Packing for Sekrat

So, in just over two weeks we’re heading back to the village with our eight month old baby in tow. If I thought packing for the village was a task pre baby, post baby packing is horrendous! Omer doesn’t seem to think we’ll have that much stuff, but I know we’ll have two extra large suitcases, a cabin case, hand luggage, the car seat, a pushchair plus a walker wrapped up separately (hopefully it will make the journey!). Omer suggested we get the train to the airport. I’ve convinced him it’d be better to get a taxi! 
It’s been two years since I’ve been to Sekrat. I didn’t plan for it to be so long, but  

I fell pregnant and didn’t fancy going whilst pregnant, nor did I fancy it with a newborn. 
I’m so excited to go back and see everyone and also for them to meet the newest addition of the Yildirim family, but I’m also very anxious. Firstly about the journey – 4 hours to Istanbul, a 5 hour wait in Istanbul, then a 2 hour domestic flight, arriving into Elazig just after midnight. I’m also anxious about taking Yusuf out of his usual setting and routines, plus I already know how differently they bring up their babies over there. Building up my confidence as a new mum is an ongoing thing and I’m the worst at second guessing myself at the best of times never mind when I’m being told by several people that my baby needs a blanket on despite it being thirty degrees! 
Anyway, I’ve started making many lists in order to get prepared. Omer would be happy to sort everything out a couple of days beforehand. Good job at least one of us is getting organised! 

Coming soon….

The flights are booked and after two years away, I’m finally planning my return to Sekrat…this time with a baby in tow! 

What I did today

i didn’t know what to write about as I could easily write a post ranting about how crazy my MiL makes me. But her hearts totally in the right place and she’s a good woman so it seems unfair. So I thought I’d just write about what I did today.

So Omer woke up at 6:30 to pick up a man from the local town to come and work at ours for the day. He’s going to skim the outside of the extension. A full day’s work will earn him around 100YTL (£25ish) with meals included. I went back to sleep as I find the days long and the earlier I get up the more I’ll have to do. Lazy I know. When I say I went back to sleep, I mean, I dozed on and off. My family here have absolutely no consideration for anyone sleeping. They’re banging pans, bickering with each other, shouting at the chickens and generally making a real clatter. I used to think it’s because they wanted me to wake up earlier, but to be honest they do it when they wake up at 4am for morning prayers. Being quiet just isn’t a thing here. 

Anyway I woke up at 8:30, got up, showered (no hot water yet as the solar heaters hadn’t had enough sunshine) and went into the kitchen where the women were about to tuck into breakfast. The workman and omer had already had theirs. My husband’s Aunt and her daughter had stayed overnight so along with my mother and sister in law, that made five of us. We had olives, egg, sausage, yoghurt, clotted cream, pastries, fried peppers, fried potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, spring onion, honeycomb, butter, jam and bread and of course lots of tea. I then washed the breakfast dishes whilst the other women got on with other housework. Sounds simple enough right? The plumbing on the sink is really poor and the water takes forever to drain away. So any slops and as much used water as possible goes into a bucket, which is taken outside and used in the garden at several intervals depending how many dishes there are to wash. It’s a right pain, plus the fact that Turkish people have a very precise way of washing their dishes which I’m sure I’ll have describe elsewhere. Needless to say it involves LOTS of water, rinsing, soap suds and more rinsing. If there’s no one in the room I’ll try and get away with simple English style! 

After that I played with my niece for a little while. We went and picked some ‘Erik’ from the garden until my MIL told me we had picked enough. Then we checked on whether there were any eggs laid in the old house, (they were in the process of laying). I generally tried to stay out the house with my niece for a while. Omer and the workman plus two other male relatives were working outside the front door. They handmix the cement which involves a hose running from the bathroom outside and them shouting ‘turn the water on/off’ as required. It was like that all day. I would try to discreetly nip to the loo and unplug the hose and they’d be outside shouting ‘someone turn the water on!’. 

At one point my MiL and aunt were off out to visit someone and so asked my niece to nip to the local shop to pick up some fruit and cola to take with them. I said I was going to go too as it’s only about a minutes walk away but I’ve never actually been and I’m intruiged as to how it is. Anyway the whole family came together to say no, it wouldn’t be right, everyone in the village would be looking at me, it would cause a stir. It makes me feel suffocated and means I’m completely reliant on other people if I want to go anywhere. I hate that. It’s completely opposite to my life in the UK. Part of me thinks I should just go and sod them, but then part of me thinks I’d be causing a lot of grief and at the end of the day I’m leaving here, they’re not. 

