The Secret Life of Bees Goes Public: Niki Koustsiana…

Niki Koustsiana is not immediately recognizable as a name, but tell any Greek woman the brand name APIVITA and her lights will brighten up.  “The best natural skin and hair products in Greece,” Eleni  gives her opinion at the APIVITA counter of a downtown Athens pharmacy.

The name APIVITA, translated from Latin meaning “a bee’s life,” is another Greek business success story thanks to the love of nature and the intimate knowledge of herbs that abounded from childhood in the soul of Niki Koustisana.  A native of Tripoli, in the middle of the Peloponnesus, Niki grew up in the wealth of spring flowers and frolicking among wild honey bees in the hills around her village.   After she graduated with a major in pharmacy from the University of Athens, she started her own pharmacy along with her husband, Nick.

This wasn’t just your normal Greek pharmacy that smells of antiseptic and cosmetics (you know what I’m talking about if you have ever walked into a Greek pharmacy).  This was the mortar and pestle dispensary that allowed her to mix and match life-enhancing herbs and experiment with honey, propoline, and wax.  Propoline is a sort of natural bee mortar that the insects use to patch up hives which has antibacterial properties.  Slowly from the alchemy of her concoctions arose hand-crafted shampoos, creams, and skin balms.  In fact, she was the first to create black soap from propolis, royal bee jelly.  Niki founded her products on her faith in the holistic theory of medicine handed down directly from the great physician Hippocrates who practiced in Kos.  Staying faithful to natural, elemental ingredients fresh from the Greek countryside and her knowledge of aromatherapy, homeopathy and apiculture (yes, there is an entire world out there related to the life of bees and their honey) Niki was able to bring the elements that ensure health.  She prescribes to a holistic definition of health, as Hippocrates did, one that encompasses not just physical well-being, but emotional and environmental beauty.  Beauty and health, in her opinion, go together.  A flower such as lavender is both beautiful, aromatic and relaxing, in addition to its medicinal properties.

In 1979, Niki and her husband branded their unique beauty/health concoctions, with the company APIVITA.  It was the first natural beauty and cosmetics company in the country.  Since 1979 until the present, Niki has led the company as its CEO.  The company has emerged as a leader in “green” marketing ranking in the top 14 natural cosmetics companies by the Global Cosmetic Industry in 2008.  In 2013 APIVITA gained 2^nd prize as a “Sustainability Pioneer” at the Sustainable Cosmetics Summit in Paris conferred on APIVITA.  Even Bill Gates has recognized APIVITA as one of the three most innovative companies in Greece.

Today APIVITA has a strong presence in many markets such as Spain, Cyprus, England, Hong Kong, Japan, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belgium, Australia, America, Holland, Luxembourg and Croatia. In her new bioclimatic factory, 200 employees are employed.

Not only a successful business maven, Niki is a philanthropist and engaged in a variety of social action campaigns. One of the projects close to her heart is resurrecting the Hippocratic Botanical Garden of Kos, a modern form of the ark of Noah, which includes 254 plants used by Hippocrates during his medical practice.  In 2012 she made a valuable contribution of the campaign by Médecins Sans Frontières ‘pill for the other’s pain.” She is a founding member of the Greek Homeopathic Society and the Greek Society of Ethnopharmacology, as well as a member of the Greek Society for Environment and Culture.  She gives boundlessly to the children’s charity, Together for the Child (Μαζί για το Παιδί.)

The APIVITA store is stocked with such luscious sounding products as Rose Pepper exfoliating cream, hydrating hair mask with honey, organic Greek royal jelly, cleansing foam infused with olive oil and lavender, and other ingredients so good and so natural you are tempted to open the bottle and guzzle the creams down.   Most products are made with some form of propoline or honey, a natural moisturizer.     The herbs used in the products are so potent when you take a whiff of the stuff you are transported to the wild hills of the Peloponnesian countryside.   I especially recommend the Eco-Bio Baby series for kids and infants sensitive to harsh chemicals.

In case you didn’t have a chance to pick up any APIVITA products while in Greece, there is an APIVITA store in Eleftherios Venezelos airport for the last-minute types like myself.

