Banica 3

Last week I again went to Banica with several others and I thought I'd take the opportunity to say something about the place.

It is known in Macedonia as a rather lawless place, and I heard that even the police were reluctant to go there. People from Banica travel throughout Macedonia as they take produce to sell (the villages around Strumica, or which Banica is one, have very fertile ground), and it is not uncommon to find them in Skopje in the summer, even though it is a long drive (it takes us about 2 hours or more each way).

In the village there are side roads of mud, and as we drive through there are always lots of people standing by or walking down the road. People with horse and carts go past and stray dogs are in the streets (although that's quite usual here in Skopje too!).

The people themselves are generally fairly darked skinned, and their ethnic roots are not clear to me - some say they are from Egypt (note that Cleopatra was descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals), someone else said Kazakhstan, or some similar area. They generally have Macedonian names, and speak only Macedonian, unlike other ethnic groups like the Roma (to whom they look similar).

Until last year they had no evangelical church in the village of 1200 people, and when missionaries had gone before, the children would throw stones at them. All the more amazing then that last week we had a group of 40-50 sitting for some half an hour listening in almost silence as the gospel was being preached.

Quote

I just found this quote from Jim Carrey:
"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."

White Christmas

Pad, pad, pad, went our feet as we crunched through the snow, coming down from mount Vodno in the dark. All the sounds were muffled, and a slight moisture hung in the air. The ambient light from the city of Skopje below us enabled us to see enough to pick our way down the slope. The day was 5th January 2008. Because of the Julian calendar, still used in Macedonia for the Orthodox holidays, this meant is was two days before Christmas. So having spent Christmas in England, two weeks later I was able to celebrate it again in Skopje! The snow even persisted until the morning of 7th, so I managed to have a white Christmas after all!