Diaspora Greeks’ pilgrimages to Pindos and their family roots

At 21, Olympia Zigoura, a slender brunette, left her lush green village of Vouchorina (sometimes spelled Vouhorina) in the foothills of eastern Pindos, never to return. It was 1956, and like many of her fellow villagers, she was embarking on a journey of migration, with destinations either in America or Australia. She was heading to Melbourne, bound by an arranged marriage to a man she had never met, chosen by her brother, who had emigrated before her.

Sixty years later, in the summer of 2024, her now-deceased daughter's child, Greek-Australian Eva Root, returned to the nearly deserted Vouchorina to reconnect with her family's roots and history. "I had seen photos of the house where my mother was born. It had a garden. What I really wanted was to touch the soil my mother had touched," she tells Kathimerini.

Eva Root pictured outside of her late mother's home in...