My Trip To Pomac-land.

In July 2019, I described the achievements of the Macedonia Thrace Brewery, their refreshing mountain tea, Tuvunu, and my quest to know more about it, which led me on a trip to Thrace. Today, I’ll focus on the value-added services the Brewery offers their community.

A dear friend of mine, Fay, manages the bilingual department of the American College of Anatolia in Thessaloniki. She invited me to accompany her to N.E. Greece on a planning trip for the English language program they have been running in conjunction with Tuvunu, and the Office of Political Affairs of Thrace.

 The initiative for the program came from the Politopoulos brothers, founders of the Macedonia Thrace Brewery.  They are of the Pomac race - long-term residents of the mountainous regions of N.E. Greece and S. Bulgaria. They are of the Muslim faith, a residual influence of the Ottoman Empire. Living as they do in fairly inaccessible villages in the Rodopi mountain range, their genetic pool has remained strong: many have fair hair and striking blue eyes. Many families operate on a single-parent status as the husbands, economic migrants, work in countries such as Germany and Sweden for long stretches of time. It also has to be said that in the past, these people have been used as pawns in the to-ing and fro-ing of Graeco-Turkish politics. It is only natural, then, that they prefer to keep themselves to themselves, working off the land, tending their animals and growing crops of tobacco and tea.

                           

 

It was in this backdrop that the brothers, wishing to give something back to the people of their home area, approached Anatolia College. In 2014 a unique 2-week English program, tailor-made for the 25 children who participated, was piloted in the Pomac village of Kentavros.  In the children’s notice board below, top-right corner, the symbol can be seen from which the village takes its name: the Centaur. The poster next to it exhorts protection of the environment and its species: Life for the bear means life for the forest and for man.

        

 

Below we see Fay giving a talk to the children in Pachni and alongside is a poster with details about the two-week summer course.

                                 

 

Ours was a multi-purpose trip: one of the marketing team came along to collect data, while Christos kindly ferried us from village to village.

                        

 

But he was also there to inspect some tea crops to assess if they met the Tuvunu standards.

                  

 

Fay’s task was to meet parents and children, inform them of what the program had to offer and hopefully enlist students for the course, helping the parents to fill out the application forms where required. We can often make sweeping generalizations about Muslim women being submissive. This group of ladies was very open and friendly and I was interested to see how they responded when parental permission was sought. Some understandably said they would take the documents home to discuss with their husbands, while others quite emphatically agreed to sign there and then, saying with a smile that their husbands would do whatever they said. Women are the same the world over!

Anatolia not only helps organize the summer program, but offers an annual, donor-funded scholarship which allows one selected student to board and study at Anatolia through secondary school and lykeio, to prepare them for a US university education. In Glafki what was really interesting was that two scholarship students came to address the local audience.  They described their experiences in the most articulate and enthusiastic fashion.  It was clear that mothers were encouraged and reassured when those children spoke about all the support they were being offered at Anatolia and how much they had been helped initially with the summer program.

Certainly Fay and Tuvunu could only assess this trip as a resounding success. Even with the additional accommodation which had been arranged at Kentavros School, a record number of 160 children attended the classes. This wonderful decision of the brothers to give back to their community is certainly appreciated locally and serves as a model which could be replicated in other outlying areas by local entrepreneurs.

               

                       

 

It had been a long day but we were still able to enjoy some spectacular scenery as we drove down the escarpment. This elegant three-arched stone bridge made a particular impression on us.

           

 

  Then it was time for us to relax and enjoy some local fare, washed down with local wine - and some Tuvunu iced tea, of course!