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Showing posts from January, 2021

Yiayia Roula - always by my side

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  If anybody asked me until now, how I would describe my Yiayia Roula, I would respond “katsarida” (cockroach). To which, everyone looked disgusted and with a question mark on their face. The explanation is simple: I read somewhere that in a global nuclear disaster the only creatures that would survive would be the cockroaches…and my Yiayia! It was a joke clearly with a dose of pride about the strength and calibre of this woman. Trust her, thus, to survive 2020; one of the most difficult years of modern humankind and say goodbye to us the third day of the new year. My relationship with her was in a way separated in three periods: my childhood years up to my parents’ separation when I was 5 years old, the years that I was at school and she was in South Africa, and the last 14 years that we have both been in South Africa. Or in other words: Roula and little Roulitsa; Roula without Roula; and Roula and Roula periods.   Roula and little Roulitsa She was my caregiver and althoug