Nessebar - A bit of hi(story) and some pictures

5.45 a.m. walked on the beach and then headed along the water to Nessebar. The streets were quiet and clean. Few people jogging and sightseeing. Nessebar is a UNESCO world heritage cite. Nessebar's history dates back to the Thracians and ancient Greeks who came here in 6th century B.C. There are old ruins of Byzantine churches (a total of 40 churches in the little town), more recent Bulgarian cobble stone streets and wood houses. Small boats gently swayed by the morning breeze. It smells of seaweed and salt. Coffee houses just opening, owners hosing down the sidewalks and getting out plastic chairs and tables.

This is the Nesseber I would like to exist in its own little undiscovered bubble. Last night it was buried under the tiny make shift and house shops that sold junk, Eastern Europeans were addressed in mother tongue and coaxed to visit overprized restaurants, the noise and bustle paired with the amount of “stuff” made it impossible to stay too long. Not so today.

On the way there I met two old women. They live here. They come out in the morning at 7a.m. and stay till 8 when it starts getting hot. They told me a bit about themselves – who they were in previous lives before retirements and the ill health they have to endure now. Both poorly dressed and sad looking. Their town belongs to others…

Last night met shopkeepers who come here in the summer to work and then go to the mountain resorts for the winter to work there. Hard to make a living, global economy crisis is acutely felt. I discovered a shop with beautiful art, bought me a little souvenir, the owner is an artist too, said most everything else is from China…

Realities come and go, overlap and live side by side, stories of old and new stories..

overkill - a written informed consent

http://cliniversity.com/wp/training-informed-consent-overview-and-process/

Sooo, as we sat and chatted casually over shopska salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, feta and onion - my favorite) with two photographers and their partners the issue of the absolute need (my need) to sign consent forms somehow popped in. After a hearty laugh (at me) the comment was: "life in America has deformed you. Or may be we are deformed and don't know it yet). Time to unlearn the learned?

Two research classes and several different projects all connected with interviewing and research have helped me learn well key ethical elements of interviewing - a written outline of the research and a signed consent form. The power of the written word.

According to the Institutional Review Board at Easter Mennonite University:"An Informed Consent Letter describes procedures for informing participants about the purpose of the research and for obtaining their consent to participate. Note: You must also obtain participants’ permission to 1) audio/videotape or photograph them and 2) use any of the recordings or images in presentations or publications."

The IRB provides a template to follow and then off course a place to sign and date. I diligently created a form both in English and Bulgarian.

Why not sign? The population we are talking of is over 80, signing papers makes people much more suspicious regarding your motives and the profit you will make out of them. A grandma once signed some papers for an ID to find out that they had made her sign her land away to someone...

What is the alternative?

Be creative and flexible -

Ask for consent in a form understandable and appropriate to the population you are interviewing. If recording the interviews is OK make sure you explain the process and what you want from them and record it - their verbal acceptance is as good as a written one.

Abuse of trust can happen with or without the paperwork - the integrity of the interviewer is not tied to the paperwork, but is rather an internal commitment to respect the subjects and give back to them what you promise. It used to be enough in their time.

Alex and a grandma going home from work in the field

In loving memory of grandma Sofia

Close to Dobursko - a village of around 600 people - ethnically pure community in the Pirin mountains. We went to continue the work we started last summer - interviewing women in the village. As usual they were sitting outside on the benches chatting - same croud of last year with two missing. My friend Alex went to investigate. Grandma Sofia had died in November and grandma Katya was now blind and sitting in front of her house. My heart sank - this one woman Sofia had pored out her soul and given us her precious story last year, I needed to see her. It was more than conducting an interview, I had made a connection of trust. Now all we had left of her was the short recording of a conversation and a few pictures. Grandma Katya could not remember who we were, repeated the same songs she sang last year and looked much aged in the little time we had not seen her.

I talked to the women and made some important conclusions regarding the interviewing process, but of that later. Here I want to share the story I recorded and translated last year.

Righteousness keeps me

Grandma Sofia – 1922-2010

photo:Alexander Bagdatov

I am 88 years old. I had a grandson. He was such a nice child – 23 years old. Was an example to all. He would go somewhere with friends, someone would start quarreling – he would try to settle them down and make peace. He did not drink or smoke. Car accident – he died. His mother had prepared clothes for him and the bride – he was getting married….

His mother lived 17 years after him and then she died too, it has been three years now. Everyone thinks their child is the best, but she was a very nice child. Was married in Eleshnitsa. And I am alive and they are dead. First the grandson, then the daughter. I keep having dreams, I dream of them. Wake up at night and cannot sleep. And since she was lost the son-in-low gave me her clothes and would say, “Here, wear this”. I know how I wear them. I am not the person to have tears, but my heart cries always.

What keeps you?

