Coming to peace with the Peace Corps...
I guess I should first get you caught up on my situation. I am in a bad news first kind of mood. I’ll keep this part short. I have not met the new mayor. This is largely due to the fact that since getting sworn in, he has taken a two-week vacation. Now, to be fair, after an election campaign, I probably would want a break also. The problem is that with the old mayor out and the new mayor on holiday, the city has ground to a halt. No new projects can be opened. The old projects, if they hit a snag, are just stopped and await the next stamp. I could get into more detail, but it would mostly sound like complaining. I don’t want to do that.
So, this leaves us with…well, me. What am I supposed to do? Or, more importantly what am I doing here? This may sound naïve, but when you finally decide to leave every person you know on the planet for two years, you expect big things. I wanted to come into Bulgaria and do everything. My first three months were spent doing two things. One, learn the language. Two, study the growing pains of this little country. I saw everything: racism, unemployment, and alcoholism to name a few. I assumed that once I got to my assignment, I was going to be a superstar. Ok, superstar sounds stupid but, I was going to be good. Really good. I was going to tackle the big issues. I was going to fix things. I guess you can figure out by the tone of this and previous journals that this has not been the case. But, as it turns out, that just might be ok.
I think I have taken the first step to coming to peace with Peace Corps. It all went down early Friday. My counterpart and I were waiting for some document to get approved. It probably was going to take all day, but we had to wait in the office, just in case. This was nothing new; I sit around that office almost everyday with nothing to do. But, for some reason, today was really irritating me. I kept saying to myself, ‘I did not join the Peace Corps to sit around an office board.’ In fact, one of the main reasons I joined was because I wanted to do more than just sit around an office. Anyways, my coworker and I started the typical banter but this time our conversation took a turn towards America. I found myself talking about holidays, family, friends, university, etc… All in my broken-but-getting-better Bulgarian. This went on for about an hour.
I have spoken about those things with tons of people since I have been here, so I do not know why this time sparked an epiphany. It was like that Chemistry experiment where you keep adding more and more of solution A to solution B. If you do it right, all you have to do is tap the side of the tube and everything goes liquid to solid instantly. This conversation was the tap on the tube of over four months of living here and now things have solidified. Now that I have a clearer idea of what is going on I can see I was way off base. (Shocker, I know.)
I, Mark Jackson, was never supposed to be, nor ever will be, the white night for my little town. Somehow, despite logic, I thought I was going to change the world. The reality is if the Peace Corps had any intention of me doing this, I would have come swooping in to Samokov with a caravan of aides, assistants, and an armored car of money. I would have set up the ‘Mark Jackson – American Extraordinaire’ headquarters in a storefront in the dead center of town. My staff would start crawling around the town, and, man, we would be helping people. It would have been good, really good. Instead, they just sent me. No parade, no hoopla, and I can promise you no armored car. Just a twenty two year old kid who is living by himself for the first time. (Sorry Samokov, there will be no black ties or champagne from me. I will leave that to the suits at the embassy in Sofia.) My job description is much simpler: it is to breathe. That conversation with my counterpart was a good day’s work. In fact, that was very ambitious of me. I am doing a good job when the grocery store clerk is surprised that ‘the American’ conducts the transaction in passable Bulgarian. I am kind of like a one man America museum/petting zoo.
As lame as simply ‘existing’ sounds, it is more important than ever. When an Italy loses a score of solders trying to keep the peace in an ‘American’ war, people get mad. When television is throwing everything from ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ to ‘Ally McBeal’ (both of which are dubbed over to Bulgarian) people here are getting a slanted view of America. It is my job to counter balance these things. And, five years down the road (when we do something else to anger the world) someone will hopefully remember me and direct their anger at the country in general, and not the people specifically. Trust me, we are all a lot better off when people are saying ‘I do not like America’ instead of ‘I do not like Americans.’
Well, I am not sure if this makes any of you feel any better, but I feel great. (Ok, not great great, but good great.) It took me a few weeks, but I found my rose colored glasses again. The same view that got me through all those finals weeks and starting work as 5:30 am, is now being applied to Bulgaria.
Hopefully, I will have some more information about the mayor situation but, no promises. Never know what will actually happen over here.
