I was 14 years old when I realized that Baba Vanga and Dimitar Gushterov had adopted me. One day they called me and told me in person that they took me when I was two and a half years old. They didn’t tell me who they took me from, and I also didn’t want to know. I started to cry – I knew that I could leave them if I wanted to, but where could I go? They were the only one I had, they were my parents. We shared good and bad moments together.
My mother always taught me to be a good person and to do good deeds. She liked to say: “Nobody should go out of your house hungry. If you have a sick relative or friend, you don’t leave him alone without being visited.” Every morning she got up very early and cooked for the day, and washed the clothes. Then she started “work” – there were hundreds of people in front of our house every day. I was used to see those long line-ups, and at one point it stopped bothering me.
It wasn’t easy to live with her phenomenon. Her life with Dimitar Gushterov was difficult. Even though Baba Vanga looked like an ordinary woman, there were things that only me and Dimitar knew. For example, she wasn’t sleeping well at night, she was talking with the dead, Dimitar had to get up early in the morning to lock the doors, as sometimes Baba Vanga was sleep walking. The superior powers didn’t give her peace, and they didn’t allow her to have an intimate life. It really wasn’t easy on Dimitar, but he couldn’t change his destiny.
Baba Vanga was very strict but very caring and loving mother.She was just like every other mother – she was teaching me, singing me, fondling me, and hugging me. I always had breakfast in the morning, and my clothes were washed and ironed.
I remember how I lied to her once about 5 levs ($3) for which I said that I lost somewhere. She smiled and said: “So you lost them at the cafeteria with your friends, and you bought everyone sweets, huh?” That was exactly what happened – it was impossible to lie to her, so I never tried to do that again.
Today I am sad to hear how some people that were not close to her, or even didn’t like her, are sharing their memories to the public and sometimes even to the media about her. These are the cases with some of her neighbours. They pretend that they were close to her, and in fact when the police was coming to search our house, those same neighbours were spreading slander and bad rumours around town, and were mocking on her phenomenal gifts.
Baba Vanga left this world with a lot of sadness mainly because of people like these.
Zheni Kostadinova graduated Philosophy at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She has worked as an editor at the student TV show “Ku-Ku”, and as a reporter at the National Radio “Horizon”. For over 15 years she is a columnist at “Weekly Trud” newspaper writing about esoteric and psychology. In the same newspaper she is maintaining a page on literature. Zheni Kostadinova is the author of some of the most popular books written on Baba Vanga including “Baba Vanga The Prophetess”, “Baba Vanga Predictions”, “The Secret of Baba Vanga”. Her first book was translated into Russian, Polish, Latvian, Serbian, and Albanian. Zheni is a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers. She had published three books of poetry: “Fire Sticks (2002), “17 love colors” (2007), and “Fig Jam” (2008). In 2012 Zheni has founded the art-house “Kuklite”. It is a doll gallery and a mini-museum located in the old downtown of Sofia. The gallery exhibits different dolls placed in specific categories. Besides the exhibitions, the art-house “Kuklite” also have the priority to work with children from the local schools, so they learn more about the traditions and customs of the different nations. The main idea is to transform the art-house “Kuklite” into a centre for cultural exchange, creative collaboration between representatives of different fields of art, science and philosophy. The art-house will hold meetings with interesting personalities, and will be a place of exhibitions, seminars, workshops, premieres of books and documentary movies, puppetry, and many other great events. The art-house “Kuklite” will also be a place where collectors can display their favourite artefacts and can share the history associated with them.
