“Unra” – and, also, corrupted “Undra”: The assistance, help, support, rescue, aid that comes in a difficult time, the Deus ex Machina, but also the person that provides help, usually the most essential and necessary for survival.

Derives from UNRA: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, more commonly known as Allied or American help. An International Organization founded in 1943, in order to provide the afflicted by the WW2 countries with help, producing, however, controversial results.

For those that have not heard about Undra, Vaggelis Mavrodis reminds us that before the  distribution of clothes and food took place, the officials tended to sort through the supplies, and as a result the rest of the people received only the castoffs and the mismatched.

So much so, that since the people in charge kept anything of good quality for themselves, the people (and mostly the leftists), were handed out long, old dresses suitable only for the carnivals or busks for corsets, like those worn by rugby players!

It was around 1955 that one of those Undra missions arrived to Aghios Kyrikos and the teachers locked everything in a classroom. Did they want to go through the provisions themselves first? Did they intend to divide them between the children according to their individual needs? Who knows?

But who could wait? Certainly not two kids from Papas, a boy and a girl, that one noon went to the school, and walked up – in secret, it goes without saying- to the room that the provisions were kept. They managed to crack the window open, but they couldn’t climb in. They found a long stick from a field near by and shoved it into the opening.

- I can’t reach it!
- C’mon! Try! You’ll get something!
- But I cannot reach, I’m telling you!
- C’mon, c’mon, stand on your toes!

The stick got heavier, something stuck on it, but at that exact moment a noise came from the other side of the building.
- Let’s go! We’re gonna get busted!

The boy pulled the stick out of the window and a piece of cloth fell to the ground. The girl picked it up and they run away.

The kids hid behind some rocks, panting from the scuttle they took to avoid getting caught. The girl opened her hands stretching the fabric and they saw it was a woman’s bathing suit.
- I’ll take that. I have so many sisters!

And that’s what she did! And the suit fitted perfectly one of her sisters. She wore it at once and went swimming to Apikofto, in Amalou (picture). Posing fatally and whimsically under the sun!

A beautiful Ikarian girl.

And the other day that I happened to see her, 60 years later, she looked equally feminine!

Big up!

Konstantinos Vatougios