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Darena Gesheva and her adventure novel life

Author:
Darena Gesheva with her husband Krikor, also an anesthesiologist.
Photo: Personal archive

Knezha-Sofia-South Africa-Botswana and ... Asenovgrad. These are the stations in the life journey of our compatriot Darena Gesheva, which will surely provide her with countless memories to tell friends and visitors to her café in the small town of Asenovgrad, near Plovdiv. Her shop is now well known to the people of Plovdiv, who often drop in for a cup of Darena's fragrant coffee. 


Like all of us, Darena has seen both good and bad times in her life. In 1995, after 6 years of working as a doctor at the hospital in Knezha, she decided to seek her fortune outside the country, as these were years of "hunger and hardship". The only country she could get a visa for from Sofia was South Africa. It was only a tourist visa and lasted two weeks.

"I arrived there not knowing the language, not knowing anything. There was no internet then and information was scant, if not non-existent," Darena recalls. - I got on a plane with other immigrants who were also looking for a better life. I found myself in South Africa at a troubled time. It was almost immediately after the Apartheid and finding a job was extremely difficult. I had to do menial jobs for 3 years. The initial two weeks passed and I became illegal. Half a year later I managed to get a so-called refugee visa, which allows you to wait until you are granted refugee status".

Darena never received such a status, which made it impossible for her to even leave the country. She worked in a factory, as a nanny and was lucky enough to become a cleaner in one of the private hospitals. It was during her time as a janitor that she learnt many of the medical terms in English. One day she heard that a medical facility in neighbouring Botswana was looking for staff:


"I knew nothing about the country except that it borders South Africa. I called them and they invited me to Johannesburg for an interview. Then they approved me and said I could be offered a job in Botswana, but employers should call me from there. In the meantime I continued to work as a cleaner and after about 3 months I got a call from Botswana. It was quite a long time and I had almost given up hope," says our interviewee, who was able to leave South Africa but without the possibility of ever returning. 

"I took my old car into Botswana. I stayed there, I took a medical exam there, but unfortunately they don't tell you immediately if you've passed. It was a torturous three months of living in limbo. Then I went to the Ministry, walking, because I had no money and nothing. It was Christmas Day when I went there to ask if I had a contract. Only the guards were at work, because the whole country is not working until 15 January. The guard asked my name and went to check at the supervisor's desk. It turned out that I did indeed have a contract from two months ago. I had to report to the hospital in question, which I did, and from then on my life seemed to go on more normally. I legalised my documents and now I had a work visa, which was amazing. It was more than a green card to me.


Darena settled in northern Botswana, where she was employed at one of the country's two main hospitals, and admits she felt like a new person because she could now have a decent life. She says that the percentage of Bulgarians in this African country at that time was negligible - literally a few families, mainly engineers and doctors. She herself spent the next nine years working as an anaesthetist and resuscitator. 

The year is 1999 and life in Francistown is still relatively safe. It's everyone's responsibility to make sure the house they live in or rent has external and internal alarms and bars on the doors and windows. She lives alone with her dog, but despite all her precautions, she has been robbed seven times. When she got married, she moved to Botswana's capital, Gaborone, where her house was broken into again:

"One night they broke in by opening the window with a credit card. To my horror, I was inside. My husband was at work and I can't describe the feeling of paralysing panic. You can't move, you see everything, you understand everything, but you can't move a foot, a hand, make a phone call, call for help. After that incident, I asked the landlords if we could put up bars, they refused, and we decided we had to find our own home where we could protect ourselves.


They bought a house where they lived with a high level of protection until one day they decided to return to Bulgaria. So, after 22 years of working abroad for her and 28 years for her husband, and with the recognition of their patients and colleagues at the hospital, the two Bulgarians began a new chapter in their lives, now back in their homeland.

Photos: personal archive
Translated and posted by Elizabeth Radkova


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