Röportaj

The Teenager Keeping Bees on a City Rooftop

At just seventeen, Zeynep Aksoy tends forty thousand bees on the roof of an apartment block in the middle of the city. We climbed six flights of stairs to ask her how — and why.1

So, how does a teenager end up as a beekeeper?2

"Honestly, by accident! My grandfather kept bees in his village, and after he passed away I couldn't bear the thought of his hives being abandoned. So I brought one home to the city — and now, well, one has somehow become eight."3

Weren't you terrified at first?4

"Terrified is exactly the right word. I got stung about a hundred times that first summer. But you learn to move slowly and stay calm — the bees can sense it the second you start panicking. In a strange way, they've actually made me a much calmer person."5

And what would you say to someone who thinks bees are just… scary little insects?6

"I'd say look a bit closer. Without them, a third of everything on your plate simply disappears. They're not scary at all — they're tiny farmers, working for free."

As we finally head back down the stairs, Zeynep is already crouched among the hives again, completely unbothered by the soft cloud of bees around her head. "Come back in autumn," she calls after us. "I'll give you a jar of the honey the whole roof made."7

Meet the Woman Teaching a Throwaway Generation to Fix Things Again

Six years ago, Mira Devlin was an engineer with a comfortable salary and a nagging feeling that something was wrong. Today she runs a network of eighty "repair cafés" — free spaces where volunteers mend your broken toaster, torn coat or cracked phone instead of letting you throw it away. We met her over tea, surrounded by half-mended kettles, to find out what drives her.1

Let's start simply. Why fix a five-pound toaster when you could just buy a new one?2

"Because that question is exactly the problem! We've been trained to see everything as disposable — including our own skills. When someone watches their grandmother's old radio come back to life on our table, something quietly shifts in them. It was never really about the toaster."3

You left a good career to do this. Did people think you'd lost your mind?4

"Completely. My father asked me for a whole year whether I'd 'come to my senses' yet." She laughs. "But I was sitting in an office designing products I knew were built to break within two years. I couldn't do it anymore. Honestly, this felt like repairing something in myself, too."5

There's a bigger message here, isn't there — beyond broken appliances?6

"Absolutely. Every object we save is one less thing torn out of the earth and one less thing buried back into it. That matters, and I won't pretend it doesn't. But the part I love most is the human side. A repair café is one of the last places left where a lonely widower and a shy teenager will sit side by side, heads bent over the same broken clock, actually talking to each other. Nobody is selling anything. Nobody is in a hurry. You'd be amazed how rare that has become."

And to someone who feels it's all too small to matter?

"I'd say small is exactly the point. You can't fix the whole planet on a Tuesday afternoon. But you can fix a lamp. And the person who fixes a lamp slowly starts to believe that other things — bigger things — can be mended too. That belief is the most powerful thing we make here."7

As I gather my things, a boy of about ten shuffles up to her table clutching a headless toy robot, close to tears. Mira crouches down to his level, examines it with complete seriousness, and says, "Right then. Let's see if we can save this fellow." Watching her, it is suddenly very easy to believe she just might.8