Roma Weekend

This past Saturday was Roma Culture Day in Vratsa. Roma Culture Day is a Peace Corps celebration, not a Bulgarian one. Although my permanent site has very few minorities, it was good to learn about their culture and some of the specific challenges they face. It also helped place our work with marginalized groups in greater context. After panels and discussions, we were let out to play games with children from an orphanage in Vratsa.

On Sunday, the I and the other volunteers in my village went to church in the Roma community across the river. It was housed in a small metal trailer held up by rocks and wood planks. The outside was painted bright yellow a very long time ago. Inside, there were 7 wooden benches and a wood cross. In addition to the 5 of us, around 5 women, 10 children, 2 male teens attended. People came and went during the service. Songs were sung from a hand written book.

It began about half an hour late with reading from the bible in Bulgarian. The minister (?), who is also works in the mayor’s office, the school, and is always around town, spoke for a while. Then there was repetition of prayers and an elderly woman was blessed with oil. The minister also blessed us. I sat between two children. The small boy next to me whispered instructions when to stand, when to sit, etc. We were guests of honor. In front of me sat a woman with a baby and a seriously handicapped young girl. The baby was teething on a stapler.

It lasted about an hour. When we were leaving, he gave me a children’s bible in Bulgarian and invited us to return. We will be holding an intro to English language class in the trailer in a few weeks for the Roma community.

It’s difficult to give any concrete numbers on Roma in Bulgaria because self-identification varies significantly from other numbers and even deciding a firm definition for ‘Roma’ is controversial. According to the 2009 numbers from World Bank, UN, amnesty international, and CIA there are between 700-800k Roma living in Bulgaria. Historically nomads, Roma (romanticized as gypsies in the America) were forcibly assimilated under communist regimes in the 1960s and 70s. These programs were unsuccessful and most Roma in Bulgaria live in segregated Mahalas (neighborhoods). These Mahalas are generally difficult to enter and cut off from the surrounding environment.

Bulgaria has several programs designed to improve the situation for its minority groups. It was a launching member of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, an EU program to give priority to develop policies addressing Roma education, employment, health, and housing. “The Land-source of incomes,” is a smaller NGO working near a large Bulgarian city to provide start up funds, training, and close guidance to Roma families, enabling them to achieve self-sufficiency with their own small business and market integration. They are doing some really neat work. Here is a link to their website in English: http://www.agrocenter.info/?id=2

More information about Roma and Bulgaria can be found at: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/roma

http://www.romadecade.org/

My Bulgarian Family

I love my Bulgarian family. I never knew what it was like to have a crazy busy household with lots of siblings. I’m starting to learn. I now have three host brothers aged 22, 8, and 2. They are the grandkids of my host parents. The 22 year old lives in Sofia most of the time, but visits a lot. He speaks pretty good English and is into break dancing, Reiki, and meditation. The 8 year old and 2 year old are from Chicago and spending their summers here. The 8 year old speaks English and Bulgarian. He talks all of the time. The 2 year old is learning to speak in Bulgarian and calls me Kaka Meggi (Kaka is the familiar for big sister and Meggi has been decided as the short familiar form of my name).

I play soccer and cards with the 8 year old a lot. If he wins, everything is awesome. If he loses, he hates me and cries. There are a lot of emotions and talking at full speed and volume all of the time. Today, I was studying before class and told him I couldn’t play. He brought a giant beetle in my room and put it on my desk. Later, my host parents brought home a new kitten. He named it Meggi. The other two kittens are named for him and his younger brother. I am constantly distracted and saying no, but when the baby reaches out and says my name or the 8 year old rests his head on my shoulder while we watch the Jonas Brothers in Bulgarian, it is awesome...not sure if I could have handled it all the time forever, but it is definitely a great experience.

SITE PLACEMENT: CHIPROVTSI

The site placement and counterpart conference was this past weekend. Site assignment was a nerve wracking and exciting experience. None of the 80 volunteers had any idea where they would be placed. Our sites will be our homes and jobs for the next two years. HUGE DEAL!

After a few hours of talks on logistics and planning, we headed out to the school yard where a giant chalk map of Bulgaria had been drawn. We waited with our satellite groups as our names were drawn out of a bowl and our villages announced. Then, we walked to where our villages were marked on the map and were handed a file with information on our assignments. We stood there until all placements were announced. It was an intense experience.

The two girls from my satellite group are about as far away from me as possible in Bulgaria; they are in the far southeast of the country near the Turkish border and Black Sea, about 12 hours by bus. The two boys are directly south, in the Pirin Mountains near Bansko, also about 8 hours by bus. I’m sad I won’t be near them, but love the village to which I’ve been assigned. There are also several other volunteers from different groups nearby.

