A chronicle of my experiences as a Peace Corps Community Organizational Development volunteer in Bulgaria.

Friday, February 25, 2005

We Have Neolithic Dwellings And You Don't!!

Last week we all put on our slogging clothes and slogged on through IST (In Service Training). The bulk of the week was structured around lectures, seminars and training events about Project Design and Management. Our counterparts were invited to attend this training week with us and many did. Each organization requesting a volunteer has to commit to providing the volunteer with a counterpart who will act as guide, interpreter, and mentor through the two years of service. My counterpart is Darina. The head of my program in the PC (Community and Organizational Development) is Dimitar. Dimitar came to SZ, met Darina and immediately exempted her from attending the PDM workshop week. Darina has been successfully designing and managing projects at a highly professional level for the past ten or twelve years and the week would have been a huge waste of her valuable time. Some of the counterparts and PCV's did get a lot out of the training. As with most of the things PC Bulgaria organizes, it was well thought out and well run. The material was pitched to a reasonably basic level due to the wide range of skills amongst the 100 plus attendees. That made for some long sessions for people who came equipped with a grasp of the material. On Friday we were given a whole day of language lessons served on a menu that allowed each of us to pick and choose both topics and levels that suited us. I found it to be the most useful day of the week. My first night in Bankya I roomed with my sitemate from SZ, Matt. There are a group of younger volunteers here who are known as the hard-core partyers and Matt is a fully paid up member in good standing. Our room was surrounded by rooms holding others of his ilk so I didn't get much sleep that night. I asked to change rooms the next morning so my bitching and griping wouldn't dampen the party mood. The 'resort' we were staying in was some sort of convalescent hospital and I was given a room to myself in another wing. It was appreciably quieter among the recovering heart attack and stroke patients, God bless them! The biggest negative to the week, however, was that it rained every single day. We were fed breakfast and lunch in the 'resort', but had to walk to town for dinner each night. It was cold, dark (Bulgaria doesn't really believe in streetlights) and raining every single night. Most of us caught colds as a sort of diploma for completing the course.

On Saturday I headed back to SZ and all the mundane chores that go with living alone. Shopping, cleaning the apartment, doing laundry and cooking dinner. It was nice to be home after a cold wet week in Bankya.

We have a couple of interesting things on the horizon. Europe Day is May 9th and we've put in a bid to become the local coordinators for the festivities in our region. If selected we'll need to organize a series of outdoor cultural events built around Bulgaria's pending European Union accession in 2007. We're talking about staging a concert in the ruins of the Roman Forum, having an outdoor performance of the National Puppet theater, and creating a Taste of Stara Zagora Day, modelled after the famous Chicago celebration of food and festivity. There is also a drive to improve the visibility and access to the Neolithic Dwellings in Stara Zagora. Some years ago, when workers were laying a pipe through an open piece of ground near the Trakia University one of them noticed that they'd dug through something that looked both very old and man made. A team of archeologists took over the excavation using whisk brooms instead of backhoes and discovered the remains of two homes. Both homes were destroyed by fire but much of their structures could be seen in the rubble. Carbon dating of some of the recovered materials (wood and wheat chaff) proved the homes to be about 8,000 years old, making them the oldest such habitations in Europe. Yes sir!! Right here in Stara Zagora, who knew!?! They are one of the best kept secrets in town but now we're thinking of promoting them a little to attract tourists. It'll help if we put up a sign to help people find them as they are located behind the university and the only access to them is to walk through the parking lot and grounds of the hospital. Anyway, we're now looking into various ways to improve access and to promote awareness. Next on a list of interesting things, my project to help the disabled ladies has been approved. Next week we'll begin drafting the final plans and then begin the work. I'll be responsible for working with Malcho to help him create a business plan. Malcho lives in the Home for the Disabled and was selected by the women to work as the manager of the business. Like the seven women, Malcho is in a wheelchair and is physically disabled. None of the women wanted to take on the responsibility for managing the enterprise and they introduced me to Malcho. He is very excited about getting to do this and I'm looking forward to working with him. Finally, I have a meeting set up with a group of kids at the local Foreign Languages High School for the week after next. My contacts in the High School have sent around a notice that I would be interested in starting a Film Club and there has been enough of a response that I'll meet with them in two weeks. My total lack of knowledge inspires complete confidence in my inability to perform! How hard can it be, Andy Warhol once shot an eight hour movie of the Empire State Building!!

So, that's it. Fun stuff on the horizon and next month it'll be Spring. The ice has melted in my toilet bowl and I actually hung laundry out on the terrace last weekend. It froze solid in minutes, but I did it and that's the important thing. We're going to switch our internet service provider at work to pick up a DSL line that will improve our speeds here exponentially. HBO is now offered in English as an option on the local tv cable. Raffy (the Italian ice cream franchise) will re-open in the Center next month and my washing machine hasn't had an 'episode' in three or four loads. The Hallmark Channel is showing too many reruns of "McLeod's Daughters", but some hardships are to be expected. This is, after all, the Peace Corps.
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