As I mentioned the workmen get fed and watered as part of their terms so when we went back inside it was time to start in food. It was quite nice, my heavily pregnant sister in law, 12 year old niece and I were cooking away in the kitchen whilst my MiL and aunt went to see an ill woman in the village to wish her well. I let my niece have full reigns with my iPhone music, so we were chopping and cutting away to alsorts of random songs. Between us we made chicken, rice, a mince based ratatouille type dish, ayran soup, Turkish salad and taş ekmek which is a tower of pancakes sliced into squares drizzled with a butter and grape sugar sauce.

We then lay the table up for the men in the extension and everyone got annoyed as the cat I adopted last year when I was here kept coming in. My MiL and I don’t mind it but everyone else does because it keeps trying to come into the house. We feed it every day, my MiL takes over when I’m not here, and it sleeps in the old house with the chickens in the evening. My sister in law gets annoyed as I sneak fresh cheese or the best part of the yoghurt out to it. It only has one eye which I think is the main reason I took it on, I thought it wouldn’t stand a chance but I’m proud to say it made it all the way through the winter. 

Once the men had finished I heard my MiL calling me to clear away the table. Now since I’ve been here  I have been cleaning the house better than I clean my own, washing dozens upon dozens of dishes, making numerous trays of tea, cooking food, laying breakfast and getting the family bedding out in the evening (mainly so my 9 month pregnant sister in law isn’t heaving it about), but I’m doing all that off my own back because I want to help, it fills my time and also gives me a bit of exercise. Anyway the point is, the minute I’m told to do something you can forget it. The daughter in law traditionally does most of the cleaning/cooking/housekeeping etc and it’s bloody hard work with very little in return. I’ve made it very clear that I’m not that sort of daughter in law. I’ll certainly help but I won’t be ordered. Anyway I just ignored her and left the men to clear the table. We then ate and it was really delicious. I did the washing up again. 

After lunch the women started getting potatoes, cocktail sticks, matches, water glasses and a candle out. Totally confused, I later realised they were ‘cupping’. They slice the potatoes, stick a cocktail stick in it, light the cocktail stick place the potatoe on wherever hurts on your body then the glass over it to create a vacuum sucking the skin up into the glass. The premise behind it is the suction caused blood to pool in the affected area and encourage healing in the affected area. They asked if I wanted to have a go. I did because it meant I could lie down. I let them do it three times to my leg so I could lie for longer. Can’t say I feel a difference but I told them I did because I’m evidently a ‘yes’ person. I’ve since been told that normally, after they take the cups off, they use a razor blade to nick the area and do a bit of blood letting. Luckily for me they had no razors in. 

   
 Tea break time, so I out together a tea tray for the workmen, tea glasses, saucers, tiny silver spoons, sugar cubes, lemon slices and a bowl of nuts and seeds. I let my sister in law make up the double tea pot and take it out to them. It’s been warmer today which I thinks make me tired so I went into the lounge to read for a bit but fell asleep for about an hour. I woke up covered with a blanket. My sister in law had returned the favour as I’d covered her earlier when she’d fallen asleep whilst I did the dishes. If I didn’t do them she would, and she’s due any day. I think it’s too muchfor her but then I’m childless as everyone keeps pointing out here, so what do I know? On that subject, word on the street here is that we haven’t had children because I don’t want any. Obviously because I’m a European woman and we European women don’t cherish family or home life, we just want careers and loose morals (says said word on the street) . I would love to know who started that rumour off. 

It’s 8:30pm now, my aunt and niece have gone, as has the workman so it’s just the four of us, omer, me my sister in law and my MiL. It’s all gone quiet and I’m hoping we don’t have any last minute guests as I’m tired and so is everyone else. 

Anyway I’m hoping to read for a bit then get an early night ready to see what tomorrow brings.

I’ve only been out twice since I’ve been here – once to my sister in laws the day after we got here, and once to the hospital with her to pick up some blood test results. I think I’ve become institutionalised. I nipped outside the house boundary earlier this evening to see how the outside walls were looking. It was like a little snapshot of freedom. Then I saw two huge dogs coming along the road, nearly pooed myself and scurried back inside. 

Finally an update

we’ve been here nearly a week and this is my first blog post. To be honest, it’s just been so busy and when I’ve not been busy I’ve been zonked out. 

