Tagging Vultures (or not tagging vultures, as the case may be)

For the record, yes I did spend five days trying to capture vultures. And, yes it is true we did not capture any. With that said, here is what went on.

First off, about getting there. I left at 06.00 and arrived at around 21.00. It involved a train, two busses, and paying a guy with a car to drive me the last hour and a half.

So, I am in Madjaravo and hang out with my buddy for a couple days. In a town of 500, you don’t really have many opportunities in the entertainment arena. We pretty much just ate and sat on his balcony. [A related note: I have gotten very good at ‘killing’ hours and even days. Perhaps a new marketable skill?] When I asked what day we could be leaving to do the tagging, my buddy’s reply was ‘Sunday or Monday.’ How are we going to know? ‘We will end up running in to him a some point.’ Ok.

On Monday, we left for the other [perhaps smaller] town. We took a bus to a random town – the one with a gas station. Waited for a guy. Took guys truck another hour. And then ended up at the town. Our ‘capturing’ site was about an hour hike outside of the town.

You may be interested to know what one uses to capture vultures. Funny, the answer to that question was also the answer to my question of ‘what is that smell’ when we got into the guy’s truck. Ladies and Gentlemen, you use cow entrails to lure vultures. Rotting assorted leftovers from meat packing plants. Is that all, you may ask. No. You see, those rotting assorted leftovers are placed inside a dead horse. That’s right, horse. Times are hard at the Bulgarian Society for Birds and dead horses are expensive. So, they came up with the ingenious plan of the ‘refillable’ dead horse. Awasome. The dead horse was placed in a cage - a cage with an open door. Attached to the door was a rope which leads to a tent. In this tent lay a volunteer who started his morning by sneaking into the tent before day break. The volunteer’s field of vision was restricted to…the cage – via a peep whole the size of a sliver dollar. Our job was to watch from a far and warn the man in the tent if any birds arrived. From here, the plan goes from reality to pure theory. In theory, the man will pull the rope, which will close the door, and capture the bird. But, as it turned out, no bird went within 50 yards of the door; so, I can not verify how well that part works.

If you make this your wallpaper and then stare at it for five days, you might get the idea.

Our days were spent sitting about a half kilometer from the cage, looking through telescopes and binoculars. Around day two, I reset my trip objectives from ‘vulturing’ to ‘chilling.’ Five days of chilling. Our lunches were light – usually some tomatoes, peppers, bread and some cheese. Our dinners were down in the little village – usually some tomatoes, peppers, bread, some cheese and a couple patties of ground meat. The veggies were from the local’s gardens and the meat was probably from where we got the entrails. Yum.

We did actually see a lot of vultures – around 40 I would say. And they are amazing animals. Interesting fact: they do circle around before they land to eat.

The two tiny white spots [left] and black spots [right] are birds, I promise.

Hands down, the best part of the trip was going to sleep. We just plopped our sleeping bags in a field somewhere under what were by far the most gorgeous stars I have ever seen. The Milky Way was unreal. We spent most of the time after dusk and before sleep watching satellites and shooting stars. During the night, Orion would rise. I would usually wake up and stay up a bit to look at the stars again. They were fantastic.

On the last day, I woke up at sunrise and hiked down to the village to grab a bus and make my way to Belovo. It was Friday and I had a wedding to get to…

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Tagging Vultures (the prequel)

The great Bulgarian outdoors.

Ok. So, I am leaving at 06.00 tomorrow morning for good old Motown. No, not Detroit - Madjaravo. It is a town of around 500 people and home to the Bulgarian Society for Birds.

'Hey Mark, do you have any experience with wildlife - particularly carnivorous birds - at all?'

Casey (a buddy of mine), myself, and some other volunteers are going to head into the woods and tag vultures. 'Hey Mark, do you have any experience with wildlife - particularly carnivorous birds - at all,' you might ask. No. No, I don't. But, you don't end up doing Peace Corps in Bulgaria by knowing what you are doing all the time. (It that a good thing?)

After that, is my host brothers wedding. The 25th of October. After the last one, I am a touch nervous; but, there really is no turning back. I will keep you up-to-date.

