"I took my old car into Botswana. I stayed there, I took a medical exam there, but unfortunately they don't tell you immediately if you've passed. It was a torturous three months of living in limbo. Then I went to the Ministry, walking, because I had no money and nothing. It was Christmas Day when I went there to ask if I had a contract. Only the guards were at work, because the whole country is not working until 15 January. The guard asked my name and went to check at the supervisor's desk. It turned out that I did indeed have a contract from two months ago. I had to report to the hospital in question, which I did, and from then on my life seemed to go on more normally. I legalised my documents and now I had a work visa, which was amazing. It was more than a green card to me.

Darena settled in northern Botswana, where she was employed at one of the country's two main hospitals, and admits she felt like a new person because she could now have a decent life. She says that the percentage of Bulgarians in this African country at that time was negligible - literally a few families, mainly engineers and doctors. She herself spent the next nine years working as an anaesthetist and resuscitator. 

The year is 1999 and life in Francistown is still relatively safe. It's everyone's responsibility to make sure the house they live in or rent has external and internal alarms and bars on the doors and windows. She lives alone with her dog, but despite all her precautions, she has been robbed seven times. When she got married, she moved to Botswana's capital, Gaborone, where her house was broken into again:

"One night they broke in by opening the window with a credit card. To my horror, I was inside. My husband was at work and I can't describe the feeling of paralysing panic. You can't move, you see everything, you understand everything, but you can't move a foot, a hand, make a phone call, call for help. After that incident, I asked the landlords if we could put up bars, they refused, and we decided we had to find our own home where we could protect ourselves.

They bought a house where they lived with a high level of protection until one day they decided to return to Bulgaria. So, after 22 years of working abroad for her and 28 years for her husband, and with the recognition of their patients and colleagues at the hospital, the two Bulgarians began a new chapter in their lives, now back in their homeland.