Name: Penny O'Sullivan
Place of birth: South Africa
Nationality: British, South African
In Bulgaria since: September 2002
Hobby: Singing, particularly at church and with the Club for Singing Diplomats and Co

There’s a good story under, or more so, because of, the strata of Penny O’Sullivan’s life. The South African world she entered in 1973 varied greatly from the London one that became hers nine-and-a-half years later, which again had no real similarities to Bulgaria, where she moved with her husband Mark in September 2002.

The South African village in which she lived with her grandmother and cousins until age seven – Madadeni, near Komatiport – was traditional in all senses of the word (and for Penny, this word was in SiSwati, a dialect of Zulu): circular or square mud huts, no electricity, a prima (paraffin) stove, toilet outside, the family chicken coop, water collected from the communal pump down the main road.

At seven she left the village to go to school, staying with cousins in Phalaborwa while her mother worked as a nurse. She rarely saw her mother, due to the latter’s job, which afforded them a brick house, the only one in her part of town.

“It was a very basic village,” she says one sunny afternoon in Sofia. “Mostly black people.” And then, one day, her mother came around, and said that the two of them were moving. To London. Because her mum was getting married to some man.

“There were definitely a lot of changes,” Penny says. “Everything was new, new, new, new – I hadn’t had much contact with my mum before, getting on the plane was new, the meal in front of me was new. My senses were awake. And then we get off the plane, and the guy (her new father) was white! I grew up – most people don’t want to say it – the village we grew up in, we lived in the black section of town, and the white people were only in the centre, and we would kind of stare at them.”

The London adaptation came along reasonably ok she says, because most children adjust without much difficulty. One of the differences she recalls, besides the clothing, the food, the climate, was that she couldn’t walk around barefoot any more. Learning English, which she had never spoken before, did not prove a problem. And she cherished her new father, Paddy Donnelly.

Later on in our conversation, though, she’ll say that while she acclimatised well enough, she never felt like she fit 100 per cent. It was not until she went back to South Africa in 1999 and first met her birth father that she had realised that missing piece of her soul. “It was interesting going back and seeing my father. I was saying: ‘My ears are just like yours! My hands are just like yours! You like jazz? I like jazz!’ It was a sense of belonging that was just amazing.”

Paddy sadly died of cancer in 1995; a few years later, Penny’s mother remarried, to the widowed pastor of a Baptist church in East Ham. It was during this time that Penny became a follower of Christ.

Well, this man, Roy, had three children, and his boys befriended a youth from Ireland who frequented their church, Mark O’Sullivan, and started inviting him to their house.

“And I saw a long ginger-haired tall boy and we looked at each other and I just thought ‘Wow’,” she says. They ended up becoming friends, dating on and off, working together with the church youth group and the worship team.

Then in 1999, after graduating from university with a degree in communications and computers from East London University, she returned to South Africa for a year with an organisation called Operation Mobilisation, which works to mobilise local young people in evangelism and good-will actions.

Going back “took me to my grandmother’s time”, Penny says. She was staying in a small village, sleeping in a hut. “You could spend a whole day just doing basic survival things! Collecting water from the communal pump, boiling to water to prepare the food – and that takes ages, cooking, eating, cleaning up, and then maybe you have a few minutes to relax before it’s time to start again.”

It was a lovely period, she says, as she was able to spend time with her aunties, her cousins, and – to meet her father. “It’s a wonderful experience, to feel that you belong to someone truly.”

The year made her love Africa even more. She thought: “I’m more African that I really realise. It’s good to be African.”

Returning to London, she realised that she really did love Mark, and they married in July 2000. Baby number one, a boy, Cedar, came along in 2002, shortly before they moved to Bulgaria.

And – why Bulgaria? “We wondered what we wanted to do with our lives as a couple,” she says. Summer missions trips to various countries in the years before marriage pointed the direction: they decided to become missionaries. A British-based Christian organisation called BMS (Baptist Missionary Society) World Mission brought them over. The O’Sullivans ultimately chose Bulgaria because it presented itself, choosing it from among the other four or so options because they liked the sound of the country’s name.

After 10 months of language learning and adaptation in Sofia, they moved to Kazanluk, and worked with young people – at the church there and in the city.

They started a foundation – Cedar Foundation – that works with orphanages in the Kazanluk area. The goal is to encourage Bulgarians to do something about Bulgarian problems – namely societal, like caring for orphans. Mark, with the support of London Sofia Properties, is also working to start a traditional training farm for orphans once they pass the orphanage age limit.

Now Penny and Mark and their three children are mostly in Sofia, where they work at a clinic run by international relations students at Sofia University who provide justice services for refugees. In addition, they still are fully active in Cedar Foundation, their church (Penny sings with the worship team), hobbies and family.

Penny also enthuses about her participation in the Club for Singing Diplomats and Co.

In some ways, being in Sofia is easier for her, because she “doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb”. Being of a different skin colour had never been much of an issue for her in Bulgaria, until an Ataka (ultra-nationalist political party) office opened up in Kazanluk two months before they left the city last year. “I started to feel very uncomfortable,” she says.

Another good thing about Sofia is that it has more opportunities. And with more opportunities, one can only wonder what the next layer in the life of Penny O’Sullivan will be.