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

Thursday, January 26, 2006

It May Be Your Teapot, But It's My Tempest!

When we celebrated the completion of the renovation of the Knitting Room in the Home for the Handicapped last November, among those present for the party was a youngish woman living, temporarily, in the Home. In addition to unspecified handicaps that kept her confined to her wheelchair, she also had a drinking problem and was in the Home in an effort to regain some control of her life. During this brief period she befriended the women of HandKnitCrafts.com and often found time to join them as they worked. She didn't knit but sat with them and talked and gossiped and listened as they talked and gossiped and as they complained about life in general. Then the youngish (30's) woman left the Home, thought about her experiences there and wrote a letter to a penpal in England. The penpal was a vicar in a small town parish and Evgenia (the youngish woman) took great pains in her letter to him to: 1) reconfirm her overpowering love for Christianity in general and God in particular, 2) confess the personal burden she bears as a result of being overwhelmingly beautiful, 3) admit to backsliding ever so slightly on the whole alcohol thing and, 4) accuse me of the 'brutal exploitation' of the handicapped women of Stara Zagora.

How do I know this?, you ask. The Vicar, bless his well-intentioned soul, turned out to be married to the sister of the wife of the British Ambassador to Bulgaria. Small world, no? Through chain-of-command the letter wound up on His Excellency's wife's desk; who, by the way, is the Chairperson of Traditzia - the shop in Sofia where almost all of our knitted products are sold. One of the women in the shop faxed us a copy of the letter and we were, initially, somewhat at a loss for words. Then I began to find some words but, fortunately for you, I seem to have lost them again. Evgenia described the person doing the brutal exploitation as being 'the artist man' and my colleagues and I all agreed that, as I'm the only man involved in the project, she must have been referring to me. I've been accused of many things in my life, including the brutal exploitation of handicapped women, but I've never been called an artist! The nerve!

Our primary concern was to learn how Evgenia had developed this opinion. Was it a reflection of feelings held by the women with whom we'd been working for over a year? We arranged a meeting with the ladies and met them at the Home in the Knitting Room. After the usual banter and small talk, we began to ask them how they felt about the work we were doing for them. They assured us that they appreciated all we were doing but that A) we should sell more of their shawls so they can have more money and B) they don't want to work very hard anymore. This was not new, 'more money - less work' has been their theme song from day one. We, again, explained that start-up businesses don't quite work that way and had a fine old animated and boisterous conversation. With the four of us and the eight of them and their wheelchairs in a 15x20 room animated conversations are something to behold. This is pretty typical of our meetings and during the shouting and arm waving someone or another will be sure to begin passing out cookies or chocolates for their birthday or name day. Then we wrap it up and everyone says it's been fun and we leave.

So Petya mentioned the letter and the 'brutal exploitation' and the room went silent. Now that is different. The room is many things but one of those things is not quiet. The women knew about the letter, having been told of it by Evgenia. There was a bit of sheepish to-ing and fro-ing of wheelchairs and then they said that Evgenia had listened to them while they worked and misunderstood their general complaining about work, money and life and had written the letter without telling them. Then they stated emphatically that they want to do very little work and have someone give them a great deal of money. So, they have arrived at the place in capitalism where we all aspire to be; my work here is done!

The final bit of sweeping up was for Petya to make a daylong trip up to Traditzia to assure the Ambassador's wife that we were not brutally exploiting the women (and that I'm not really much of an artist) and that we were continuing to put a great deal of uncompensated time into helping them. It should be noted that, while I am a Peace Corp Volunteer, my colleagues are not compensated in any way for the many hours they spend each week trying to help the women form a sustainable business. The Ambassador's wife understood and during their meeting made the universal sign of putting your thumb to your lips and tilting your head back to indicate that she knew Evgenia. So all is well and our escutcheon is unbesmirched.

We are currently drafting a proposal to an EU funding organization for a grant to enable us to develop our Agency into a one-stop shopping center for foreign investors seeking to relocate all or part of their businesses to Stara Zagora. We want to build a set of web tools that will offer a vast amount of information to prospective investors, market our ability to hand walk them through the governmental processes involved in relocation and offer a menu of specific fee-based services. The most remarkable thing about this proposal is that it isn't due until the end of March and we're actually working on it now! This project seems tailor made for us and we seem determined to put some time into writing this proposal.

I traveled to a nearby village with some of the girls from the Film Club to begin filming Stancho's movie. The group has found a very good actress to play the part of the girl and Stancho's baba to play the part of the baba. The story revolves around the reasons the two don't like each other and calls for them to be fairly rude and mean to each other. Desi, the girl, has some acting experience and can be rude and mean on command, but Stancho's baba keeps looking at the camera and breaking into an ear to ear grin. She is one of the happiest people in Bulgaria and Stancho has to keep yelling at her to, "be a witch!" They've gotten off to a very good start and only need to keep at it to end up with a pretty good film. Nikoleta's movie is also moving along. She's doing the film with the animated ghosts and the cast of thousands and the magically appearing hotel. So far, she's still working with her cast on tightening up the script and hasn't begun filming. Mila & Eva are in the middle of shooting their really short film about a boy who decides not to run away from home and are waiting for the weather to improve before filming the last scene. I've shot about an hour's worth of film for the Roma project and have been trying to make contact with various people who are involved with that community. Jennifer, the PCV working with me on the project, and I want to have some film taken from the back of one of the many horse-drawn carts that are on every street. Our plan is to stand behind the driver and shoot over his shoulder which, admittedly, will fill the screen with the southern end of a north-bound horse, but will be a nice clip for the movie anyway. Unfortunately, the PC has just issued a directive prohibiting riding on horse or donkey carts. Oh well, they don't prohibit high school girls from riding on the carts so I'll have to ask Stancho to risk her life and limb for the sake of my movie. Now that's brutal exploitation!

Well, it's time for me, the artist man, to grab some crayons and begin to doodle on napkins. Hey, those things could be worth some real money some day! More money - Less Work!!
Comments:
Larry,

I think you missed your calling. You should seriously consider taking up writing for profit - of course that might take the fun out it??

Your English Teacher friend,
Patti
 
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