Everyday life in peasant village was not, as Karl Marx pejoratively dismissed it, an exercise in “rural idiocy”. It was a complex challenge that required deep knowledge of seasons, planting, mending, and animal welfare – in short, a holistic environmental atonement. How much of this knowledge and capacity for problem solving has been passed down, let alone been appreciated, in this contemporary urbanised world?
My generation, and that of the ones that follow, are so aware of the need for greater environmental consciousness, but the toolkits formed by the previous generation has been ignored and laid bare.
In this short piece I reflect on just one detail – the role of the donkey that my mother has recalled. Moreover, the donkey, a beast of burden—not as elegant as its cousin, the horse, yet as intelligent, more stubborn, and hardy—was symbiotic with the Greek peasant. This symbiosis extended from labour to war: beating back the invading Italian armies of Mussolini, standing shoulder to shoulder with partisans against the Nazis, and later enduring the bloody fratricide of the Greek Civil War, serving both partisans and royalists alike.
It was not the gallant horse that bore the bloody weight of war, but the donkey that fought and died alongside those at in the many conflicts that birthed modern Greece.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the donkey had become symbolic of an exotified Greece—the tourist’s motif of the scantily clad European model posed beside the peasant and their donkey. By the mid-2000s, however, there were hardly any donkeys left. The mechanisation of farming and the rapid technological transformation of rural life rendered them obsolete.
Tasks once dependent on animal labour—carrying firewood, transporting heavy blocks of ice for the icebox—belonged to an earlier that had effectively lapsed by the 1980s. With electricity now extending across Greece, refrigeration, transport, and daily labour were absorbed into the infrastructure of modern life.
Greece had finally entered the amorphous world of modernity, but at a cost: the loss of ancient knowledge of animal care and environmental atonement, deeply embedded in the relationship between the peasant and the donkey. That knowledge now survives only in the memories of a diminishing few, who recall that wonderful, intelligent, and loving beast—and, with it, the memory of an intrinsic bond to the land.
How many other facets of the wisdom in the peasant and their donkey world would enrich our lives? We now have greater tools for predicting climate disasters, but in what ways are we closer to the risks that animals are exposed to, and what do we do to make our lives more environmentally sensitive?
A story: The donkey’s intelligence
Tsonk!’ The donkey obeyed this universal command to stop. Yiorgos loaded its saddle with the beans that Hariklia and Nikiforo had harvested. His job was to take them to market in Kastoria. He fetched a good price, kicked the donkey in the behind, it made its way home to the village, and Yiorgo revelled in town for the next four days. On its way the donkey got hungry. Near the village it strayed into a neighbour’s field. Eleni was working as a day labourer clearing rocks from the rows of vegetables.
The neighbour spotted Hariklia’s donkey. The evening was approaching. Eleni’s work was almost done. “Take your mother’s donkey and run home before it gets dark.’ “Good, I will, but you need to pay me.” “Eleni! You know that my husband is the policeman who guards the fields. If he finds out that your donkey was chewing on this field, the fine would be more than your wages. Get home.”
Eleni gave her a venomous stare and retreated. When Nikiforo saw her approaching with the donkey he knew immediately what his little brother was up to. Yiorgo would get a thrashing on his return. Yiorgo did return with pockets empty and a big broad smile. Before Nikiforo could lay a hand Yiorgo beguiled him with stories of big bosomed women and delicious grilled fish. Yiorgo was barely fourteen.
The donkey had done no wrong
The donkey had done nothing wrong, but there was no money in the house. That night the donkey slipped out of the stable with its baby donkey. The filly followed its mother to the field. After feasting on fresh grass and vegetables they returned. The mother donkey closed the gate and they both slept soundly. Hariklia despatched Eleni the next day to the mountain to gather wood. Eleni was handed the small axe and lead the donkey by the lead. At the plateia she met her two friends and they all headed up the hills. They sang love songs from the Italian movies. The wars were over.They gangly thin but had no thought of risk. The men were all decent. As the path narrowed the donkey was put ahead. The land mines had not all been cleared. In the previous year Mitso went up this path on the back of his donkey. At one point the donkey stopped suddenly. It refused to budge. He kicked it with his heals.
Nothing. He dismounted from the saddle and stepped forward to pull it by the lead. Boom. The three girls thought that this would never happen to them. In a clearing they saw Dimitri guarding his flock of sheep. Dimiti was a Vlach – transhumance shepherd that moved his flock to the northern parts in the summer. He was a big and rough looking man.
Dogs at alert
His dogs were alert but under control. One was licking the edge of his hemp trousers. The other prowling the line of the flock. His hand was gripping the neck of the alpha dog. As he smiled at the girls the dogs relaxed. “My dear Dimitri, would you be so kind as to cut some wood for me?” He leapt to it. Carefully selecting the thick low hanging branches. While Eleni sat in the shade of the pine tree he carefully bundled and loaded the stacks on each side of the donkey’s saddle. The other girls got jealous and asked him for help. “Eleni asked me first, and I would never deny her a favour.”
“Dimitri, are you married?” “Yes, she is tall, with long black hair, just like Eleni.”
The other girls giggled. Dimitri returned to his flock. He spent almost the whole year with his flock and dogs. He never set foot in the kafenia. The Pontians opened kafenia in all their villages. The Vlachs did not know what to make of all these songs and gambling. They towered over the Pontian men, but they felt inferior.
They would exchange their sheep and goats for fruit and vegetables and then scurry back to their huts that were located on remote ridges. Dimitri also bought a donkey on his next visit to the market. The donkey could carry more food and tools so he could stay longer in the distant pastures.
The fire engulfs
The following summer he came down to the market again to buy some antiseptic. Two of his dogs were killed in a skirmish with a pack of wolves, the other was badly injured. Dimitri herded the donkey and the sheep into a pen. The wounded dog weighed 30 kgs and was locked in the hut.
While he was in Kastoria a fire swept through the valley. The smoke was ominous. Dimitri rushed back. The hut was burnt to the ground and the pen was empty. As he approached, he saw the scarred earth and, buckled over with guilt and anguish. On closer inspection he could not find any sign of the herd. No huddle of burnt carcasses.
The vultures could not have swept through so quickly to clean up the charred remains. The donkey had opened the gate and led the sheep and goats to the edge of safety.
*Professor Nikos Papastergiadis is a cultural historian and author of many books; his most recent one, ‘John Berger and Me’, won the 2025 Michael Crouch Award for biography.