Four Celebrations

Aderlez. May 6^th is Georgov Den (the name day of St. George) in Bulgaria. It has also become a national holiday that celebrates the liberation from the 500 years under the “Turkish yoke” (Ottoman empire). Gyovren, being a Turkish village, has their own version of the holiday called Aderlez. Aderlez is a mish mash of superstitions and traditions. Mainly, it is the occasion when the night battles with the day. It is also a personal indicator of how the summer will go for you (so, don’t oversleep, or you’ll oversleep all summer. Don’t be grumpy, or you’ll be grumpy all summer, etc.). The night before Aderlez, every family makes

kitki (small bouquets with a yellow flower called Iglika). Each bouquet is tied with string and marked with a distinctive trinket (a button, earring, ring, etc) so that everyone knows which is theirs. The kitki sit in a bowl of water outside overnight—in a place where they will be exposed to the moon. The next morning you should wake up (early, of course) and wash your face in the dew—it is supposed to have healing powers on this day. Next women gather together all the kitki and put them in a large bucket of water. As they sing Turkish songs, they pull each kitka out of the water. The line of the song that corresponded with the kitka’s emergence from the water will be the owner’s fortune for the year.

Mine, in case you’re wondering, was: There’s a boy on a distant hill who sees a girl and calls to her. She tells him to wait there and she will come to him. If I had a boyfriend in America, I would find this quite insightful.

Earth Day. Earth day may not have really been on Gyovren’s radar, but it was recognized in Bulgaria. Various groups in Sofia organized a large-scale cleanup that was well publicized on the national news and environmental conscious in general is gaining momentum. My friend Amber, a PCV in Smolyan, set up an on-line clean-up initiative that we joined in Gyovren. Basically, the idea was to clean up the town with a volunteer brigade and then weigh our trash at the end and enter the amount on the web site. This allowed us to see our own results, and also to feel connected to other places all over Bulgaria that were doing the same thing. Not surprisingly, all of the volunteers from Gyovren were kids. They were incredibly enthusiastic and we had a great time!

Potato planting. Potato planting is not an official holiday, but since the whole village starts their planting on the same day, it certainly had the aura of a celebration—or at least a large family reunion. Most of the potato fields are small, confusing plots, marked by boundary stones, which have been passed down from generations. Somehow, they sorted this back out after communist times. Each family has (or borrows) a horse/mule and plow to get their fields ready. This is the men’s work.Next, the women drop potatoes into the furrows (three at a time) and cover them using hoes. I worked with my landlords from 8am until 6:30 with a picnic lunch in the fields. The weather was superb.

Wedding. Weddings are a big deal in Gyovren. They’re expensive, and not every couple will choose to have one (by the way, the groom’s family pays for the wedding in Bulgaria—just a small incentive for me to get married here!). I have been to several Nikias (where the hoja marries the couple in the groom’s home), but this was my first time to experience the wedding celebration. The family prepares food for the entire village—plus all the people they invited who don’t live in the village. We’re talking about 1,000 people! A small wedding is simply not an option. The day before the wedding, I sat outside the groom’s home and peeled potatoes with over 25 other women. The day of the wedding, at 9:30, as I was putting on makeup, I heard clarinets squeaking and drums beating. The wedding procession, starting from the groom’s house, had begun. With musicians in front, they wind their way through the entire village on the way to the bride’s house. Once there, the groom has to “bribe” the bride’s family to enter the house and then has to find her hidden shoe before he can see her. I bet this tradition started because brides needed more time to get ready and these were excellent stall tactics. Now the bride and her family join the procession and they make their way to the court house where they will have the wedding. The musicians and family have towels, clothing, and other household items pinned to them to represent all the stuff that the bride is bringing to her new home. All the people from the village stand along the road to watch the parade. After the official wedding, the couple comes down the steps and the secretary of the mayor throws water on the steps in front of them for good luck. They dance some horo, and then make their way to the school where they have the celebration. At the school, they break bread before going inside (whoever gets the bigger piece will “command” the marriage). Close friends and family get their own procession with music to show off their gifts (including large pieces of furniture) which they bring to the school. At the school, everyone (really, everyone) is served lunch. All you can eat, three types of salad, soup, meatballs, and lots of drinks. Every hallway, every classroom, was filled with makeshift benches and tables. After lunch, the dancing begins. And goes on for a long time. Horo, slow dancing, kuchek. The bride, in her high heels, leads every horo. It’s as if her happiness and radiance is transferred down the line of people as we hold hands and move together. (Check out the slide show below to see all of this in pictures)