I’ve got loads to write about even thought I’ve only actually left the house twice, and debated whether to do long one post but I think I’ll end up drivelling on too much so I’ll split things up a bit. 

Our flights were great – I managed to get us exit seats on the way over to Istanbul so loads of leg room, and then I’d booked first class seats for the domestic leg. When I say first class seats, I mean seats that were previously used as first class but for whatever reason they’re just classed as ‘steerage’ or whatever now. So we had the normal service, but in first class seats, so again loads of room.

Our flights were a bit delayed so by the time we got to our house it was about 12:30am. I was shattered and tired and had that grubby feeling you get after a day’s travelling. I was looking forward to a nice shower then bed. It was great seeing my mother in law again and she was obviously thrilled to see us. Unfortunately for me, the hot water was broken so I had to make do with washing with a kettle full of water. Better than nothing. 

Then was the task of making up our bed. By this time it was after 1am. Turkish bedding is not like ours. There are either heavy extra thick fleece type blankets, or heavy home made duvets filled with local lambs wool if you’re lucky, or old clothes and rags if you’re not. Either way they choices were heavy. So by the time we’d lugged all this heavy bedding into our room and made up our bed I was knackered. Despite my earlier request, the soba (a type of tin stove) had been removed for the summer and it was a cold night. Despite all the blankets I was freezing all night – bet you didn’t think I’d be saying that from over here in Turkey! 

I lay in bed thinking ‘why the hell am I putting myself through this again’.

The next morning, the sounds of the village woke me up. Chickens and cockerels, cows mooing in the cowshed next door, a donkey plodding along with jingling bells on its rug and children squabbling with each other on the walk into school.  I was in a much better mood and felt ready to tackle the next challenge – the toilet!

Scrumping

We’ve got a real problem here at the moment – scrumping. 

I don’t know if scrumping just applies to applies, but it’s whatever the plum version of scrumping is.

Our house has some land within the fencing around it – enough for the chickens and obviously enough to extend out, but across the rubble road outside the front of the house, is a largish patch of land which my in laws class as their garden. When my father in law was alive he planted it up with vegetables and plants, but now it’s gone a bit to pot as its too much for my mother in law to cope with. Anyway, his pride and joy were three plum trees he planted. Here, plums are eaten early on when they’re  still green and sour tasting. It’s plum or ‘Erik’ season now and the children of the village are going crazy over the trees in our garden. There isn’t a problem with the children picking the plumbs, it’s the destruction they cause when doing it, they’ve already broken down a huge area of fencing at the back of the garden to get to the tree, and when they climb up them, try to snap branches off to take home with them. Omer’s also worried as there’s a deep well in the garden (which has been our saving grace when the water’s been cut off in the past) but as the grass is overgrown it’s pretty concealed. He’s terrified that a child might fall down it – something that seems to happen more often than you’d think over here.
  
A view of the garden from our doorstep – you can just see the gate amongst the hedgerow

Anyway, anytime we see children up the trees my mother in law or omer will go outside and shout them away, although it doesn’t seem to particularly deter them. There’s a little code where some of the neighbours children will throw stones onto our roof which is corrugated metal in parts, we hear the stones clattering and know there’s children in the garden. 

My favourite little niece came round today. She’s 5, very cute looking but really bolshy. Some Turkish children are really whiney, and despite the family seeming to prefer the whiney ones, I can’t stand a whiney child. I’d take bolshy with a side serving of naughtiness any day over whiney. Anyway, we were sat having a tea break outside, when we noticed some older boys starting to climb up the plum trees. This time we sent five year old Hayrunissa out. She marched up to them, fearlessly told them to get away from the garden and threatened them with a slap otherwise. That’s how it goes around here and it seemed to scare them off!

Going back to the village

so after a lot of compromising on both sides, we’re on our way back to the village. The suitcases are absolutely rammed and we’re enjoying our last evening in the UK at the wonderful radisson blu at Manchester airport. Due to the fact I’ll be subjected to a squat toilet for the next few weeks, I booked us into a business class room with access to the lounge which is fantastic. The view of the airport is great and we’re sat scoffing the canapés and drinks as if we haven’t been fed or watered for a whole week. 

Omer has had his suitcase packed for a month. I think he’s may be a little excited. 

You know those programmes where they show all the crazy things people have in their suitcases – we are those people. Omer’s suitcase includes amongst other things; a pneumatic drill, a cordless telephone, a cctv kit, a security floodlight, a Disney princess recorder, a child’s play gym, a wicker birds nest and a cuddly Paddington bear that speaks when you squeeze his belly. 

