On Christmas Eve in Koskinou, Rhodes, twenty-four-year-old student Rafaela Drakou suddenly loses her father, a prominent livestock farmer on the island. She and her sisters do not hesitate for a moment. They take on the livestock themselves and step up with courage and perseverance, against all hardships and prejudices.
Interviewee: Rafaela Drakou
Interview by: Dimitra Patapi
Producer: Fenia Chala
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Avraam Marios Theofilatos
Translator: Eva Kesserling
Voiceover: Melia Kreiling
Istorima is the biggest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could easily be lost in time.
It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.