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| Breakfast at Teacher Vahit's |
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| Via Sebaste |
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| When the village gets within the eyesight Bambina gives "that was a piece of cake too" look |
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| Getting our share from a prosperous pomegranate tree |
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| A beautifully renovated house at Mentesbey |
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| Mentesbey guest house |
We woke up in the best of the spiritS the next morning,
because we were invited to teacher Vahit’s house for breakfast. After spending many
days on the road without a shower and covered in mud, we tried to minimalise
the sharp odor radiating from our bodies into the atmosphere by changing into
the cleanest clothes we had. Teacher Vahit had prepared a complete breakfast
table with piles of food including eggs, which we hadn’t had for the past week,
had toasted all the bread and brewed tea. Since we were all well educated and
well behaved people we supressed our wild instincts to stuff our mouths with
the food and slowly started eating. Whoever finished their plate went on to
fill it with more food with such grace and nobleness. Finally we finished
everything found on the table down to the last piece of olive and were feeling
full and content. Teacher Vahit, Uncle Kemal, and Mr. Erdener accompanied us
through the village and we said our farewells hoping to see these nice people
again. When we had climbed half way up on the slope we could still see them
down below on the road. After waving each other one last time we heard Teacher Vahit’s
voice telling us “Don’t get scared, don’t get scared!”. First we couldn’t make
anything out of what he was saying but the sound of gunfire revealed what he
meant. Hunting crazy Teacher Vahit had brought his rifle along with him and
wanted to fire it in our honor, but thought it would be better to warn us city
kids beforehand so that we wouldn’t piss our pants. After this warm farewell we
headed over to Mentesbey village, which was going to be our last leg due to our
days running out, even though there were still more to complete the whole
route. When we reached the village we had the first parting from the group. Ali
and Asena caught a ride to Akseki to return home. The rest three of us decided
to spend the evening at the village and get on the return journey the next day.
Mentesbey village was no different than the other
villages with its quiteness, but had a much finer and elegant look thanks to a
recent renovation done by a wealthy family on many of the old houses, which
used to be famous for housing many judges in the Ottoman period. After a unfruitfull walk in the village to
get ourselves invited to a house for dinner, we returned to the guest house to
eat whatever was left in our backpacks. We first were happy to find a stove and
gas cylinder in the house, and started preparing soup and tea, but soon the
whole kitchen was smelling of gas that was leaking from somewhere we couldn’t
quite figure out where. A person of average intelligence would immediately turn
the stove off and cut off all the connections with the gas cylinder, but I had
a stubbornness ten times my intelligence, so insisted on getting that tea
brewed. When I finally gave in to the pleas of Benoit and Gamze going over to
turn the stove off, the tea that I almost gave my life for was already brewed.
(e.g. “to go bananas!”)
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