Dacha day with Sergei

It was our friend Tanya's birthday yesterday. Sorry I didn't take a photo of her. Tanya wanted to invite us to her Dacha. Our Evenki friend Sergei wanted to come with us. It was a simple and enjoyable day. We met Sergei in the centre and then took a bus to the edge of the city. A ten minute walk later and we were at Tanya's dacha.

The Russian dacha is a similar size piece of land to an Australian home block. But there is usually just a very small house with one or two rooms. The houses are usually not winterised, but people will often sleep there in the Summer time. Tanya's family dacha was filled with garden from top to bottom. There were all sorts of vegetables growing there such as peas, beans, carrots and potatoes. There were all sorts of fruits such as crab apples, strawberries, raspberries, red currants and plums.

We have been getting to know Sergei recently. He is from northern Evenkiya and has been living in Krasnoyarsk for many years now. Yesterday I recorded an Evenki word list with Sergei and also recorded some short oral texts. The plan is to compare his dialect (from the Tura region) with the dialect from the Baikit region (where we will go from August 5th-19th).

Meet Sergei our Evenki friend.

Sunflowers are always so spectacular.

Abigail had a great time picking berries.

There were also many pretty flowers at the dacha.

Sergei and PJ.

The little one room house.

Sergei built a good fire. He provided some observations late as he fed the fire with a carrot and later some chicken. This comes from an Evenki belief that the spirit of the fire needs to be fed and respected. I didn't feed it anything.

Krasnoyarsk really is a beautiful place.