Kind And Generous Bulgarian Baba

Baba is of the old Bulgarian school and a very funny person with it. However, she does get stressed out at the smallest of things. A hole in a jumper is a major problem and she's on it with repairs even before you can take the jumper off! Just missing a phone call sends here into a panic worrying that the call was the utmost importance. She will spend the next 20 minutes trying to figure out who it was and what they want question everyone until the mystery caller that was missed is solved.

Now 85 years of age, she is full of aches and pains with the colder weather during night now upon us this mid November. Even with the aches, she never attempts to put the newly installed air-conditioning system on when she is at home on her own.

There are two reason for this, the main one is, she’d rather stay cold than use up the electric, she often goes to bed at 7:00 before the system was installed to save energy. The other reason is that she just can’t understand the air conditioning controls. Even though the on/off button is the biggest and the only one coloured pink. No matter how many times we try to teach her, it goes in one ear and out the other.

The other day she had us all in stitches with a typical incident. She said that lunchtime she had lost two teeth; one fell in her bean soup she was eating and other she accidentally ate. That was it! The story was a two liner. The funny thing was that we all couldn’t understand how on earth you could lose teeth eating soup! She repeated the story time and time again and it remained as funny each time as she herself had trouble telling it from the fits of giggling.

Baba always puts other people before herself, even if she was starving, she would make sure others ate before her. She sneaks out of the house without telling anyone sometimes and brings back basic food such as bread bought on her measly pension. She knows we usually shop everyday after work, but feels that she has to contribute something to the dinner table. That’s Baba; they just don’t make people like this anymore - even in Bulgaria. Looking after here is our duty in the family house, but it really is a case of her looking after us.

So what is the point of this particular blog?

Bulgaria is changing so fast that it has left many behind, Baba is one of those people. She just doesn’t know what has hit here with the changes over the last ten years. It is now an unfamiliar world she is living in, along with many others of her generation. It becomes even more unfamiliar to her as each day goes by, I see that very clearly.