Thank you Niki for indulging our senses with the natural beauty that grows in Greece.

Resources:

APIVITA Official site: www.apivita.com

The Doctors without Frontiers campaign “Pills for the Pain of Others”

The Hippocratic Garden of Kos, www.hippocratesgarden.gr

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Captain Karen Tsiantas: A Navy Officer and a Hellenic…

What would is it like to be a Greek American woman working for the US military?  That is the question greekamericangirl.com posed to Captain Karen A. Tsiantas.  With a long career (26 years and counting) in the US Navy, Capt Tsiantas is an unsung hero who has stayed true to her roots.  She has traveled the world and the seven seas many times over, having served in such faraway places as Okinawa, Hawaii, Alaska, as well as the South Pacific.  She has visited in her official capacity Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  She has received training at anti-submarine warfare schools, communications school in Newport, R.I., gaining knowledge in undersea sound surveillance, as well as a graduate of the Naval War College (Master’s Degree in National Security) and the Joint Forces Staff College.  She is also a qualified Joint Specialty Officer.  Although not assigned to submarines or ships, she has spent time onboard submarines as a visitor and was a liaison officer on the USS RANGER, a carrier, during an anti-submarine exercise before women were officially assigned onboard combatant ships.  In addition, she worked at anti-submarine surveillance headquarters and naval stations mentoring civilian and Navy personnel alike, and put her in charge of the operational planning for a large-scale operational plan in the Pacific.  In her blood, she carries the Greek wanderlust for sailing.  She is a remarkable woman who is a pioneer in forging a path in the military, a road less traveled for women, especially Greek women.  Not only has she chosen the road less traveled, she has blazoned it.  Captain Tsiantas unravels the oxymoron “female sailor” and makes it a statement of truth.  Her accomplishments are so worthy and bold they can challenge the boasts of many a proud Greek father for his sailor son.  As a child, her father ensured she learned and could sing the Greek national anthem and to this day she sings it out loud at the Olympic opening ceremonies in her living room.

Captain Tsiantas credits her “wonderful childhood” as the foundation for her life-long success.  She was born to a middle-class family of Greek immigrants in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  Her father came over from Greece after WWII and attended high school in his late 20’s to learn English, then went on to college, and eventually became a math teacher.  Later, he earned his master’s degree at night.  Her mother, from the same village as her father, a small village in the mountains outside of Kozani, emigrated to the US after her father returned to the in 1962 looking for a wife.  Her father saw her in church and that was it-it was arranged.  Her mother was in her early 20s when she came over and her dad immediately placed his bride in a local elementary school to learn English.  He made it a point to Americanize not just her mother but other Greeks in his community.  He spearheaded an effort to have many of the very elderly (70s/80s) women from their local church naturalized as American citizens before they passed away.

Ironically, her father did not agree with her decision to join the armed forces.  She had enrolled in the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit school that worked in conjunction with the Navy to train officers, and had received a Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship from the Navy to attend the school.  Captain Tsiantas remembers his insisting to go to the bank the week before she graduated and was commissioned to apply for a loan to pay back the Navy for her education.  “He probably wanted me to stay close to home and look for a Greek husband so I could start making grandchildren,” she said jokingly.

However, she stayed true to her original course to serve in the Navy for three good reasons: 1) to service her country and in gratitude for all the great things this country offered her parents; 2) for the sense of adventure a career in the military implied; and 3) as a way to assist her family to pay for college.  As a child Captain Tsiantas had grown up within minutes of the seashore and she remembers spending many summer vacations at the local beaches.  This partly affected her choice in joining the Navy as opposed to the other branches of service.  Additionally, her Nouna’s son, who acted as a big brother for her, had enlisted in the Navy in the late 1970s and she was haunted by his far-away tales of the Philippines.  Through the example of her parents, she learned the importance of service. “Service to country, service to church organizations, service to others,” she credits.  “My parents showed me through their actions the importance of helping others.”