His sister, Sayyal, whose wedding we went to last August is pregnant and due this month. They want me at the birth if it happens whilst I’m there. I’m not sure how enthusiastic I am about that idea. 

I have the usual excitement/apprehension I have whenever we go.  I’m so excited to see everyone and catch up on the gossip. I’m excited for sunshine and vegetables that taste how vegetables are meant to taste and I’m excited about the slow village life which I intercede with plenty of reading. On the downside, it’s often hard work and I have little control over what goes on as I find myself powerless over there. Something I’m not used to. 

I’m enjoying a few more hours of luxury whilst I can. It’ll be a long day tomorrow with a morning flight to Istanbul where we head to the domestic terminals for our flight to Elazig. At least we’re flying Turkish airlines where the food is absolutely delicious! 

Anyway that’s it for now, I’m off to the spa! 

Images from Sekrat

Here’s a few photos I took whilst I was out there…

Hollyhocks in the garden

A melon field

Hand picked melons

A surprise tortoise in a field

Tomatoes about to be sun dried on the roof of our house

Goats blocking the road

My friendly cat ‘bir goz’

Out on the open road

A mosque in Elazig

Beautiful teapot at Harput

and finally, delicious ‘pide’

Extensions Kurdish style

So for a couple of years now, the family have been talking about building a balcony around the house. I’ve never quite understood this as the house is a bungalow. I’ve tried to dissuade Omer, as the family want him to build it. First of all it eats into the little time we have here, secondly, he is not a builder, or an architect, or a plumber, or an electrician. If anyone has been to my house in the UK, they’ll have seen Omers attempt of an outside living space under the large back door canopy. I would like decking laid, maybe some plants and a nice bench. Instead there are loose bricks raising an area of old laminate flooring (that we stripped from the house when we first moved in), plus various mats that get soaked in the winter, and plenty of odd things hanging off nails and hooks. It’s about the only area of the house I’ve let him DIY, and I’m planning on overhauling that next summer.

The wedding is over and things have quietened down, they have all decided now is the time to build the ‘balcony’. The house is raised about a metre from the ground, so you have to use steps (made from wooden cartons) to get to the front door. The ‘balcony’ they want, is more of a raised terrace, that will now be at the front of the house.
Upon digging the foundations, they’ve realised there’s a problem with the sewage plumbing levels, which were laid incorrectly and now requires the street to be dug up and the sewage pipes re-laid. Omer tootled off to see the Mukhtar, who said he has spent the budget elsewhere and he has no money or interest in digging up the street. He told Omer if he wanted to do it, he’d have to do it himself.

Omer and his Uncle started to prepare the ground. Most of the time, they were arguing between themselves and chain smoking. In the late afternoon a digger turned up, with the driver charging 100TL (£28) per hour. Crowds gathered. Crowds always gather at these sorts of things, but even more so when it’s to do with our family as people want the chance to see the yabanci (foreigner) they’ve heard so much about. The neighbours rallied round, the Mukhtar turned up, even the man from down the road with one leg turned up.

With Omer’s guidance, the digger started to pull up the road. As the ground was opened, the heat felt even more intense, it was as if he were opening the earth exposing the fiery hot liquid magma below.

The men stood, watching, taking a break from their shovels, long sleeve shirts, drenched in sweat after exerting themselves in the searing midday sun, caps shading their eyes, and cigarettes constantly hanging out their mouths. I wondered how safe it was to be smoking when they were exposing various underground pipes.

Suddenly, and as I very much expected, the digger hit a water pipe. A jet of water spouted from the earth, cascading high into the air, the sun’s rays sparkling through it, and back down into the dust. The children squealed with delight and ran forward to enjoy the cooling relief of the water spray. Various bits of piping, plastic, and wood later, the leak was contained, and the work continued.

By the end of the day, the whole street was dug up. The cats and chickens were enjoying their playground, and my sister in law, Sevim, and my mother in law, were fretting about the dust that might have come into the house.

We ate outside that evening, surveying the progress. Spiced chicken and potatoes, roasted aubergine and garlic, and crepes, stacked high in a large pan, drizzled with lemon, sugar and water syrup.

