My home is where my family is
Mrs. Bulgaš Badajeva was born in 1957 in Kalmykia in the then Soviet Union. When she was five years old, she suffered a spinal injury, and as a consequence she had to undergo many surgeries until the age of twenty. Due to her injury she spent her childhood in hospitals, sanatoria and spas. She was not even able to attend school together with other children and she was taught by a teacher who was coming to teach children in the hospital. Later she enrolled in a boarding school and after completing her elementary education she went to apprentice as a seamstress. When she completed this vocational training she received a disability allowance and she stayed at home, where she was supplementing her income by making clothes for her friends and taking care of her two young nephews while her sister was at work. When she was thirty years old, she began a distance learning course of history at the university. Although she has successfully completed her studies, Bulgaš has never been able to get employed in the archives, a job she had always dreamt about. In 1999 her sister lost her job and moved to Prague, while Bulgaš Badajeva remained in Russia and was taking care of her two sons. Bulgaš’s nephews relocated to Prague to their mother’s after they had completed elementary school, and Bulgaš followed them there when her mother died in 2008. She still continues to receive disability allowance and she lives in Prague with her sister and nephews.