Her first tour of duty began on an isolated island part of the Aleutian chain in Alaska.  When she joined the Navy in 1987 women weren’t allowed to go to sea.  She was assimilated into a shore-based operation where women had already been serving  conducting surveillance using underground cables and arrays, as mentioned in the book, Hunt for Red October.  She does not feel as if she broke ground as a woman in the Navy as she was following the path already prescribed for women at the time.

She was lax in following her Orthodox traditions as a young officer in her 20s in Hawaii as she was “trying to find herself and her place in the world.  “I would choose to run in races on a Sunday morning instead of attending church,” she confesses.   But with time, and especially after getting stationed in Italy and spending her two-week vacations in Greece with family, she started to reconnect to her Hellenic heritage.  “When I was stationed in Italy, I often thought ‘If only I were in Greece.’”  By the time she did her second tour of duty on Hawaii from 2001 to 2005, she had become a born again Greek.  She became active in her church becoming Vice-President of the Philoptochos at the Cathedral of Sts. Constantine and Helen in Honolulu.   Her Philoptochos chapter was instrumental in raising many needed funds, especially to arrange for transport of children affected by cancer and their families from the outer islands to Oahu.  Later, on Okinawa, where there was an Orthodox Chapel, she was appointed as a lay leader for six months while the Chaplain, Fr. Duesenberry, was deployed to Kuwait to work at a mortuary affairs unit.

By growing up with the benefits of a bi-cultural upbringing, Captain Tsiantas gained insights into life.  She remembers in particular the summer of 1971 when her mother took her and her sister to Greece to stay with her parents in Pentalofos, a very small village 1 hour west from Kozani, way up in the mountains.  The village was very small with few amenities.  She remembers her grandmother’s home did not even have indoor plumbing. (She had to use an outhouse for a bathroom and took a bath by heating water in the fire in the kitchen and using a briki to rinse.”)  This experience made her realized all things she took for granted back home, even in her humble rental apartment.  “Upon return I had a deep appreciation for the opportunities my parents had in America,” she explains.

She also remembers how amazed she was at an annual female officer’s convention.  “There were so many young women there—Navy, Marines, Air Force, Cost Guard, enlisted and officers from all services—all rising up in the ranks,” she said.  The notes how many more opportunities there exist for smart, ambitious young women in the military since she joined.  And now with the lifting of the ban on women in combat positions, there will be even more opportunities for advancement.  As long as a woman can uphold the physical and training standards and hold her own against her peers, there should be no limits to what she can accomplish.

At the same time she appreciates American drive and opportunity, Captain Tsiantas still keeps it Greek.  “It is hard to say what am I; more Greek than American or the other way around,” she says.  “I kept my last name as my way to keep my Greek identity, I am not shy to tell my boss (because I am senior, I don’t really need to ask) I am leaving work for a few hours to go to church and I am not shy to tell people my Easter is different.  I like to talk Greek when I can, I follow service in church in Greek as I can still read it; I have a ton of Greek CDs of older music.”

She merits her successes to the fact that she was raised by loving parents who kept their Greek and Orthodox traditions alive and instilled in her solid values.  Those lessons were strengthened by the Jesuits and teachings at College of the Holy Cross; the mottos of Holy Cross still resonate with her: “Service before self” and “Lift the Cross High.” She also attributes her success to the number of mentors she was fortunate enough to have met during her career. Her first was CDR Mary Ann Duff, the second in charge, also called Executive Officer, whose example she tried to emulate when she in turn became executive officer at a small installation in Italy.  Then there was RADM Ronne Froman from 1997-1998, a female flag officer who even came to her wedding in 2001 and Selina Hernandez-Haines from 1989-1991, who was a senior lieutenant and eventually retired as a commander.

Captain Tsiantas did not have the fortune of running into other officers of Hellenic descent.  She does remember in 1998 while stationed on La Maddelena, Italy, a woman from Iraklion, “Penny”, the wife of a service member, who upon hearing that “the new executive officer was Greek,” invited her to her house for Christmas. They have kept in close contact since then.  She remembers watching “a ton of 1950/1960 and 1970s Greek movies” from Penny’s extensive collection and bonding while watching Greek divas such as Aliki Vougiouklali and Jenny Karezi, her mother’s favorites.

