Poverty and beauty

Poverty and beauty

Greece
West Macedonia, at the borders with Albania and FYROM.
Prespes Lakes
Psarades village

Traditionally one of the most underdevelopped but also unforgivably neglected regions of Greece. The beauty is redundant as if nature granted it generously to make up for poverty and neglect...Beautiful lakes getting frost in the long and heavy winters but also, in the milder periods, refuge to rare and precious bird spieces and surrounding mountains with dense forests ideal for animal breeding. And scattered villages with people struggling to cultivate harsh land, raise some cattle and profit from fishing in order to cope with bare everyday necessities...Lately turism and improved roads gave a spark of life to the region and also the fact that it is included in the european ecological net NATURA 2000.
The village Psarades (in the photo) is the biggest in the region, on a lake that offers a certain comfort by fishing but with a land hardly fertile for any substantial crop. The rest of the villages are much smaller and morbid drained from their youth that moved to bigger centers for a better luck....
If you ask the people what they are most in need for,you get the answer:
" Nothing, just send a message that we still exist....!