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.
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