Mariya Pavlenko

A few days before my father went for two year research project to Tenerife, I recorded an interview with him about our family story; just a week after that my uncle died, so as for now my father is one of the last family members on his side, who can tell that story. Among other stories as an artist I have been always interested in a “gypsy legend” in my family that rises a question what can be treated as “gypsiness”, when we are talking about something that had been talking place in a Ukrainian village about 100 years ago. So, as my father told me many times, his grandmother Mariya (Марія) was a gypsy/Roma woman, however nobody uses the word “Roma” to talk about gypsies even today in a Ukrainian village. As my father tells “she was a very beautiful woman; probably there was an episode in her life, when she decided to left her gypsy camp and settle in Makalevychi.” I did not clarify, if it was because of the relationship with my grand-grand father, or due to some other reasons. When my grandfather Volodymyr was born (on photo), baba Marya (as my father name her) refused to raise him, so he was raised by relatives in a poor family. My grand-grand father Anton remarried another woman, baba Marya (баба Мар’я) or Mariya (Марія) settled in Makalevychi (Макалевичі) and lived in an astray house. My grandfather Volodymyr tried many times to reestablish relationship with his biological mother, the breaking point was when he went back to the village after WWII and the first thing he did he went see her mother. However she was not happy to see him and said something like “You’d better died, so I could get a pension”. Grandfather Volodya (дід Володя) still supported her occasionally with food and medicines till her death (my father remember visiting her with his father); she is buried somewhere at the village cemetery, however separately from our family, it is written “Марія Павленко” on the grave. My grandfather Volodya looked after that grave as well asked about that before his death. Villagers suggest that we can claim rights on the small astray house of baba Marya, however my father see no sense in that. March, 2023, Wroclaw