Travelling vendors

Peddling was a common occupation among the refugees who lived in the refugee settlements of Volos. For some it was a last resort, while others saw it as a way of continuing their previous professional activity in their new life. Peddlers would wander around the settlements or travel outside them on foot or makeshift means of transport (donkeys, carts, bicycles, tricycles) to sell virtually anything: fruit and vegetables, fish, sweets and Turkish delight, ouzo and wine, sundries, combs, hair pins, threads, ice. There were also junk collectors, who were buying goods instead of selling them, and travelling craftsmen who would offer services, such as the mattress repairers who would tease the cotton stuffing of the mattress and then sew it back in. In the entire city of Volos, this craft was almost exclusively practiced by refugees from the Greek-speaking village of Misti in Cappadocia.

There were also other travelling craftsmen who were not necessarily of refugee origins. Up until the 1970s, gutter cleaners would traverse the streets shouting ‘We’ll clean your gutters!’. There were also many travelling milkmen, chair makers and knife grinders, with the latter two services offered almost exclusively by Roma people.

Many travelling vendors were so well-established that they were known by name. Uncle Andreas sold fish or mastic, depending on what was available. Karampouzas was a gutter cleaner. Theodoros Daniilidis sold sundries. Petros Karafiloglou sold wine and raki, Stelios Garitsis was a greengrocer, Okkaoglou and Sarikizoglou both delivered ice. After the Second World War, Pipina Vasileiadou and Eliso Ketsetzioglou travelled the villages of Velestino selling different wares from a huge bundle and taking orders from the villagers. They got paid in money or goods, like eggs, which they then resold in Volos. These shrewd businesswomen from Cappadocia would also engage in the art of matchmaking, for which they would always receive gifts.

Many travelling vendors used their profits from peddling to open small stores or workshops, which were then passed on to their children and grandchildren, but some kept peddling even after opening a shop. In Nea Ionia and the Iolkos settlement, street peddling was common until very recently, with super markets struggling to take off in the area. In communities like the one in Nea Ionia, long-standing financial practices and human relationships can resist the advent of newfangled trends for years. Is this just an instance of old habits dying hard or an expression of class consciousness, where a community supports its members in a show of spontaneous solidarity with the, for lack of a better term, ‘common people’?

Peddling has always been a means of survival for newcomers in the city. Today’s migrants sell pocket tissues, balloons, or gadgets made in China, from cell phone chargers and small fans to lighters and air fresheners. Others wipe windshields at traffic lights. Their occupations and the places where they work are the same; they walk in the footsteps of the milkman, the mattress maker, the ice vendor. However, the differences in the goods and services provided highlight the shifts which have transformed cities socially and economically throughout this past century, while also shedding light on trends in commercial globalization and the global division of labour.

Even though the cheese pie seller who would set out from Dimokratias Street early in the morning to sell his pies all over the city might now be a rare sight, the delivery drivers ceaselessly traversing the streets on their motorcycles can be viewed as the modern equivalent of the old travelling vendors.