The Ride Home

Saturday, 4:00 pm, I’m sitting at the bus stop in Devin with two other volunteers: Jon and Ryan. I am still groggy from the stuffy mini-bus that jolted through curvy, narrow mountain roads to bring us here. My body protects itself from motion sickness by sleeping; I’ve become a narcoleptic who uncontrollably passes out even when I would rather stay awake to take in the views. At the Devin bus stop the three of us study the limited bus schedule. For me it’s one bus from my village in the morning and one bus back in the evening. Monday through Friday. I start to feel the weight of isolation. Jon, who has been here for a year now, gives tips for getting around in “less institutionalized” ways.  
 Ryan has made plans for us to be picked up by a contact from his site visit. Actually, it’s the same guy who helped us get back to our training sites. He’s a disheveled, stocky business man who drives a much-used jeep to distribute construction supplies to several stores. Last time we rode with him, he and a partner stopped for “20 minutes of work” in Plovdiv while Ryan and I sat in his running car. 20 minutes became an hour and 45 minutes before we were finally dropped off at the bus station. The most likely explanation for the seemingly absurd delay is that we were needed to keep the car running—at a previous stop they had to push start. Maybe we should have learned from this experience…
At 4:15 I call our friend to make sure he’s still coming for us. Bulgarian phone conversations are a challenge, but in the torrent of words I can usually find key ideas…in this case “working now,” “will come,” “one hour later,” “nice Bulgarian.” My side of the conversation was, “three people,” “at the bus station,” “waiting,” “thanks!” Knowing that one hour is probably just a polite underestimation, we settle in and take turns walking to a nearby café for refreshments. I drift into thoughts about arriving at the village, mainly imagining my new house and what things I have in my bulging luggage that can make it start to feel like home.  
At 6:00 we see the familiar jeep pulling into the parking lot…packed to the roof with hardware items. There is no room for two people, much less three people with significant luggage. Even the back seats had been laid down to accommodate the huge oil drum, chain saw blades, and various boxes. Before I can ask for the plan, our friend has started taking everything out of the jeep. I am confused—is he going to leave all of his work materials unattended in the parking lot while he gave us a ride? One advantage of not speaking a language fluently is that it keeps me from making objections or comments in a timely manner. While I am racking my brain for a way to say “plan B” and conjugating the verb “to doubt” in my head, he is able to cram all of the items back into the jeep so precisely that one back seat is left open…Just enough room for Jon and I to squeeze in with Ryan sitting in the front holding more luggage. Jon is sitting with his feet on the seat and his chin resting on his knees (since the floor was packed as well). I sit, or rather, am enclosed in the other half of the seat, pressed against the window. Neither of us can move our arms. When Jon’s phone rings, it is impossible to answer it. But, we only have 20km to drive and then they will have one less person and two less bags…
5km from my village there is a road that splits off to the west. Without warning, our friend veers to the right and begins taking us away from our homes. Homes…yes, at that moment although I had only visited for three days and hadn’t even seen the place I would live, the village had the familiarity and attachment of a home to me. And I knew we were driving away from it. We quickly speak up: “Where are you going?” “Why did you turn?” “People are waiting for us!” The answers are vague, but the commands are familiar: “Relax!” “Don’t worry” “Take it easy!” Somehow those words in Bulgarian rarely have the intended effect on me. As we pass villages our driver points out things that we might find interesting (e.g., “Oh, there’s where the town had their holiday last year,” or “There’s a factory that operates 24 hours a day.”). But under the uncomfortable circumstances I’m only focused on when we will turn around. As we continue to protest the route change, he begins to use me as an excuse: “Whitney wants to see Bulgaria.” We change tactics as well. Now as he points out new villages we speak of ours in glowing terms: “Oh, that village is nice, but I like Yagodina so much better” etc.  
After an hour of driving in the wrong direction I reach a state of being that I have only experienced in reckless taxis, on roller coasters, and during rough airplane landings. It’s a sort of resignation to fate that says, “I have absolutely no control, I will probably not die, and I’m going to enjoy this!” As I laugh to myself, our driver points out the Pirin Mountains—we have officially driven all the way through the Rhodopes! The end of the story is simple: our driver drops off the oil drum at a store and then finally turns back east. After one more business stop and another hour of driving, he heads up the steep, rough road to my village and leaves me there to settle into home, having seen more of Bulgaria.  

Last Friday we had an English teaching/dance class in Pudriya for whoever wanted to come. A lot more people came than I had expected—at least 25 kids and a couple adults were crammed into our training room. Right away we ran into some difficulties: people being too embarrassed to participate, not being able to hear each other, and not having clear roles for the teaching. I’m not sure anyone learned English, but we did successfully teach the electric slide! It was a great exercise because as we debriefed, we took away a lot of strategies for problems that we had not anticipated.
The next morning (Saturday) we were blessed with sunny weather for our “clean-up the park” project. We sanded, picked up trash, cut the grass/weeded, and painted the playground equipment. We had a lot of kids helping out and they really took ownership of the painting. They added some personal touches by mixing colors and using “creative” painting techniques! The finished product is great!

Sunday, the 4th of July, we hosted a party in the town center. We had a rough start. At least 50 people had gathered around and were waiting to try our American food (chili, cheddar cheese, potato chips, pasta salad, peach cobbler, and chocolate chip cookies). We were embarrassingly late to start, we had no plates, and only 20 forks! But, as with all of our projects, despite our lack of planning and our mistakes, everything came together in the end. Swain gave a little explanation about the 4th of July to start us off. We served food in plastic cups and people brought us more silverware. It became a party when we started the music! We started with the electric slide, but people really got involved when we switched to Horo music (the Bulgarian dancing). Everyone joined the circle! At the end of the night we also had an impressive fireworks display. We left the town center around 10pm and headed to Swain’s house where the party continued with Kucheck dancing in his kitchen. We had 15 people crammed into a very small (and hot) space dancing as wildly as possible! Self-consciousness and fear of dancing is just not an option here! Best 4th of July I’ve ever experienced! :)
So, after three intense days of watching our projects take shape, we now have less than three weeks of training left. All that’s left is our final language proficiency exam and swearing in to become actual Peace Corps volunteers.