A Rainy Day

It’s rainy today. I probably shouldn’t write when it’s rainy because I’ll sound more melancholy. Also, since next Saturday marks one year since I arrived in Bulgaria I’m feeling extra reflective. One year. A year since I drove a car. Pulled warm clothes out of a dryer. Had a drink with ice. If only those were the difficult things to get used to! The real adjustments have been much slower to come to the surface and I still struggle with them: being unsure of my role and priorities, feeling unable to communicate effectively in Bulgarian, experiencing the disparity in workplace norms.

I love life here though. There are moments of truly exquisite happiness that I wouldn’t experience as easily in other settings. Like the enthusiasm of kids. I gave a lesson the other day in the kindergarten and afterwards I got handshakes and hugs from several kids who told me “Nice lesson, we liked it!” I glowed the rest of the day. Having a wood stove in my room is beyond wonderful. It’s May, but I still light a fire in the evenings because hearing the wood crackling as I read a book is just so satisfying. I shower less often here than I did in the states and now a “shower day” is a special one. I start looking forward to it the night before! I can also say that in the area of traveling, I have adjusted to not having a car (which for me meant control and independence) and I get great satisfaction from watching things work out in ways I never expected. I ask for help more often, I meet new people, and I get places more slowly.

Asking for help in general has been an area of growth for me this year. In the U.S., my desire to do things independently was both encouraged and possible. Here, approaching a problem almost always requires relationships. A small example: I was with friends in Smolyan and we needed to make a reservation at a restaurant for a large group of people. Thinking like Americans, we first looked on the web—no luck. Then thought about how nice it would be to have phone books. Finally I called the one person I knew who lived in Smolyan and simply told him that we wanted to make a reservation at such and such a restaurant. And, 5 minutes later, he called back to say that his friend of a friend with a cousin who worked there had called and made our reservation. Yep.

Really, things go much better when I stop trying to use my customary method of setting appointments, posting information, and scheduling things and just…talk to people. Planning, I’ve found, is a value I didn’t know that I held so dearly—perhaps because I had never questioned it or experienced the lack of it. Here I have because there’s a different mode of operation. The majority of the time, work is focused on the immediate and urgent. So, because I sometimes miss my old familiar system, when I get to work with other volunteers and we effortlessly spend hours discussing goals and objectives, making action steps, assigning roles, taking notes, and putting things in excel charts, it is incredibly refreshing. And comical.

Realizing I’ve been here a year tempts me to ask, “What am I accomplishing?” My days are full and I have plenty to do during evenings and weekends as well, and yet, it feels like I’m accomplishing an extraordinarily small amount. There are wonderful moments: reading with kids, showing someone how to look up information on-line, teaching my counterpart to use the sum function in excel, sharing about wedding traditions in English class…but these bright spots are often lost in the vastness of wasted time in the library where I am only keeping it open so that people can facebook and play on-line poker. It makes me wonder if I am just working (because I wouldn’t be comfortable any other way)—taking care of the immediate needs—and forgetting to look for the opportunities that “could be.” Probably so.

I haven’t accomplished much that’s tangible. I haven’t “won” any money. We didn’t get the funding for the park we wanted to make near the entrance to the village. (However, people from the mosque have started working on the retaining wall without outside funding and that is both encouraging and a better way to get the job done) It’s hard not to feel like a failure though at times. Ideas move so slowly to action. I’m hopeful about the year ahead. Mainly because I know that I’ve built trust in relationships. If I am able to accomplish anything, it will only be because people were willing to work with me.

Oh, and most days in Gyovren…are sunny.