After the death of her father in 2005, Captain Tsiantas recalls bonding with her mother.  “We went to St. Anthony’s monastery in Arizona for Pascha,” she recounts, “and being there with my mother in the Greek Orthodox chapel—well, that’s was just sacred.”  Her career also had the added benefit of bringing the wondrous world of travel to her parents who were quite home bodies throughout their lives.  While they were visiting her while she was stationed in Hawaii, she remembers, she “loved coming home every day and hanging out with my parents.” The devotion and respect for the older generation is another very Greek value Captain Tsiantas still keeps close.

Captain Tsiantas would encourage young women with a sense of adventure to eagerly pursue a career in the military.  Of course, the military does present some unique work-life balance issues, especially since tours of duty normally rotate after three years.  For a woman in the Navy, it would not be uncommon to be stationed on a submarine or ship for six to eight months at a time, making it difficult for those who have young children.  But the benefits of travel and the opportunities to serve exist for all those who are brave enough to reach for them.

Captain Tsiantas is currently stationed in Norfolk, Virginia and faithfully continues to attend liturgy at the local Greek church.  She is married to Colonel Brad Weisz, USMC, a native of Edgerton, OH, who is currently serving as the Marine Forces North Chief of Staff in New Orleans.  She and her husband are now living apart, which is not new to them as her husband spent 14 months in Iraq, eight months in Afghanistan, and, right after they were married, he was in Bahrain for 12 months (two different times for six months).

Tsiantas’ personal decorations include the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (one oak leaf cluster), Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal (two gold stars), Joint Service Achievement Medal (one oak leaf cluster), Navy Achievement Medal (one gold star) and various unit and campaign awards.

“No matter where I go, I’m Greek and I’m also an American naval officer,” Captain Tsiantas exclaims proudly.

Anne Zouridis: For the love of Greece in fact…

Had Agatha Christie ever had to solve a murder mystery while on holiday on one of the Greek islands that would be a bit like the crime dramas of acclaimed mystery novelist Ann Zouroudi.  Ann’s eyes and voice are Greek through and through even if she is not a native Hellene.  Each and every one of her detective fiction novels are set on the distinctively Greek landscape and make use of Greek characters and sensibilities.  Could it be called escapist literature, the fact that Zouroudi chooses not only the setting of her novels but also their major characters as Greek? Could we dismiss her books as easy summer reads written by a bored British vacationer on the Greek isles?  Absolutely not.    Skimming through her books, top-sellers in both the UK and US markets, you can smell the oregano wafting through the pages, the freshness of the fish she describes for dinner, and the snatches of “kali spera”.  Only a true philhellene who has spent countless days and hours fixed on understanding the Hellenic sensibility, who has been moved by the poetry of sea, land and sky, the very fabric of the land could fabricate the meticulous descriptions that float out of her fiction like picture postcards and fuzzy but warm memories of summers come and gone.

Her detective hero,  Hermes Diaktoros, combines the shrewdness of Sherlock Holmes with the wisdom of a real psychoanalyst of human character.  Mature, collected, but compassionate and passionate, he combines the cold rationality of other detective heroes with the joie de vivre of a warm throbbing heart that could only belong to a true Greek. In his existence, he typifies the Greek way of solving problems; that this character could be birthed by a British ex-pat  testifies to a feat that could only have been accomplished by a keen insider.  That is what Zoroudis is—a true insider of the heart and soul of Greece.  You get the sense from reading her novels, although all written in English, that “it is all Greek to me.”

