Eleni Magaliou, from Pelion to Volos

Eleni Magaliou, the eldest daughter of a seven-member family, was born in 1944 in Pouri, a small village near Zagora in Pelion. Her father had also been born and raised in Pouri, while her mother was from a nearby village called Xourichti. They had an arranged marriage and had five children, three boys and two girls. Eleni’s father initially worked as a farmer, but was gravely injured when a bullet hit him in the head during the civil war in a battle that took place in the village of Kanalia in Pelion. The injury left him disabled and unable to work again, with the family surviving on a small pension that he managed to secure:

 ‘He had a disability in both his arm and his leg… he was getting a small pension when the whole family was living in the village… then when we all moved to Volos, he was granted a kiosk and we managed to make ends meet…’

Eleni’s mother did not work because, as Eleni notes, she had five children to raise. Their childhood in Pouri was particularly difficult and they experienced severe poverty and harsh conditions. Her mother’s health was fragile and she was frail both physically and psychologically because, on top of all the other adversities, she had to endure a difficult cohabitation with her in-laws in her husband’s family home. From a very young age, Eleni took on the burden of running the household and taking care of her younger brothers.

 ‘My mother was sick… her nerves were frayed… she had many health problems… and as for me? I had to do everything… I finished elementary school and then we came here, to Volos’.

As it was becoming harder and harder for the family to survive in the village, they decided to leave it and move permanently to Volos at the end of the 1950s in search of a better future. The fact that Eleni’s paternal aunt already lived in the city seems to have contributed to this decision.

 ‘Even if we had stayed in the village, the kids would grow up, the boys might go to school, study… no one cared about the girls at the time, only the boys…, my father was that kind of person… So in 1958 we all moved to Volos’.

In 1958, the family rented a small house in the area of Oxygono, in Metamorphosi, near where Eleni’s aunt lived. Soon, due to the father’s disability, the family was granted a kiosk by the state which they rented out and that was the only income on which Eleni’s seven-member family survived. Her brothers continued their studies in Volos. One brother graduated from a night school which he attended while also working in a pharmacy, and got hired by the Commercial Bank of Greece. Her younger brother studied the craft of tailoring, which he then abandoned to become a fire fighter. Upon settling in Volos, Eleni, who was thirteen at the time, started working as an au pair for a local family.

‘When we arrived in Volos from the village… there were five of us, five children… my mom and my aunt knew [the couple], they both worked at the Bank of Greece and had two young children. So I went there and I looked after the children… on the corner of Iolkou Street and Antonopoulou Street. I stayed there for three years… they really loved me, they wanted me to stay, find me a husband… She was a good woman… First, I spent time with the little ones. Then, I cooked, shopped, cleaned. They loved me very much! On Sundays, I would come back to my family, visit my mom and dad. I had a day off! But I had no other free time. Whenever we went out, we went out together. She would take us to the cinema to watch kids’ films, we would get ice cream… I had a good time there!’

Eleni kept working as an au pair for the bank employees for three years. Then her aunt got her an apprenticeship as a seamstress for a short period of time. She went on to work for three years at a German factory which manufactured spoons and forks and then moved on to another factory which produced ready-made male garments. She worked there until the birth of her second child in 1974 after marrying Nikos Margaritopoulos from Farsala in 1972. Nikos was also an internal migrant to Volos. He had come to the city with his family during the civil war and had been working from a young age to eventually become a car painter.

‘My husband’s father was a leftist… he was persecuted… that was the situation back then… My husband had an auto repair shop. He had been working since he was a kid, too… Then Datsun came to Volos and my husband and his two brothers decided to close down the shop and go work for Datsun… they all worked there. They were supervisors, foremen… He even went to Japan!  He stayed there for three months, he learned a lot!’

As she concludes her narrative, Eleni clearly states the distinct reasons that drove her and her husband’s family to migrate from different parts of Thessaly to Volos at the end of the 1950s. For Eleni’s family, the main reason was the poverty and hardship they were experiencing on the mountain of Pelion and the hope for a better life for all family members. For her husband’s family, it was the violence of the civil war and the need to survive and protect the family that drove them away from the plains of Farsala to the city of Volos.

Oral interview of Eleni Magaliou to Thanasis Betas. The interview was conducted on 3/6/2022.