Who determines the schedule?
N 46°43'59.9'' E 029°27'37.1''Tanja reports:
In the afternoon, I go to the greenhouse to visit Marta. At the same time, I would like to tell her that our time here is up. I tell her that we have to keep going. She doesn’t understand what I’m trying to explain. “We’re moving on.” Turning with my hands, I show how to crank the pedals. Put my head to one side, sleep two more times, then it starts… She understood. Now I look into a face distorted by pain. At first I don’t understand, but then Marta begins to weep heart-rendingly. It is so painful to see her like this that I immediately cry with her. There we sit, on thin boards in the greenhouse, our bare feet stuck in the wonderfully rich soil, in the thick mud. Although we don’t have many words of communication, we understand so much. In the last few days I have learned a lot from Marta, she showed me what is harvested and how. We carried sacks full of treasures from her garden and greenhouse to the next department. I quietly called her the “polishing nun”. A nun who has the task of sorting our harvested produce, and indeed she sits there with a cloth and polishes the peppers, for example… I think of the flower officer, a sister who is out all day caring for all the flowers in the complex, washing the pots, cleaning the windowsills and thus creating a beautiful atmosphere… A few days ago a nun asked me if I would hold the ladder for her. She was busy cleaning light bulbs at dizzying heights. I won’t call her the lamp-cleaning nun now, because I’ve also seen her doing other jobs… Sister Apolinaria, a tall, slender woman who knows how to maneuver the minibus… The pig herder Maria. Little pigs run away every day, only to be caught again a little later. The little pigs then scream their heads off. Maria smiles and strokes her lovingly. In the evening, busy hands thread beads to make crosses, which are then displayed in the small church store. Sister Jevaxevia, who really wants us to visit her vineyard… Nuns renovating and painting. Jewlampia the beekeeper… Olympiya the seamstress… Magrina the materials manager. As I’m sitting here with Marta, all these images are running through my head, little sister Natalia, she peels potatoes every day until it gets dark. Some of them are so small that I wonder how the old woman can still see the work. In just a few days we were allowed to live and inhale the place here and were almost lovingly swallowed into it as a part of it… Now I come along and explain to Marta that our time in the monastery has come to an end. That’s how we made the decision here. Selfish and self-centered. Now to be ready to move on. Have we asked anyone whether they are ready to let us go again? Is Marta ready to say goodbye? To be honest, I have never in my life thought about the fact that it is not only up to the traveler to decide when they are ready to continue their journey. It’s also up to the hosts. With this realization, more big tears run down my cheeks. Denis joins us. When he sees us sitting in the greenhouse like this, he starts to cry too. All three of us speak and assure each other how grateful we are that our paths have crossed. Some time passes as Domnina searches for us and finds us in the greenhouse. She already knew from Denis that we were planning to leave. Domnina asks us to at least wait for the holiday and then start the next day. Denis and I look at each other, smile, nod and agree to stay as long as we can…