Righteousness keeps me. I don’t want anyone to fight, to be in bad relationships, I try to make better. Now we are here with my son. When they gave the land back he got here a house. He used to be a teacher in Sofia, now he lives with me so I am not alone. He works a lot, very hardworking person he is. This is what holds me together. I can’t do much, but make him food daily. My daughter-in-law is in Kostin Brod, has a mother bedridden now for 15 years. We talk every night with her. We love each other. She always asks my son: “How is your mother?” He goes to see her there once in a long while. We have a horse and a stable far from the home and someone needs to tend it, so he cannot go for long. I help with nothing anymore. Life is so hard. Barely, barely, barely I try and suffer. I come slowly and sit outside. Watch the women go by. I have not seen much good, but life has been given to me and why.

“Alive they held hands, dead they let go” – a song

travel at dawn

Tuesday this week I left USA to spend the next two months in Bulgaria for my practicum – research and interviews with Bulgarian grandmothers. I left my kids and husband back in Virginia. As the last days tick-tocked to a close I kept thinking that it was a crazy idea to go chasing after old stories and leave my girl home crying. It was a difficult good bye.

I decided to be mindful of what comes my way, to notice. First mindfulness exercise met me at the airport. Without the kids around my mind was unusually free to roam and observe the surroundings.

The security lines were tiresome and long. I tried to pick out faces in the sea of people as the colors and themes kept changing within seconds.

I noticed parents everywhere -

African, Indian, White, dressed in traditional and modern clothes, keeping a vigilant eye on small and older children - some excited, some asleep in their arms, some crying. Mothers juggling like six armed Indian goddesses sleeping babies, diaper bags, plastic toys and monster strollers that had to be collapsed and fitted into the ex-ray controls.

Happy people coming back from vacations with straw hats, sandals and tan bringing into the sterile environment the smell of salt water. Others going home first time in years, the bulging ten suitcases per family and all the presents I envision for the relatives five times removed. I should know that - this time I travel light – only one extra suitcase for family...

A rabbi with a pointy hat and long wise beard.., a businessman with polished black shoes and conventional suit, his dignified manners somewhat ruined by the sight of his socks and the shoes in the gray tray. A loud group of American students ushered by the leaders, thank God to some other plane and destination.

The sting of envy when passing by the chairs/beds of business class in the airplane. They are already seated and talking on their cellphones or checking their Macs. The others are like sardines, somewhere in the back hidden by the discrete curtains.

I sit by the window. I could enjoy the view and keep the bathroom breaks to a minimum.

Midnight EST. Most are asleep or watching movies on their little screens. I open the shutter of the window. It is still very dark with the sky the hint of gray. A small spot of red light under the plane - plane signal? Oddly enough it is growing.

The next one hour I witness a spectacular dawn as we fly East.

The red grows and cuts a wedge between the blue beyond of the horizon and the solid landscape of clouds - a hot blade cutting through light and dark. The colors of it change to orange and yellow and the blue of the sky becomes more luminous. A river of Russian gold begins spilling across the horizon growing in magnitude. Even though I am prepared for the explosion of light still it is unbearable to look at the blinding sun.The massive dark clouds have become feathery veils revealing the ocean and approaching land. No objects have obscured the the divine drama.

It was this same week that I thought of a verse from Isaiah 58 which happened to pop in my head as the sun rose:

“Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear.”

Well, when is that then, after what?! When will there be healing, when will healing be as dramatic as the beginning of a day? What is healing for me and what is healing for my people, what are the signs? Hear a prophetic voice, sounds as fresh today as it did thousands of years ago:

¹ “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.

Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the house of Jacob their sins.
² For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
³ ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
⁴ Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,

Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Cindarella's Ball

a story by Ianka Trencheva - Bansko

I had my high school graduation with so much joy and happiness. And now there are such great expectations and children get all offended if something is not as they like it.

I am not sure if your grandma Trenche knew that there will be a graduation. I studied in Veligrad to become a teacher. Back then no one talked of these things at all. From a friend of mine, who studied in a different school I borrowed a dress, black dress with a white collar. The dress fit me, then I needed shoes too, she gave me a pair of black shoes – size 38, but I wore size 39. The landlord lady with a spoon sweated over trying to make the shoe fit me and I finally put both on. Filled in the shoes and could hardly move. Barely with two people holding me I got on the city bus.

The graduation was on the lake Kleptuza. I got off the bus and there others picked me up to help me walk to the restaurant. We walked in. I went to the cleaning ladies – at the time inside people walked with white soft shoes called slippers. I took my shoes off immediately, the feet had gotten swollen, they gave me these white slippers and I danced all night.

In the morning I knew the shoes would not fit no matter how much I tried. So I took them in one hand and walked out barefoot. There was no bus, all were walking home. There were many like me – I realized – with borrowed shoes.