March 4, 2002

It seems that every volunteer has a different way of coping with living in a foreign environment and all the frustrations that accompany it. Not only are we living in a foreign place, but we’re also trying to promote projects and ideas to the people that live here. For me, in order to cope with our experience here, I have had to become more Bulgarian. I think that if I was reading this from the States without my present experience I would probably think, of course dummy, you have to adjust to the culture – you’re in Peace Corps!! In fact that is one of the exciting things about PC. Adjusting is one thing, adopting is another.

Fatalism is one concept that doesn’t sit too well with Americans. We Americans live in a culture where we truly believe we can change the future and many times, we do. Much of the time we shun talk of death and if we do talk about it, it seems like it’s an option. And I’m not completely sure, but I think we Americans invented the self-help book. We’re convinced that we can change ourselves if we really set our minds to it. Again, we sometimes succeed.

I think one of the things that I’m now realizing is this: Even if I didn’t always notice it, my American culture and all its can-do outlook has been constantly grinding with the fatalist Bulgarian mentality. It sort of happens under the surface. Things that happen under the surface don’t usually catch our attention until much later. Fatalism, for the average American, has a negative connotation and means resigning yourself to mediocrity and inactivity. That’s an insult to most Americans. But I’ve found that fatalism is quite a natural response to Bulgarian history and maybe Balkan history in general. I know that if I were born here, I’d be just as much a Bulgarian as I am American. And to live here for two years, I’ve had to adopt a somewhat fatalist outlook.

It’s really not very easy. And while adopting and adapting, it can get sort of painful. Your basic understanding of things comes under question. What I mean is, the stuffs of life – time, work, relationships, etc., all have to be reconsidered. Sometimes it feels like I’m in some sort of warp. As an American, I was raised to do and make. In Bulgaria there’s just as much to do as there is in America. In fact there may be more potential projects here just waiting for someone to pick them up. But no one here is rushing to do them. Sometimes I wish more people would start rushing around here and doing, but it’s just not happening. I don’t want to talk about all the good and bad aspects about that, but what happened to me was this: I began to question the whole idea of doing and accomplishing. After all we’re living in a pretty big universe and I’m just a wee-little speck in it all. What is my doing really going to do? What is pushing my agenda through and fulfilling my expectations really going to do? Think in terms of ultimacy. Won’t we really end up in the same place anyways? And what about that strange phrase that I haven’t heard in about two years, oh yeah, umm, “time management”, I think it was. How strange, I mean really strange. Let’s manage something that, according to Einstein, is relative. We Americans seem to want to manage a lot of things.

Things in Bulgaria just happen. If you’re around, you hear news. I’ve never gotten a note from another teacher about a meeting or a question that he or she wants to discuss. Instead, teachers will just stop me spontaneously to ask me questions that only a native speaker would have the answer to, or ask me about a student, etc. But if we don’t see each other, we don’t talk. It’s really that simple. If you see someone in the center of town and you begin to talk, all of a sudden you’re sitting at a café with him or her, enjoying the afternoon. You’ve just got to be out and about, and available.

However, it’s so frustrating to see people resign themselves to neighborhoods with trash strewn all over. It’s such a contrast to come from a people who continually decide their future, to a people who open themselves to traditional and perceived forces, which often have greater impact on their future than themselves. It’s difficult to see people live in an environment, which seems malleable to me but stiff and unbending to them. Sometimes I want to shake people and get them to believe in their own potential. When I told my unhappy student that she could do better on her essay because she only got a “4”, or the equivalent of a “C” in America, I didn’t believe her when she said she couldn’t do any better. Surely, I thought, she’s fooling herself. If she spends enough time consulting a grammar book, rereading and checking, and clarifying her own ideas in native Bulgarian before she hands me her English essay, she could have a “6.” But she really didn’t believe me. It wasn’t possible. It really didn’t matter how much I told her that she could do better.

Before we arrived here I expected that, at this point to have gained more compassion and resolve to make this world a better place. It really hasn’t worked out like that and it’s not the opposite either. In light of what I thought I would have experienced by now, I’m more cynical and pessimistic. In light of Bulgaria, I’m more realistic. In light of the American environment that I grew up in, I’m much more negative. But here I’m more Bulgarian and I’ve had to adopt certain things in order to adapt. The compassion that I expected to experience is, in my estimation, naïve and sometimes harmful. I don’t think it does our world any good to be unrealistically compassionate. Sometimes all you can do is just be there. And that’s the best and most compassionate thing you can do. This all rubs up against our expectations and whether we’re going to get hung up on them or not.

This clash of cultures reared its head so many times in my classes. It took me nearly a year to just adapt to the Bulgarian teaching style, which, in my American eyes, is mind-numbingly boring. But what works here isn’t interactive small group learning styles; it’s chalk on the board, pens writing in the notebook and the teacher sitting at the desk. I haven’t stopped introducing my American-ness to my Bulgarian students through more interactive and out-of-your-chair lessons – that’s one of the reasons I’m here. But I try to give it in small doses. It works better that way.

-Josh