We were all exhausted after a hectic day, so headed to bed just after 9. I had my usual second shower of the day, and by the time I was finished and came to our bedroom Omer was fast asleep. I was enjoying reading ‘A Bird Without Wings’ when suddenly I heard water. I waited for a second, thinking maybe someone’s gone to the toilet, but the noise didn’t go away. I realised it was coming from outside, and that there was a lot of it. I woke Omer up, who sprung up from the floor where he sleeps and hit his head on the open window. After getting up off the floor again and looking outside, he swore, and confirmed that the children had smashed the water pipe back open. The whole family is called up, we pull our salvar trousers back on and head outside. Omer ends up knee deep in mud and using old nails and a rock somehow manages to stem the flow. A child sits about ten metres away watching the activity, denying having seen anything.

A Funeral

Yesterday I was happily relaxed in front of a fan engrossed in ‘The Book Thief’ when the phone rang. I heard lots of proclamations and ‘why why why’s’ and I knew someone had died. 

The phone was put down, building work outside halted, and my mother in law came and told me to get ready we were going to the village of the deceased.

It turns out, it was my mother in laws uncle, his wife and their son-in-law who were involved in a car accident. All three were killed. The husband and wife were in their late 70s and the son was late thirties. The son had a wife and two children under five. 

They were doing a relatively high speed on the open road to Elazig, when the tyre malfunctioned, they veered off the road and crashed. None of them were wearing seat belts and were flung through the windows of the car out onto the open road. 

This is so common here in Turkey. Road safety is non existent out here. It’s a legal requirement to wear a seatbelt, but nobody does, people drive at night without lights, children, women and animals are packed into the cars with children scrabbled wherever there’s a space. I’ve seen children sitting on the dash board, on the boot cover, on the drivers knee. The standard required for a car to pass it’s MOT here is low. I know our car would never pass it’s MOT in the UK, but here it breezes through. Apart from the odd radar car manually checking speeds, there’s no real enforcement, and bribery is like a disease. 

So I put my kindle down and rush to get ready. I pack the essentials take anywhere now – a big bottle of water, my kindle, phone and anti diarrhoea tablets (you never know when you might have a problem!) 

I’m relieved to find out that  I will be dropped off at my sister in law Sayyals house (the new bride) whilst my husband goes to the grave, and my mother in law goes to the bereaved’s home. It sounds heartless but I know I would struggle if I went to the house. The outpouring of grief is vocalised much more here than in England, the house would be packed with mourners, they would be praying and weeping constantly. I’m just not used to it being like that. 

As we drove up to the village, we drove passed the grave yard, where dozens of men had already gathered and a digger was carving out three new plots.

The deceased sons brother had left that morning to drive back to Germany. I can’t imagine what it’s like to get that call. He turned round and drove back. The bodies have to go through an autopsy, which I thought might last for days, but omer said no, just a few hours. Due to the autopsy and the travelling relatives, the burial will take place today, in fact I’m sure it’s already taken place.

Ironically I ended up having a nice afternoon. I was at my sister in laws, there were only a few of us younger girls there, as the men were at the grave site, and the older women had gone to be with the mourners. The house is newly built so very comfortable, and it’s elevated spot on the hill ensured a constant breeze, bringing fresh air filtered through the trees outside and no dust, unlike our village. I read some more of the book thief, and the gelins (brides) of the household gave me a tour of their rooms with the new beds and wardrobes they’d recently had delivered. The furniture in both rooms was oversized, white, blingy and plenty of pleather. They were so pleased with it. Both the girls had come from poorer houses originally so it was nice seeing them enjoying some luxury. 

Later in the evening, the older members of the family and the men returned for an evening meal.  At one point one of the men came in with three red semi opaque plastic bags, people gathered round. It turns out they contained the clothes of the deceased, to be passed back to the bereaved family at an appropriate point. 

At around ten o clock in the evening, I joined a group of people outside, the air was lovely and cool, fresh. They started asking me what happens with the dead in England. It all sounded rather strange when I told them in my broken Turkish that, the funeral is held up to a week after the person has died, in the meantime they are embalmed and usually have make up applied to stop them looking so pale, then depending on what they’ve pre-decided, they are either given a burial, or they’re cremated. It was just unfortunate that the closest word I could get to cremated was ‘baked’. By the end of the conversation the girls who were in their late teens were horrified and feeling faint. 

It was a noisy night, and we’d been so busy talking that I hadn’t picked up on the noises going on around me. There was a dog incessantly barking, and other smaller groups were sitting outside the house where we were, talking over the day, drinking tea. Then I realised another back ground noise. The crying and wailing of the mourners at the house, which is about half a kilometre behind the house we were at. It was really spine chilling. Men and women were crying out for the deceased. A woman had lost her husband, mother and father in a split second. It’s tragic.