See ya,
Jackson

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POW’s, Jazz, and Rock Climbing…

When I don’t post something on the website, it usually can mean only one of two things. Either I am board stiff and there is nothing to tell or I am really busy. Luckily for me, the recent lack of updates was due to the latter. Here we go with my most productive/fun week I have had to date in Peace Corps:

The closing of a POW camp:
Sixty years ago, on September 8th, a prisoner of war camp in Shoumen closed. The men in the camp were mostly American pilots who were shot down during WWII over Bulgaria. Robert Johnson was one of those men; although he was only 19 when he had to parachute from his falling plane. Decades later, he decided to return to the camp he was held in as research for a book he is working on about the story.

I had the honest pleasure of meeting Mr. Johnson and his family during their trip. For two days, I was with the Johnson family – part interpreter, part tour guide, part token English speaker. The events were organized by the Shoumen University and some American organizations. The 8th was filled with speeches, a trip to the actual location, and an official dinner (which was, by far the best meal I have had in a couple months).

The guest list also included the Defense Attaché for the US Embassy. She also brought her family and I filled a similar function for them. It was a real treat to be in an American family setting. To hear someone tell me to put on my seatbelt. To hear the words, ‘No more lizards in the car.’ It is hard to explain why it is a different feeling, but it defiantly was comfortably different. As much as we all need independence and time alone, that family atmosphere is like a protective cover. The warm blanket of not having to be constantly on guard, fending for yourself. They also invited me to a normal, no frills American dinner at their home in Sofia, an offer and am going to make them keep.

The Jazz concert:
This was the culmination of a few weeks of work with the US Embassy. And, it was a giant success. The Jazz Ambassadors is an annual program put on by the State Department and the Kennedy Center in D.C. They send a few groups of highly talented musicians to tour around the world presenting a truly American creation, jazz. The idea is that the universal language of music can help to transcend cultural barriers and help people around the world to better know American life and culture. A lofty goal; and one that I am certainly not qualified to assess. What I can tell you is that it was very much well received in Shoumen. The group played to a full house of 350 seats, with the overflow listening in the hall outside.

One of the jobs I was assigned was to find a local group of musicians to play for the American group. At the last minute, I found a Roma group to play. It rocked. The clarinetist was of true talent; so much so, that the Americans asked him to play with them for a few songs during the concert. Picture this: the lead vocalist asks the local man to come up from out of the audience. Someone elbows the man to rise (he does not speak English). He gets on stage and she asks him some questions. He stares blankly. Figuring out that the whole talking thing is not going to work out, the vocalist has the band start a tune. She goes off into some awesome vocal improvisation; you know the kind where they go: Beee-bop-didlee-do-bop-she-baaaa… Or, something like that. After a few seconds, she pointed to the – till now silent – clarinetist. The bass, piano, and drums keep the same beat and all eyes are on the Roma man. He starts softly, a faint echo of the gibberish that the vocalist had just spit out. And then he gets it. Horn in the mic, he parrots the vocalist. The crowed is eating it up. They did this duet for about twenty minutes (including the piano). During his solos, he would blow out a few bars of a famous Bulgarian song and the crowd would erupt. After two straight hours, the band called it quits. It was more than enough.

From there, we headed to another assignment of mine – the after concert dinner. This was where we could all relax and enjoy the evening and each other’s company. After spending some time rubbing elbows with the attending Embassy staff, I settled in with the band. Showed them the finer points of Bulgarian food, wine, beer, and most importantly rakiya. Stories were swapped, jokes were told, and then the clock stuck midnight. Having to get up early, the band (and its entourage) headed for bed. The rest of the evening was spent with the other six Peace Corps Volunteers who had traveled to Shoumen for the event. It was really nice to have the support of some of my peers. {The moral of this story is go see some live music...soon}

Rock Climbing:
On Sunday morning, I woke up early. I had taken up an offer to go rock climbing with some people from town. I was tired, but it was a crisp, early fall morning and I was ready to go. I packed some water, cheese, and a log of salami and meet up with the group. We drove to the base of some cliffs outside of town and we set up camp - after a brisk and very vertical hike to the cliff’s base. And we spend the daylight climbing up and repelling down the faces. It was great. The only downside is that I am missing significant portions of skin from my fingers, wrists, knees, and legs. But, who goes rock climbing with out wanting to get banged up a touch?

So, that is it. In a week, I did three things – any one of which would have been good enough to write home about. Like anything, sometimes you get waves of good fortune and sometimes not. I will take it when I can.

I am now going to buy some Band-Aids so I don’t get any more blood on my keyboard.

Hope this finds everyone well,

Mark

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