Village Life

Last night was a delight.

Our cousin Mark picked Danica, Samuel and I up from my apartment and took us to their apartment half way up the hill between Gornje Tucepi (upper Tucepi) and new Tucepi (the tourist town by the sea). Mark is a 5th cousin and also a Jakic from Tucepi, and he and his wife Kay are here for the third time. We decided that we would all go up to the selo (village) together to check out the old houses. They have been staying in a renovated apartment with a gorgeous courtyard and a mulberry tree outside it. The place is beautifully peaceful, but requires a car trip to go anywhere – and he has discovered that as a tourist, he is at the bottom of the pecking order on the road – if he meets a car on the narrow road, he is bullied into reversing out of the way – the locals rule.

A lot of the residents in the selo moved down to the coast after the earthquake here in 1961 – still more moved as it became important for jobs and education which were closer to town, and then only the old ones were left up there for a few years. Now places are being purchased as holiday homes by people from other countries, and it is becoming almost economical to live up there. There are young people renovating family houses and tending the garden plots.

We decided to walk from Mark and Kay’s apartment up the single lane road until we came to the village – we wandered first to the left hand side of Sv Ante (the beautiful church) where there is a cluster of houses all with terraced gardens. One of these houses was our cousin Zlata’s mother’s house, and her husband Drago goes up each day to work in the garden. When we ate at their house on Sunday, everything on the table was from his garden – including the olive oil, the vinegar in the dressing on the salad, and the wine.

Maria is an old lady who lives a few doors from Zlata’s parent’s house and she stopped to chat to us. I explained who I was and she laughed and said that she already knew – Drago had been up in the garden and told Maria about us, including the fact that we had been for lunch at his house the day before.

Mark’s grandfather’s house is in a different area from our grandfather’s house – and the house would have been two storied - the structure is still there, the floor of the second story has gone, the arch is still solid - but since the last time that Mark and Kay visited Tucepi, a whole wall of stones has been removed. We looked around as we walked to see who had new walls of the same stone!

They are stuck with the same dilemma – each time they come here they visit the old house, see that it has deteriorated further and wish that they could fix it up and use it. But the logic of this is plain – the other option is to gift it to a relative to renovate on the basis that there is always a room for them to stay in – but this option is also fraught with issues.

From there we wandered further up the hill through more houses, some renovated, some original, and some in various states of decay, and then around and down to the road where our grandfather lived. The house is barely recognisable, with vines and blackberry bushes growing over the structure – there look to have been three buildings on the land.

I would love to clear it all back to see exactly what was there. Unfortunately due to an error in the court system in Makarska, the land that was to pass to my mother and her two sisters has been transferred to a cousin. The court records state that my grandfather died with no Will and no issue and therefore the land went to the closest relative, a cousin in Australia. The lawyer with the file has explained that in the same court document there is a copy of Granddad’s Will, noting that he had three daughters. A shrug of the shoulders and ‘sto raditi´ - what to do. It would require funds to try and undo the situation – and everytime I am up on the land in the village, I feel motivated to try and do something about it. But then, what. And how.

I struggle to understand the feeling of absolute connection that I feel in this old village – I love talking to the old people who obviously wonder who on earth we are – and talking to Mark and Kay, they feel exactly the same way. There is no explanation, there is no logic. But then what sort of life would it be if you just behaved logically. (I wouldn’t be over here have this experience for a start!).