Ümran* is in her mid forties and has three daughters and one son. Her husband has a rafting company and moved the family to the riverside for business proximity. They live in a large house by the beautiful Köprülü Canyon. Her husband's business is going extremely well, especially since he started hiring cheap labor from Kyrgyzstan as rafting guides. They have the right cultural background (they are Turks) and language skills (they speak Russian). With the majority of the rafting tourists being from Russia, this makes the perfect combination.

However, his family is very lonely. In a culture where there are no female public spaces (the tea house is a men's place) it's perceived as inappropriate for a woman to go out of the house unless she has a reason. Until recently, Ümran's reason had been her only friend who had lived one mile away from her house. The perfect walking distance to see a friend, she finds. But her friend moved to Antalya and since then Ümran has hardly been leaving the house. “There is nothing for me to do, nobody I can go and see, so I just sit here and watch TV, drinking one sweet tea after the other. Now I am fat and my doctor tells me to lose weight, but how?” She shows me her latest blood works and points to the encircled high cholesterol among other clinical and sub-clinical test results.

For now, her daughters are still in school and free to move around, at least during the day. “The evenings are lonely, too.” says Ümran when her daughter leaves the sitting room. Shortly, she comes back serving us another round of sweet tea.

* Name has been changed for patient's privacy.