Ivan Kostov
Look, I have lived more in another place, to be honest… I like it here. I have a small house, within my means I have achieved enough…
I have asked the grandson: Do you want to live here or in Varshets? “Grandpa, I like it both here and in Varshets. If I find work, I will live here,” he said. But that is only if there is work, of course…
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- chicho Kiro: The village hasn’t depopulated now. The village depopulated in 1960, when the Cooperative happened… They took the land from the people, the cattle that fed them… The people were left on the street without means of living…
- lelya Danche: Now they have returned bad land, that you cannot make anything of.
- chicho Kiro: The people were left without bread, in the Cooperative they paid 50 stotinki for work… can you feed your family with that? That is why it depopulated, these are the reasons… The people went to another place, they bought themselves houses, flats, they settled in different places… - baba Sanda: Here the bus comes for one child only [Dessi]…
- lelya Danche: If I hadn’t fallen ill when I was 43, I guess I’d still be in the shop… If I weren’t in the shop, I would have gone abroad to take care of old people, like everyone does… I would have gone there to live and wouldn’t suffer…
- chicho Kiro: There are villages with only one inhabitant, with around ten people… And this village will reach the same pass… Look – there is only one child… after 20 years, what will happen… Not only won’t that child stay here… will there be any people at all? These people, who are here, are people-travelers… for the next world… They are disappearing… And what is left? One person… That is how we see the village…
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lelya Deshka
Here, this house has been made by my father-in-law. It has been made for a stable, to put food for the animals…
And when we married, Blago and I, and we had nowhere to live, the two rooms here were gaping… gaping naked… And we have put one bed, but underneath there are the beams and boards, the bed isn’t made as it should be…
And we went during the day to work on the field, we came home tired… and went to bed. Even before we were completely abed, the bed would shift and the boards would fall. And we had to get up to arrange the boards. As soon as we arranged them, so that we could go to bed, they would fall again.. and so it was for the entire night…
After Blago came back from the military quarters, we left for Sofia in 1953… We came back here when we retired… But first we fixed the house, we brought bricks from up there…
I like it, because you have memories, you were born here, you were raised here… And of course, dear, you will miss it… because you are left without people, without humans, you don’t have anyone to talk to…
I watched on TV that in a small village somewhere there is only one woman left… only one… And we talk about it here, that it will be the same with us.
You miss it, as I told you... I remember years ago, how it used to be – people, cheerfulness… A pipe playing from that side, a second one from the other… The bells chime and you feel nice. Birds sing cuckoos…
You suffer, when you see how the houses crumble, the people are gone…you remember a lot of things, you want it to be the same again. But… nothing is forever… An end comes…
I wouldn’t leave for as long as I can, I will be both in Sofia and here. But a day will come when I won’t be able to do this anymore, I will be quite old and leave this… Because I don’t have more than five years to live… When I leave this world, let them do whatever they want. But as long as I live, the houses will stay, and I will support them as much as I can… If you can, you support it, if you can’t – you leave it to crumble… And a day will come, I think, when all houses will crumble, when there are no people left…
