5-2-01

Leaving our block this afternoon, I got hit by a warm breeze that was much warmer than the air in our flat. My jacket was too hot. I walked through the entranceway of our block, which is always dark and a little scary, down the steps and onto the street. There were people out – lots of people. Children coming home from school, people going home from work, men sitting and drinking beer on benches, women selling their jarred vegetables, and a bustle of activity that was exciting to be around. It was about 6pm and I wrapped my way down our sidewalk, down to the main street. I walked past the small store, built into another identical block, adjacent to us. As soon as I passed the store and the woman who watches me every morning on my way to school, I came upon a Roma family, sitting in the grass of a much larger store called “Evropa.” This in itself isn’t a unique sight, but what they had with them was what made it made it worth my while to stare as I walked past. With them were two bears; about two or three times the size of a grown man. They were on chains, with rings through their noses. They sat complacently on the grass, behind their human owners and gnawed away at the lush grass. I’ve seen this sight a few times before – just this weekend, when we were in Sofia, a Roma couple came ambling down the sidewalk of a park with a dancing bear. The man was playing his violin-type instrument and tugged the bear to dance and walk on its hind legs. The woman came afterwards with a tin can, collecting money. Parents sat their children on the bear’s back for a token ride and then put money into the can. The bear was obedient and kept close to its master. All the master had to do was tug in a certain direction and the bear would stand up, roll on the ground, or put its arm around him as he played. And I saw those big claws.

I kept walking past the Roma family, staring, staring, staring, still amazed at what I was seeing and the casualness of everyone else walking by. People walked in and out of the store, pausing only for a glance and then continued to walk on. Eventually I passed them and I saw a flurry of people out and about. The cafes were nearly full – everyone knew this was an evening that shouldn’t be spent inside of your flat. It was time to go out to a café and have a beer with a friend or two and watch the people go by.

This small strip of sidewalk between our block and school is our most walked part of Silistra. There is something new along there everyday. Someone will decide to bring the ten or so fish that he caught that morning to the bazaar; a woman will bring her fresh flowers to sell; children play and push each other on their way to school; taxis (there are so many taxis here) make a u-turn in the road to line up in the taxi stand on the other side of the road; a man or woman will lean outside of his or her window; looking down on to the numerous heads bobbing up and down; and I will walk through as a foreigner, trying not to be too conspicuous.

We spent last weekend in Julie’s town, Pazerdjik, which is about a thirty-minute bus ride from Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria. Kate and I have gotten used to the fact that it takes about one day to get to get anywhere south or west of us. We have to take a bus or train to Sofia and then find a bus to wherever we want to go next. If we had some pressing schedule it would make us impatient, but that’s just life here. We spent our time with Julie and Chris, walking through Pazerdjik, Plovidiv, and Bachkovo Monastery. We had a startling experience when, on our way to the bus station in Pazerdjik, we walked past a group of police officers and paramedics near an abandoned building. They were doing nothing and soon we saw the body of a young man, leaning up against the wall of the building, under the staircase. We were all shocked to see such a sight. It was the first time to see such a thing and it stayed in our mind for quite a while. The way he was leaning against the wall, it looked like a drug overdose or possibly suicide. As we walked on further, another police car came screaming down the street and we knew where it was going.

The water mains are slowly being replaced here in Silistra – an unfinished project from last summer. So our water supply is touch and go. We mostly have water during the evenings and mornings, but during the day we don’t know if we will have it or not. The water supply in Bulgaria is very low right now, with many towns set to impose water regimes this summer. This region has been in a drought for quite some time. Some volunteers have water for only two or three hours per day in their towns. We’ve been getting rain lately, but it would take much, much more water to get the reservoirs back up to the normal level. Our water comes from an underground source in Romania and, ironically, the Romanian town across the river gets their water from the Danube. Right now, the river is very high and we watch the fishing boats speeding down the river, at the mercy of the current. All the “beaches” are flooded and the fishing boats are beached at much higher places along the banks.

-Josh