Learning to light candles

" 'Tis better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. " Nelson Mandela

Reality check- Things in Bulgaria are hard...they have been for a few years, possibly for a few decades. Granted, things all over the world are hard right now...with India and Thailand dealing with the aftereffects of a tsunami, New Orleans dealing with the wrath of Katerina, and severe tensions and violence in other places of the world. Yet, the focus of this blog is the darkness particular to Bulgaria. If it wasn't at least somewhat hard, Peace Corps wouldn't be here. Yet, it's just now beginning to hit me just how difficult life is here for the masses. Our group was somewhat spoiled with our Borovetz initiation...the house i'm living in, in Krichim, is also fairly nice, yet the screams of poverty and unemployment are pretty loud outside the resort towns of Bulgaria. As we travel around Bulgaria more, these screams are at times blatantly, disturbingly obvious.

People often don't have enough money to cover even basic needs, unemployment is rampant, there's a high amount of apathy...people either just don't care or feel depressed and hopeless that things will ever change. There's a high degree of blatant prejudice against people of different ethnicities (much of it is geared towards the Roma/gypsies). It's accepted here to use the Roma population as a scapegoat for much of the population's problems, sometimes with good reason, as there's much theft among Roma families, yet the theft often comes out of desperate necessity. Nobody really seems to know what to do about the theft problem. The apathy shines through in the high amount of trash on the ground, with nobody volunteering to clean it up.

As long as the vast majority of people believe that change is unlikely and hope is dead, that will be the reality and more and more of the people who might become leaders for positive change will leave the country to find better options. Perhaps that's part of the reason Peace Corps is here - to infuse a healthy dose of optimism and idealism (characteristic of many Americans) into the atmosphere. These qualities can be contagious. It's important for Peace Corps Volunteers to remember to focus on lighting candles and not to waste our service on cursing the darkness, as it's so easy to do at times. Even though it may be futile and pointless, it just feels so dang good to curse the darkness sometimes ; P Perhaps everybody needs a good, healthy whine session every once in a while, it might even help to light a brighter candle, as long as we don't get lost in whining and forget that there *are* candles to light.

I personally feel like I've gotten stuck in the trap of cursing the darkness over the past two weeks--focusing on problems, feeling somewhat depressed, getting bogged down in thoughts of lack, feeling miniscule and insignificant compared to the vastness of hardship here. It's easy to feel like you're falling apart in a sea of murky grey when surrounded by murky grey buildings and blocks (reeking of Communism) that are falling apart, benches that are breaking down, parks that are unmaintained, rusty fountains, boilers, and pipes, people whose eyes are fogging over from years of hardship and feelings of hopelessness. It's amazing that, in spite of it all (perhaps *because* of it all), people continue to come together for na-gostis of dining and wining into the night, people continue to go to the Black Sea for a breath or two of fresh air, people continue to laugh at jokes and to make up new jokes, people continue to enjoy the cheap porno that you can find at just about every newspaper stand and in various public buses and stores, people continue to eat sunflower seeds and Shopska Salata, to dance the traditional Bulgarian horo, and to sing in the amazing ensembles that Bulgaria is known for in some parts of the world.

As some places are breaking down and rusting away, breathing their final breaths, new, shiny buildings are springing up out of the rubble, whispering of the possibility of a new life that many people here are latching onto desperately and eagerly. As you walk the streets of any big city in Bulgaria, you can't help but notice the firm grasp commercialism has on this tiny country with vast cultural traditions. There's a plethora of Coca Cola and Sprite signs, billboards, McDonalds, Dollar Stores, Cell Phone stores, etc. It's striking at times to see a brand new, shiny Office One building (which speaks of the virtues and possibilities of materialism), sitting straight across from abandoned houses or ruins of public buildings reminiscent of the days of the Communist era.

I have an image of Bulgaria being like a ping pong ball, tossed back and forth between various bigger powers--be it the Ottoman Empire, be it Russian Communism, be it the gods of Materialism--it tends to be someone on the outside calling the shots for the people inside. A direct result of this ping pong/dependence dynamic seems to be the tendency Bulgarians have to constantly look outside themselves for validation, for assurance that things are ok. Of course, all humans probably have that to some extent, yet in Bulgarians it seems to be much more blatant and visible than in other peoples i've interacted with. There's a lack of self assurance and a hesitation to do anything different or outside the 'norm,' even though the norm has changed radically over the past 20 years.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts i've been pondering. My wish for you, the reader, is that you have all the power and assurance you need to light brilliant candles in a world that, at times, seems very dark indeed. Any ideas you have about how to light candles in the darkness, stories about how you've done it in the past, or stories you've heard of others lighting candles, are absolutely welcome here!

As Helen Keller once said, "There are two ways of spreading the light...you can be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it."