Perhaps this is so because Zouroudis had married into the culture for many years.  She first fell in love with the place while vacationing with her sister in the 80’s. As she writes on her website,“We arrived at night; there  was nothing to see,” Anne recalls. “But the next morning, I opened the  shutters of our rented house, and bam! Love at first sight. The  brilliant blue sea, the scent of herbs on the breeze, the timelessness  of the place… It was the first moment of a love affair which has lasted  twenty years.”  Then she fell in love with a handsome fisherman from the island of Symi, outside of Rhodes.   She gave up a lucrative career in the financial industry (she was a top-seller in both the City of London and Wall Street) to live a simple sea-land-and sky existence with a humble fisherman.  They had a son William or Vasillis, who is himself on holiday to Greece as you read this post.   Although she has always written, having won writing contests ever since grade school, she did not start writing in earnest about Greece and her falling out until after her divorce.  She garnered literary success with the publication of The Messenger of Athens, the first book in the series of ” Seven Deadly Sins” Mystery.  She says she writes books she would like to read herself, hence crime fiction set in Greece, as she herself is a huge crime fiction buff.  There are very few other authors in this market (Jeffrey Siger is about the only one who comes to mind).  In fact, she might be the one and only woman writing in this genre.

If you haven’t had the chance to pick up one of her novels, you MUST, YOU MUST.  They are irresistible.  And so what if they might be escapist after all?  They make for wonderful easy reading while on a crystal clear secluded beach on one of those white-washed domed islands everyone is dying to flock to in the summer.

In an exclusive interview with www.greekamericangirl.com, Zouroudis gets her Greek on and speaks candidly about the allure of Hellas in fact and fiction. 

Perhaps you can speak about the allure of the Greek a bit more. What is the mystery, what is the passion that we find in Greece that does not exist in places like the US or the UK? Can you put your finger on it?  Could there be something behind this your conscious choice to set your novels that deal with the extreme mysteries of the heart in Greek isles?  How much of Greece in your novels is true to life and how much romantic convention?

As far as the Greek aspects of my books are concerned, I write what I see, the good and the not so good. I think as a foreigner I see more, because what’s every day to the indigenous population is unique and interesting to me. You’re probably aware that outside the urban areas, women in Greece still have a pretty tough life.  Certainly my life was tough when I was living there, and I recently spent five weeks in a mountain village in Crete, where I was amazed to find life has barely moved on at all, and there’s very little sign of it being 2014 in those remote places. 

 About the culture shift, going from Brit to Greek–

I found it hard to go from being an independent woman with a responsible job to being a second-class citizen whose function was to cook, clean and have babies – I don’t mean to denigrate Greece in any way, but that Mediterranean mindset (it’s the same in Italy, and all over the Middle East, of course) does prevail in some areas. I’ve seen on your website the Putana/Parthena debate, so I’m guessing you know what I’m talking about! But at the same time Greece and the Greeks have such soul, depths of character so often missing these days in the bland English certainly – Greeks have a huge passion for life, and I love that. I  feel in my soul I’m Greek (a previous life, maybe?) and I’m much more at home there than I am here in the UK. 

About her love affair with handsome Greek men and the Greek islands–

So many of the women I know who’ve ended up in the arms of Greek islanders are bright and educated, and they are the ones who are moths to the flames of men who don’t read and would never go near a theatre – yet their relationships often last (more often than you might expect). I think it’s that the men have soul – an attachment to earth (in the sense of Gaia), a ‘wild man’ quality which women do respect. I think a woman feels safe on a primal level with a man who can literally put food on the table rather than buying her dinner without having a clue how to prepare it. And what’s more romantic than cooking fish you’ve caught over an open fire? Nothing!

I think that connection we make with the men, we make with the country too. Greece hasn’t (yet) fallen into the corporate trap – here in the UK every high street, every mall is the same now, homogenised shopping and an illusion of consumer choice – it’s like living in Soviet Russia. But Greece has kept its identity, and fights for it fiercely – the Greek soul burns brightly wherever you look. And let’s not forget the allure of beauty – like in the myth of Narcissus, beauty is dangerously seductive and addictive, and where is more beautiful than Greece? We Brits crave the sun and the blueness and the light I think – when I first found it I thought I had found heaven, and I still think that (with caveats) to this day.

About finding her voice–

So I found my voice when I came to write the books because I had found something I was truly passionate about – beauty and soul, in the country and in the man. And of course in the magic of the myths (you’ll find a whole lot of mythology hidden between the covers of my books…).

Thanks Anne for your wonderful insights!

You can read more about Zouridi at her own website, www.annezouridi.com and can purchase copies of her novels at Amazon.