Blackouts are quite inspiring I would have to say. Second time it happens and I sit down to write. It has been cold these days – I hold close to the gas stove, which stands just by the big table in the living room. When Mozart’s Requiem was interrupted by this night’s electricity failure, I lit the candles, took the flashlight and went out to get some firewood. An infinite number of stars had decorated the night sky – too bad the cold did not let me stay out longer to see the spectacle.
I
A few months ago I was hitchhiking in Ushuaia, the Land of Fire (Tierra del Fuego) and got picked up by Doris and her sister Pili; they were altogether seven sisters in the family the ladies proudly told me. Born in the northern part of Argentina, four of them had moved to Ushuaia where teachers’ labour had better salary. Doris and Pili took me to the very end of the highway number 3 that runs from Alaska to Lapataia in the Southern end of Argentina. When we reached the ocean, I climbed over the fence to touch the water – I had finally made it! Doris then showed me a good place to camp and gave me directions to come over to their house the following day.
I accepted the invitation and stayed in the kind company of the sisters altogether two nights sharing travelogues and teaching experiences.
At one point we were talking about bilingual children, if I recall correctly, when Doris brought out a book by Marianne Franke-Gricksch “You Are One of Us” (in Spanish “Eres uno de nosotros”). She opened it to read the author’s thought on how one’s mother-tongue should be spoken in immigrant families or taught to children if they had forgotten it, because "no other tongue vibrates in them like the language they had first heard when they were born". Franke-Gricksch also speaks of an affectionate Self that could not be transferred to any other language but one’s own mother-tongue, important to express especially at a young age, because it could affect child’s development.
Reading that got me thinking of my affectionate self that was last heard in February of 2010 when I was visiting Eve and Ernesto with their three children - my Estonian Colombian friends who live in Chia near Bogota.
As I looked at two penguins bending over an egg on the cover image, the name of that book’s editorial caught my sight: “Alma Lepik”. I told Doris and all those who asked me later about how I had met Tiiu, that recognizing that name to be Estonian was equal to seeing the name of Raul Perez in China, and knowing it was Latin, with the difference that there are perhaps 300 million Latin names in the world and only one million of those that are Estonian.
What I discovered after a short Internet survey was that the editorial was founded by a woman indeed of Estonian origin, but born after the Second World War in Germany, who had Austrian nationality and Argentinean citizenship. I wrote a letter, in Spanish. Tiiu replied, also in Spanish. In my second letter I asked if she knew Estonian and was surprised to get a reply written in my first language. I wondered how Tiiu had managed to remeber Estonian while living abroad. In one of the letters she mentioned that had not spoken or heard it for twenty years before going to Estonia last summer. Both of us were excited about our meeting that was postponed once too many times while I lived in Mendoza.
II
I came to Buenos Aires on June 8th. Although I had travelled almost every province in Argentina, it was my first time in the coutry's capital. Tiiu had told me the address where I was to meet her on the Quito street. Following the map I took the subway at the Retiro bus station, changed lines on Avenida de Mayo and got off at the station called Rio de Janeiro. I did not search long to find the street.
Tiiu greeted me – I was surprised to hear her speak Estonian without any accent. In fact it was her Spanish that had an Estonian accent. In turn she was surprised to see how little I resemble an Estonian with my dark and curly hair.
That became our first topic. I wondered whether with just one Estonian grandmother I would qualify to be an Estonian at all. It was my birthplace and my home country, I grew up with the people, Estonian was my mother tongue and first language. What else? - I sang on the song festival, I loved rye flour bread – the most traditional Estonian dish. To the question “Where do you come from”, I could answer nothing but “Estonia”.
Estonian Song Festival (2009): one voice and twenty thousand voices singinging "Discovering the World", words by Jaan Kross, music by Aare Kruusimäe
Yet it had been a strange relationship, at times quite confusing.I was teased in the kindergarten for knowing Russian, at school for having a Russian family name. In 1992, a year after Estonia had gained its independence from the Soviet Union, there was a time they did not want to give me Estonian nationality I remember.
It is a tiny yet a very special country where people carry a strong feeling of national pride. It is quite understandable too – for such a little country to have endured together with the language, traditions and nation, considering everything that has happened to it in history– is a big thing.
My Estonian grandmother was the only survivor from her family who during the Stalin times after they had deported them to the prison camp in the Northern Urals could return to Estonia. Her father was shot, according to his companions' words because he refused to sign a paper that said he was an “enemy of the nation”. My grandmother was then only five years old. Her mother died of hunger, her three sisters of different illnesses. When I was in the seventh grade we were given an assignment at school to interview our grandparents on where they had been during the war. It was the first time that I saw her cry as she told me. I had always been too shy to raise my hand in class - that time was different. I owed it to her to tell that story in front of everyone. I remember my hands were shivering as I read the paper.
There were too many who never returned, I was proud to be her granddaughter. It was because she returned I was born in Estonia. Would that be enough to make me Estonian?
Trailer from the movie "The Singing Revolution" tells briefly of the events that took place in 1939-1941 and 1989-1991 - two very important revolutions in the Estonian history
Russians were enemies, they were invaders, they had occupied our country, destroyed so many families, taken away people’s land, and even their voice they had put under a censorship. Estonians had all the reasons to hate Russians. I remember when they taught me communist songs in the kindergarten and dances waving a little red flag and I brought them home, my grandmother asked me not to sing. I asked why, but she never answered - at that time "walls had ears".
