a story

My Peace Corps training was held over 11 weeks during the summer of 2000. The 65-odd trainees* all lived with host families in a town in western Bulgaria named Dupnitsa.** The Jerman River*** flows through Dupnitsa and I would cross it every morning on my way to our training classes.

Bulgaria, to my knowledge, does not have anti-littering laws, and although it is not a "disposable society" to the extent of the United States, you will find trash strewn about any open space in Bulgaria.**** The Jerman River was always choked with trash, most of it plastic bottles.

We idealist and energetic Peace Corps trainees took note and decided to do a big river cleanup. About 20 of us, along with some host-sisters and -brothers, worked hard throughout one clear Saturday morning. When we finished, the 3-block section of the river was completely void of trash. It was lovely.

As we sat back, weary yet satisfied from our efforts, a friend said "Crap, we forgot to take a 'before' picture."

Without missing a beat, another volunteer quipped "Just wait a week or two. Then we can take the 'before' shot." And verily it came to pass.

This is now the story of the state of my house. Although replace "a week or two" with "an hour or two."

The End.

*Some odder than others, oh-ho-ho.
**Dupnitsa means "little hole" in Bulgarian. Fitting name. But I have no complaints about my training or host family experiences. Oh! I see the letter I wrote back in 2001 is still part of the Welcome Book [unattributed, pages 89-90 of this pdf. But I just noticed that they took out part of the last sentence on page 89. It was supposed to read ""If you’re a teacher, be prepared to wrestle with tough educational issues: how to teach to multilevel classes, what to do about students without textbooks, and whether to teach the 'smell like a monkey' version of the Happy Birthday song."]
***I totally had to look up the river's name. 
****Bulgaria could stand to run the Indian crying commercial.

Comments

[SteveO]

SteveO de-lurking, here--excellent post.

Wow, that Indian commercial brings me back to a time when they were still known as Indians. It's a great ad, but I can't believe we were able to tolerate such rough and grainy video. How times change.

[Jennifer]

Oh, how I feel you. Now that I have my kids 50% of the time, I clean twice. The day they leave, and sometime during the week that they're gone. The week they're here, I don't even try.

And mine are 7 and 10. So, you know. Embrace the Indian or something.

[maggie]

what a completely amazing experience!!! i hope to do the PC one day, but had my first baby at 20 :)

[Gretel]

I beg you, don't you dare spend a minute cleaning your house in preparation for my visit. You have much better things to do.

[Nicole]

Love Peace Corps stories. And constantly feel like picking up is useless as the boys destroy faster than I can work.

[Vessie]

Thanks for reminding me this day. I'm from Doupnitsa and that summer I was one of the host sisters. Two years ago I migrated in USA.