LG's Excellent PC Adventure

There is a party held by tradition in Veliko Turnovo each Halloween. Many PCVs attend this party and use the occasion to blow off steam, drink, dance, drink some more, form piles of bodies on the floor and elsewhere, drink a bit more, grope and fondle, slap and tickle, drink just for the hell of it, sing offkey, and finally, drink to amuse themselves while playing drinking games. We're in Bulgaria for only two Halloweens and I missed the Blue House Party in Veliko both times. However, Greg the PCV in Nikolaevo, a nearby town, invited the three PCVs from Stara Zagora and another three or four volunteers from the Valley of the Roses (our basic region) to join him for dinner and a bonfire on Saturday night. We all met up at Greg's place and spent the afternoon walking around his small town. He took us down through the mahala section or Roma quarter and introduced us to many of the people with whom he works. I didn't realize that we'd be going through this part of town so when the rest of the group went off for coffee, I ran back to Greg's to get my cameras and then went back into the mahala. Mahala is just a nice sounding word for ghetto. There is a marked economic difference between the Bulgarian part of a town and its mahala. I've been warned by colleagues and coworkers to never venture into that part of a town because a) they'll steal everything you have on you, or b) they'll kill you and then steal everything you have on you. It was a bright beautiful day and I didn't feel any sense of impending danger so I went back to see if I could take a few pictures.

From the first quick glance, the section looked like any impoverished shantytown in any underdeveloped part of the world or Illinois. Walking through the streets, however, I began to notice two things. First, the neighborhood was clean without trash or litter lying about. Houses were small and poor but for the most part, freshly painted and tidy. Laundry hung on lines and gardens were well tended. Second, like the Pied Piper, I attracted an ever growing entourage of children. One little guy in a Tom & Jerry (cartoon characters not ice cream vendors) sweatshirt appointed himself my guide and insisted that I see all the important sights in the neighborhood. That sounded good to me so I let him lead me to all the important sights, which consisted of his Baba. I then had to abandon any hope of getting interesting pictures of mahala life in favor of taking photos of as many people as I could in the shortest possible time. This was a lot of fun and it gave me an opportunity to talk with some very friendly people. After I'd take a picture or two on my digital camera, the kids would rush up and pull it out of my hands so they could see the picture. They'd pass it around and everyone had a comment, then they'd run back to find a new spot to pose and demand more pictures. They called me Chicho or Uncle (at least I choose to believe that's what they were calling me) and like a good uncle, I promised them that Greg would give them copies of the pictures. Way to go, Greg!

I've posted some of the pictures and I have a bit of video that I'll put online later. Although it doesn't show in the few shots I have online, every second house in the mahala had a satellite dish on the roof and a horse and wagon in the front yard. By the way, although I was tugged on, pulled at and handled quite shockingly in some cases, not a stotinki was missing when I headed back to the cafe to meet the others. In fact, the toughest negotiation I had was to convince Mihailov (?), my pint sized guide with four gold earrings, to accept fifty stotinki for his fee instead of the twenty he'd suggested.

I recognize that we have volunteers who work regularly in the Roma sections of towns but this was my first experience there. The differences between Bulgarian and American cultures are subtle and ones of degree for the most part, the differences between American and Roma cultures are huge and worth learning.

I made it back to Greg's just in time to help buy the groceries and rakiya for dinner. We all pitched in and made a Uruguayan dish that Greg had learned to cook when he lived there. Lentils, tomatoes, sausages, rice and anything that was lying around went into the pot which was then cooked in the oven, casserole style. After wishing each other a Chestit Halloween!, we dug in and ate every scrap of the dish. Then we got into the important business of the night, carving the tikvichi. Again, a group effort seemed the most efficient use of manpower so one person drew, another cut an eye, someone else hacked out a nose, etc. When the pumpkin was carved we carried it and a large bag of supplies up the mountain to the ruins of an old Roman fort. Greg had gone up the day before and hidden a store of firewood there so we lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. Rakiya, in case you've been wondering, is what the arson squad would refer to as an "accelerant". It also goes quite nicely with s'mores! Thank you.

The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese omelets, we all headed back to our respective sites. Apparently, the time had changed that night and I stood out in the freezing wind for an hour and a half waiting for a bus I was convinced was an hour late. I had actually been told about the time change, but chose to question the accuracy of the information. Yep, they were right.

On Monday I had to go to Sofia to have a biopsy on my left hand. I have a skin 'event' on my hand. It isn't fungus or a rash or parasitic, it's an event. The dermatologist says its a granuloma something or other and no one knows how you get it or how you get rid of it. It doesn't itch or burn and it isn't contagious but it just slowly moves around on the back of my hand. Sometimes it goes away of its own accord. But they took a chunk of it out to send to the lab in the States because that's PC procedure. The doctor put a single stitch in to close up the cut and the stitch will have to come out in a week. My choice is to go back to Sofia to have a stitch pulled or to pull it myself. The PC doctor has agreed to let me try to pull my own stitch out but insists that I be on the phone with her while I'm doing it. How tough can it be? Cut the stitch above (or is it below?) the knot, grab the knot with the tweezers and pull until a) the stitch comes out or b) I faint dead away. So take that all you PCVs living in Africa bragging about how tough you have it. I will be performing a surgical procedure on myself next week. Gimme a mirror, I'm sure I can remove that tumor from my brain with my Swiss army knife and this sewing kit.

Okay, I was hit by a car today. Well, 'hit' is a dramatic word that, in this case, stands for 'nudged'. It was my own fault really, I wasn't paying any attention as I was walking to work and the car had clearly established right of way on my part of the sidewalk. She was trying to pass a line of cars that had foolishly stopped for a red light and, as is fairly common practice here, pulled briefly onto the sidewalk to do so. As a pedestrian I was obviously more agile and should have leapt out of her way. She was forced to brake and lost her place as the light changed and the other cars (her competitors in the daily Bulgarian "How fast can your car go?" drive to work) pulled away from the light in a miasma of burning rubber. She accepted my apology pretty ungraciously, clumped her way over the curb back onto the road and roared off in hot pursuit. I'm considering mounting a horn and flashers on my jacket.