I tried to point out how important it is to wear a seatbelt, but the people I was with dismissed  it, stating it was more an act of god, and when your time is up, it’s up. I wanted to argue back but there was no point. I wasn’t going to change anything. 

A trip to the market.

So on Saturday, we all piled into the car and made the forty five minute journey to Elazig. We left just after 9am, when it was already 35 degrees, in order to avoid the afternoon heat.

I noticed along the way, the previously large lake, was now more of a small river, controlled by the Keban dam, and the intense summer heat. The previously submerged land was being farmed over the summer months.

As we approached Elazig, towering blocks of flats, in various colours of drudgy pinks, greens and yellows littered the road side. Many had strings of peppers drying off the balcony, or freshly washed Turkish carpets airing.

A horse and cart – not out of place at all in the city

We parked at the bus depo, right in the city centre, 5TL for the day – that’s about £1.80. The city is heaving, people everywhere, street sellers everywhere, some selling pastries, salted corn on the cob, fresh fruit, others wanting to shine your shoes, or weigh you for coppers. The town was thick with summer dust, heavy and lingering, stirred up by cars whizzing about without a care for pedestrians, exhaust fumes mingling with delicious smelling grilled meat.

We headed for the market which I love. I was particularly looking forward to escaping the blazing sunshine, as it’s covered with a wooden roof, keeping the worst of the sun out. We headed straight for a spice stall where we must have spent best part of an hour. Large flagons, wrapped in Turkish carpets, hold vast amounts of dried fruits, salts, spices, herbs, plant leaves and more. The best thing is you can sample anything you want. Shelves are stacked with lotions and potions that seem to be able to cure anything. The smell of spices lingers heavily, with a top note of fresh olive soap, sold by the kilo. From what I can remember we bought, three types of ground pepper, fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks, four different types of dried fruit, sumac, bee pollen, garlic shampoo, cumin, lokum, sheets of dried raisin, ‘sausages’ of walnuts wrapped in dried fruit and two fresh combs of honey.

Next we went to the clothes mall to look for a summer coat for his sister. A manto is a floor skimming trench coat worn over normal clothes whenever leaving the house. Sevim had one on whilst we were shopping. I don’t know how she does it. I also don’t understand the point. The women already have modest clothes on underneath these coats so why a coat as well? They usually fit nicely too so you can still tell if someone has a slim waist/nice hips and so on, so the whole suffering for modesty thing confuses me? So I don’t get it? She tried some on which would look nice in the Autumn/Winter but just ridiculous in forty degrees. I guess it’s something I just won’t understand. Anyway she couldn’t find one she liked, and by this time we were flagging.

We headed back to the car and headed back home. Or so I thought. I asked Omer why we weren’t going back the normal way, it turns out we were heading the other way, to the Keban Dam. As usual I’m the last to know what’s going on!

Long, hot, open roads

It was about a forty minute drive through the dry arid mountains. Suddenly the landscape opened up and down below was the famous Keban Dam, looking pretty sorry for itself with its low water levels. By this time it was about 1:30pm and the thought of sitting by some cooling water was appealing. We parked the car, and walked downhill towards to restaurants surrounding the dam. It was roasting, I wasn’t looking forward to the up hill walk back to the car. At one point we had to cross a rickety wooden bridge that swayed when you walked on it. It was about fifteen metres long with a thirty metre drop and plenty of cracks and breaks in the ill fitted, dried out wooden planks. Turkish health and safety at its best.

Keban Dam

We ate barbequed fish looking over the water. It was fantastic. Barbequed fish, salad, warm bread, dipping oils and pastes, plus a drink at a tourist spot sitting in a prime location cost just over £3 per person.

We walked back up hill during the hottest part of the day. By the time we got to the car my legs were so heavy I could barely lift my feet. I was so thirsty and opened a carton of fruit juice which had been in the car. Honestly, it could have passed as hot fruit tea.

I was so grateful for the long journey home and the chance to sit and relax. I made Omer call at my favourite cake shop where we got a fresh gateaux, a large box of individually picked kurabiye (biscuits), three loaves of bread, two smidt bread rings and four bottles of water for £5! At one point, I had to swap seats with my mother in law, from my prime position in the front passenger seat, to the back, as she was overheating in her Burka. Just a typical car ride here in Eastern Turkey.