After receiving our assignments, the COD volunteers were taken by bus our hotel located near Vratsa in the Vrachanski Balkan. The Vrachanski Balkan, which includes the Ledenika caves I went to last week, is the highland region to the west of Vratsa.

Once settled, we were introduced to our Bulgarian counterparts, with whom we’ll be working for the next two years. The rest of the weekend conference focused on drafting our plan for the first few months and working on team building exercises. Dinners were fantastic Bulgarian food followed by Horo dancing. The area around the hotel was great for morning hikes with well maintained trails and some old Thracian ruins.

After the conference, we travelled with our counterparts to our permanent sites for three days. Mine new home for the will be Chiprovtsi. Chiprovtsi is the seat of the local municipality, which includes several other villages and has a population of around 4000. Chiprovtsi itself has around 2000, but the actual number is said to be much smaller, because many people list Chiprovtsi as their home, but live and work in the nearby city of Montana.

Chiprovtsi is located in valley in the northwest Balkan Mountains. It takes around six hours to hike to Serbia. In the 13^th century it was populated by Saxon Catholic immigrants and became one of the most important centers of gold- and silver- mining in the Balkans. The Catholic Church still stands in the town next to a newer Orthodox one. Though few Catholics remain, the inhabitants are proud of their multi-religious history. Their town crest even includes a lion with a split tail to symbolize their dual religious history. Chiprovtsi continued to be a wealthy town during Ottoman rule, but was destroyed after the Chiprovtsi uprising of 1688. The town was re-settled in 1737 and carpet weaving became the town’s main industry.

Chiprovtsi used to be a wealthier town benefitting from large mining operations in the surrounding mountains. Now that the mines have shut town, the town struggles to maintain its population and economic opportunities are more limited. It is, however, considered to be the most famous place in Bulgaria for rug weaving. Chiprovtsi rugs are bright and colorful with a lot of geometric shapes and bird motifs. One famous style is the Karakachki, or black-eyed woman. Because designs with depicting people were forbidden under Ottoman rule, they used geometric patterns such as this one below. Styles as well as looms are passed down through families so that many of the stylized patterns are the same as they have been for centuries.

My assignment is to work with the municipal office and its partners: the school, the cultural center, the museum, etc. My priorities are the development of small community projects, tourism, youth, and environmental awareness.

Misspeaks in another language

The bridging of a language barrier provides continued comedic relief. Here are some of the stories shared by friends and colleagues:

After language class one day, a volunteer made friends with a local man named Tsetsi. They made plans to get together and play soccer soon. The volunteer returned to his host family, excited to tell his Baba about his new friend. Using the broken Bulgarian phrases he knew, he told her that he liked his new friend, was excited to see him soon, and hoped to see a lot of him. His Baba couldn’t seem to understand what he was talking about and was getting distressed so the volunteer tried repeating again. It was unsuccessful, his Baba seemed very concerned, and the volunteer gave up and went to his room. Well… the volunteer had been saying Tsitsi instead of Tsetsi. Tsetsi is a name; Tsitsi means breasts. He’d been emphatically repeating how much he liked breasts, was excited to see them, and wanted to play with them. The volunteer, of course, didn’t realize this until the following day in language class when our trainer informed him of a call he’d received from the Baba. She was quite concerned that this young American boy, who had only been in the village a few weeks, had met breasts and wanted to spend time with breasts and see them often.

One of the Bulgarian colleagues recently returned from a three-week trip to America with representatives from 20 different countries to learn about local governance stateside. Meetings were held in English. During one of the debriefing discussions, a participant was comparing a local election in the U.S. to one that was coming up in his home village. He began by saying, “we have a very big erection coming up soon…” He continued to talk about the large erection and its enormous potential. Only one letter off, but the meaning was, I’d assume, completely distorted.

The Bulgarian word for shower is pronounced ‘doosh.’ Most of our host families don’t speak English and our Bulgarian, when we arrived, at our host families was limited to yes, no, thank you, hello. The first night, when they kept pointing to the bathroom and asking “Doosh? You want? You need? Doosh?” was very confusing.

Ledenika Caves

I visited the Ledenika Caves on Saturday. They were incredible. The five of us from K, left early in the morning and were the first group to arrive for a tour. Four older ladies joined our group. The tour was entirely in Bulgarian, but the guide made sure to wait for us at every stopping point and tried his best to help us understand the different geologic features of Ledenika. The largest room is the 'Concert Hall' and actually hosts concerts at different times. The inner rooms are a steady 45* F, but in the first room, 'Predverieto,' the temperature varies and crystalized icicle formations are present during the early spring. This is where the name Ledenika comes from. The entire tour took a little more than an hour.

