2025-02-03
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The great abandonment what happens to the natural world when people Disappear?
By Tess McClure read by Sarah Lyneham Abandonment, when it came, crept in from the outskirts.
Homes at the edge of town were first to go, then the peripheral grocery stores.
It moved inward, slow but inexorable.
The petrol station closed
and creeper vines climbed the pumps amassing on the roof until it buckled under the strain it swallowed.
The outer bus shelters, the pharmacies, the cinema, the cafe, the school shut down.
Today, one of the last institutions sustaining human occupation in Turkmenistan,
a village in central Bulgaria, is the post Office.
Dimitrinka Dimcheva, a 56 year old post officer, still keeps it open two days a week,
bringing in packages of goods that local shops no longer exist to sell.
Once a thriving town of more than 1,200 Turkmen is now home to fewer than 200 people.
On a warm spring afternoon, Dim Cheva stood in the town square.
The weddings took place here, all of the folk dances, the volleyball.
There were lots of young people, a pool, she said.
She gazed around, pointing to ruins or now empty spaces where buildings once stood,