Cyprus then and now
The Citizens’ Service Office, Engomi, Nicosia is a gem in the government’s crown of inefficient public service thorns. Your appointment is made by phone, you receive an SMS reminder with a number, parking’s easy, reception takes your details, your number is called saying which desk will provide fast, pleasant and helpful assistance. Leaving, you are politely requested to assess your visit, mine – excellent.
Who designed this jewel, manages it, trained the staff to deal efficiently and calmly with people? Why hasn’t it been adopted by other offices to improve the usual public service run-in-circles inefficiency?
I was happy George Neokleous (Sunday Mail 25/1) found positives on changes in Nicosia because a recent walk down Ledra and Onasagorou streets brought to my mind a song about Dublin that infers regretfully to ‘The steady march of progress makes a city of our town.’
When I first came to Cyprus, Old Nicosia enthralled me, it was different to anywhere I had lived before, bearing the stamp of its age and historical identity, the kind of place most European countries preserve knowing tourists like discovering difference. It is now depressing, jaded facades wallowing in obsolescence, idiotic graffiti plastered on side street walls, shops sad remnants of a deleted past, a once vibrant entity awaiting an urgent transfusion of new life.
Then, in small shops in narrow streets, multiple crafts were practiced, plentiful textiles flowed in coloured drapes, and as traffic increased, shop owners ‘spoke’ to each other across noisy streets with hand gestures and facial expressions. Its transformation to a pedestrian area in a town where no one walks if they can drive, destroyed that core.
‘Universal chic’ spread beyond the confining walls as smart stores and malls replaced smaller, local businesses and modern buildings grated against old neo/classical architecture.
The Eleftheria Square development placed alien, out of synch structures under yellow 16th century Venetian Walls, its white benches compared to suppositories. High rises now pop up like ancient phallic symbols in modern guise. It’s a new age, a new time and we day-walking old folk have to accept change we dislike.
The Orthodox Church retains its dominance. Ireland’s old priests are dying off and few new ones replace them. Pope Leo seems no more inclined to ordain women (bravo Anglicans) or allow priests to marry than his predecessors. The Orthodox faithful have remained faithful. Married priests can empathise better with family problems than men glued to unnatural celibacy.
Pedophiles awarded forgiveness and sanctuary from the law resulted in Irish loss of trust in the Vatican and its servants. Cyprus has its share of nutters wearing robes for whom the teachings of Christ seem less important than their own narrow opinions.
Water has become an urgent topic – too late. Bad habits are ingrained, farmers pay for household wasters who don’t care, desalination is available, damn the cost and the environment. Cuts/fines will have the most sobering effect. I recall having to boil army clothing on the cooker and fill the bath to flush the loo during cuts.
America, our current ‘bestie’, needs to give Mr Trump a ‘King’s New Clothes’ moment, as he views the world with cash-register eyes instead of normal diplomacy. His peace deal farce in Gaza obviously has little to do with Palestinian welfare, more his own. Cyprus, still in the net of guarantor powers, needs to study long term effects of geopolitical change before plunging in anywhere with cash register eyes alone.