Have a super busy week following a crazy weekend. On Saturday, one of the other volunteers and her Baba killed a chicken. I videoed. It was ridiculous. They used a knife that was not very sharp and it took over a minute to saw off the head. So wild.

On Sunday, I attended the christening of my host parents 2 grandsons from America. It was really neat to witness this Orthodox ceremony. Afterwards, there was a huge party in our yard and lots of soccer playing with the kids. This is a big week for me and the other volunteers. We have our community meeting where we meet with the mayor and other community members to come up with a project for the town. Then we have our site placement interviews with Peace Corps staff. Very nervous! I still have no idea the sort of place where I'd like to go for my permanent site.

Hristo Botev Day

Hristo Botev Day was yesterday, but we celebrated it in Vratsa on Tuesday. It was really incredible. There were fireworks so close that parts of them touched the ground. They lit up the sky behind the statue of Hristo Botev, national Bulgarian hero in the square in Vratsa. Prior to the fireworks the President of Bulgaria and some other politicians gave speeches. There were protestors from Ataka present as well as some other groups voicing their opinions.

Hristo Botev, was a poet and revolutionary hero in Bulgaria. He was born on January 6, 1848 in the town of Kalofer. He died on June 2, 1876 at the age of 28, during the defeat of the 1876 April Uprising against Ottoman domination.

Hristo Botev Day, June 2nd, is similar to Memorial Day in America. It is a day of commemoration for all of those who died for Bulgaria's freedom and independence. At noon, a siren goes off all over the country and a moment of silence is observed for the fallen.

My post from 17 May - Day Trip to Vratsa has a good picture of the Hristo Botev statue. I'll try to upload some from the celebration soon.

Map Making, Chinese Food, Diplomacy of Deeds

Our group has been super busy with assignments. Tonight, we are making dinner for our Language Trainer: Palachinka, Mish-Mash, and Shopska Salat. Last week we made a map of the village. Since no street map for our town exists, we used a rough google earth sketch as a template then walked around to find street names and mark the locations of the little cafes (3), markets (1.5), government buildings, and stork nests in our town. The objective was to identify natural and human resources within the village that could be leveraged for future projects. I'm not sure how well we did on this, but we drew some very realistic chickens and water buffalo to signify the locations of farms... Also last week, we had our first HUB. This is when all of the trainees from the different satellites get together for a day of workshops and classes in Vratsa. It was great to see everyone, even though we've only been in our satellites for two weeks, it seems that so much has happened. The classes were interesting. We received a condensed version of Bulgarian history from the time of the first Bulgar tribes arrived to modern day...a lot of history to absorb in a morning. After lunch, there were some workshops on our specific jobs and a man from the embassy came to chat with us. He used a phrase, coined by Karen Hughes, to describe our work that I really like: individuals engaged in the "Diplomacy of Deeds." The workshops also stressed the importance of not only seeking tangible progress, but also focusing on the intangible gains made through relationship building and time spent simply chatting with locals. After the HUB ended, my wonderful host family let 5 of us stay the night at their apartment in Vratsa. It was so great! For a bit it felt like the training wheels were off. We were able to walk around the city anonymously, go shopping, and do as we please without noticed. One of the other trainees host family's sister was our unofficial guide to the city and we spent the evening talking and laughing at an outdoor cafe and later, a Chinese restaurant. On our way back to the apartment, myself and one of the other volunteers stopped in a cafe to buy some bottled water for the group. It was already late, around 11:30, but there were still people finishing up what looked to have been quite the celebratory dinner. When we were asking the owner/bartender/waiter/cook for 8 bottles of water, he asked us where we were from. Finally! I got to use my much practiced, but rarely used "I am from America, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer....etc" phrase. Well, the owner of the cafe loved this! He then communicated that we must sit down, for he has a bottle of wine that has been sleeping for 10 years and we must drink it. The other volunteer and I have been up since 6am, sat through classes all day, and have been eating heavy food and drinking wine for several hours, sleep sounded much better, but a choice was not given. Nor did would we change a thing. Space was made at the table and we became the unofficial guests of honor.

We ended up spending three hours in the cafe with the owner and his sister looking at family albums, his high school yearbook-class of 1980, and discussing his love of classic hard rock. It was incredible. By the time we got back to the apartment we were exhausted, but felt as if we were part of something much bigger than ourselves. For those few hours, this man and his sister shared their lives with us as Americans. It was a really neat experience, they loved that we were there to help their country, that we were learning their language, and that we were staying for a couple of years. Maybe a bit of the "diplomacy of deeds" was happening? The other volunteers at the apartment had given up on us showing up with bottled water long ago, drank tap water, and went to sleep. FYI: they had no after effects from the water.