~~Mark
PS: I have confirmed my arrangements for getting home this Christmas. Family and friends of family, I cannot wait to see you during the events of the Jackson Marathon Christmas. As for everyone else, I will be in Chicago proper the night of the 26th, if you can make it let me know. Details are in the works.
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So, this leaves us with…well, me. What am I supposed to do? Or, more importantly what am I doing here? This may sound naïve, but when you finally decide to leave every person you know on the planet for two years, you expect big things. I wanted to come into Bulgaria and do everything. My first three months were spent doing two things. One, learn the language. Two, study the growing pains of this little country. I saw everything: racism, unemployment, and alcoholism to name a few. I assumed that once I got to my assignment, I was going to be a superstar. Ok, superstar sounds stupid but, I was going to be good. Really good. I was going to tackle the big issues. I was going to fix things. I guess you can figure out by the tone of this and previous journals that this has not been the case. But, as it turns out, that just might be ok.
I think I have taken the first step to coming to peace with Peace Corps. It all went down early Friday. My counterpart and I were waiting for some document to get approved. It probably was going to take all day, but we had to wait in the office, just in case. This was nothing new; I sit around that office almost everyday with nothing to do. But, for some reason, today was really irritating me. I kept saying to myself, ‘I did not join the Peace Corps to sit around an office board.’ In fact, one of the main reasons I joined was because I wanted to do more than just sit around an office. Anyways, my coworker and I started the typical banter but this time our conversation took a turn towards America. I found myself talking about holidays, family, friends, university, etc… All in my broken-but-getting-better Bulgarian. This went on for about an hour.
I have spoken about those things with tons of people since I have been here, so I do not know why this time sparked an epiphany. It was like that Chemistry experiment where you keep adding more and more of solution A to solution B. If you do it right, all you have to do is tap the side of the tube and everything goes liquid to solid instantly. This conversation was the tap on the tube of over four months of living here and now things have solidified. Now that I have a clearer idea of what is going on I can see I was way off base. (Shocker, I know.)
I, Mark Jackson, was never supposed to be, nor ever will be, the white night for my little town. Somehow, despite logic, I thought I was going to change the world. The reality is if the Peace Corps had any intention of me doing this, I would have come swooping in to Samokov with a caravan of aides, assistants, and an armored car of money. I would have set up the ‘Mark Jackson – American Extraordinaire’ headquarters in a storefront in the dead center of town. My staff would start crawling around the town, and, man, we would be helping people. It would have been good, really good. Instead, they just sent me. No parade, no hoopla, and I can promise you no armored car. Just a twenty two year old kid who is living by himself for the first time. (Sorry Samokov, there will be no black ties or champagne from me. I will leave that to the suits at the embassy in Sofia.) My job description is much simpler: it is to breathe. That conversation with my counterpart was a good day’s work. In fact, that was very ambitious of me. I am doing a good job when the grocery store clerk is surprised that ‘the American’ conducts the transaction in passable Bulgarian. I am kind of like a one man America museum/petting zoo.
As lame as simply ‘existing’ sounds, it is more important than ever. When an Italy loses a score of solders trying to keep the peace in an ‘American’ war, people get mad. When television is throwing everything from ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ to ‘Ally McBeal’ (both of which are dubbed over to Bulgarian) people here are getting a slanted view of America. It is my job to counter balance these things. And, five years down the road (when we do something else to anger the world) someone will hopefully remember me and direct their anger at the country in general, and not the people specifically. Trust me, we are all a lot better off when people are saying ‘I do not like America’ instead of ‘I do not like Americans.’
Well, I am not sure if this makes any of you feel any better, but I feel great. (Ok, not great great, but good great.) It took me a few weeks, but I found my rose colored glasses again. The same view that got me through all those finals weeks and starting work as 5:30 am, is now being applied to Bulgaria.
Hopefully, I will have some more information about the mayor situation but, no promises. Never know what will actually happen over here.
~~Mark
PS: I have confirmed my arrangements for getting home this Christmas. Family and friends of family, I cannot wait to see you during the events of the Jackson Marathon Christmas. As for everyone else, I will be in Chicago proper the night of the 26th, if you can make it let me know. Details are in the works.
[Email to a Friend:
]
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