Yet she had married a Russian man and so had my mother. I have dark curly hair, know how to speak Russian. And I love my father. I also love my grandfather, although have never met him, but he has given me my mother. To make that national belonging question even more frustrating I would have to say that actually both my grandfathers were Russians. What is even "worse" I have to admit that I actually quite like Russians, their culture is so rich and their country is beautiful. I feel proud to have Russian blood in me. That is quite an "un-Estonian" statement. Still I do not feel Russian.
My other grandmother was Ukrainian, I knew her too little. After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 I was not allowed to visit her again. Together with her sister they were the only survivors from their family when a famine known also as holodomor caused by the government of Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians in 1930s. I was five when I lost contact with her; all I know is what my father has told me. Yet I have in me the same amount of Estonian as Ukrainian blood, and the rest is Russian.
On the photo: My Ukrainian Grandmother's sister
showing me photos of the old times when I went to visit her
in the summer of 2007 - first time I returned to Ukraine after Chernobyl. My grandmother had passed away in 2000,
but for me it happened much earlier - in 1986.
So what am I? I am Estonian. How come? I don’t know, it is a feeling – that is where I come from and everything else I have only briefly visited. It is my culture, my nation, my birthplace, my tongue.
When I then listened to Tiiu’s story I was surprised. I always thought it was “coming from”, “born in”, “lived in”, “together with…” etc. that made one Estonian, but hearing her I realized that there was also another possibility.
Tiiu was born in an Estonian refugee camp in Germany and had only visited her ancestors’ homeland a couple of times in the early nineties and later in 2010. Yet at home and in the camp Estonian was the only language they spoke. The refugees could sing the “forbidden” songs and even celebrate Christmas, what at the time in the Soviet Estonia was strictly prohibited. The German children teased her for speaking Estonian. Before becoming an Austrian citizen, Tiiu lived without a nationality for a long time. When people have asked Tiiu how she could have such a strong feeling of national belonging to a country she wasn’t born nor lived in, then to her it was never a question or doubt.
Although far away from their country, in spirit the refugees had a very strong connection to their nation. Tiiu was born and raised in that spirit and carried it now even as far as to Argentina. The editorial that she founded holds the family name she was given when born – Lepik. Alma, in Spanish, means soul or spirit.
III
When Tiiu told me that I could stay in her house for as long as I wanted, I was grateful for her trust, yet said that I would go, that it was not necessary, that I had come to meet her and to share Estonian - the language neither of us had spoken for over a year, the culture we could not have shared with anybody else but someone from our country. What connected us even more was that we both had been away for a long time and thus felt the same need.
Tiiu had lived in Argentina for more than twelve years, I had travelled Latin America for nearly three years, we both spoke Spanish well enough not to feel excluded, yet there were things coming from our cultural context that could only be expressed and exchanged in our mother tongue, at least so wrote Marianne Franke-Gricksch in her book. The few weeks that I spent with Tiiu we also both experienced that. Then my host had to travel and I was to continue my journey as well.
Meanwhile Tiiu started looking for someone to see after her place - I could not believe the trouble it was to find anybody who would have wanted to spend three weeks in a beautiful country home. It was less than a week before her departure and she seemed sincerely worried. I told her that if she really needed someone, I would stay; and then in about ten minutes said that I would actually do it quite gladly. I had an idea!
IV
I have dried lavender and mint; I like to feel the scent coming from the bundles that hang down from the bookshelf above the stove. I like to drink tea, I like the sound of fire in the fireplace; I listen to Mozart, Oscar Peterson, Mercedes Sosa, Astor Piazzolla, Norah Jones, Liisi Koikson and Jaan Tätte. I have a television set, but hardly ever watch it – one movie a week feels enough. I wake up with the sunrise and after I feed the animals I dance to jazz. I cannot recall a time like this throughout the whole journey - to be on my own feels such a luxury.
Always there have been people around helping me out, or me helping them out, exchanging experiences, telling stories, being silent, being grateful, being curious, speaking, listening, understanding, misunderstanding, giving, receiving, meeting, parting, laughing, crying, constantly awake and aware, careful or trusting, ready to act or speak when the turn came.
Indeed so many people – rich who were poor, poor who were rich, and of course poor who were poor and rich who were rich, well educated or illiterate, married, divorced, single, parents, children, young, old, gay or straight, religious or atheist, of all professions, from different ethnical backgrounds, speaking different languages, with different interests, sick, healthy, in prison or free, on land, on rivers, on the sea.
They shared their stories and confessions, their thoughts on life, I gathered them carefully and then carried in me; I observed their habits and ways, I ate what they ate, went to bed when everyone else did, listened to the music they liked, sang their songs, walked their trails, rejoiced on their festivities and did my best to learn their languages.
Each person I met was like a palette of certain colours, I added mine, yet neither of us held the brush to paint the canvas, always empty, always only seemingly.
So now I have come to a place where I could be on my own. What would that new image be? Who am I? What are my habits? What kind of food do I like? What kind of music I prefer? What kind of life do I live? How do I feel? When do I go to sleep? When do I wake up? What do I enjoy doing during the day? Indeed, who am I? - That is the question.
My canvas is being painted once again. I am holding the palette with all the colours that I have to see another image in process - looks like a portrait of someone with a flat Estonian landscape in the background. I think I've seen that person somewhere before...
The lights turned back on – I guess they fixed the problem. I’ll go blow out the candles now.
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