Alaskan Bulgarian

Love and Gossip in the Peace Corps

Allow me one day of cynicism. If you like, you can once again blame my tutor's coffee.

Last week, the B-13s (We brave volunteers who came last year and have decided to stay for a year or more) were all in Pazarjik talking about the year behind us and advising the new teachers, the B-15s, Polonius-style. Basically, there was a lot of chat about being true to oneself and not lending or borrowing money from students. Both very useful tips.

The prediction had been that the B-13s would charge into MST ("Mid-Service Training." Another successful collection of letters brought to you by Peace Corps. Honestly, you should have seen the evaluation forms we had to fill out. "Have the PC PMs provided enough aid to PCVs regarding ETs, ISTs, and TEFLs? Have the PCMO and PCSO provided clear explanations of the EAP and Medevac procedures?") full of adrenaline and estrogen, sweep the B-15s off their feet, and cure all of our dating ills.

You see, most of us have what you would call a natural fear of dating in our towns. I've given quite a few examples of gossip's speed in Bulgaria (Among Bulgarians, mostly. But read on and you'll find out Americans move it even faster). When an American gets together with a Bulgarian, it had better mean something because it's all everyone in that town will be talking about for the course of the relationship. The whole process is made easier in towns with universities, where people from around Bulgaria come and go, but those are far and few between. So the B-13s, well, most of us, have gotten a little, um, stir crazy in the past year and the prospect of 40 new Americans being injected into Bulgaria gave everybody a little hope.

However, the B-15s actually wanted to learn something over the course of the week and we spent most of it discussing our jobs, teaching, and the European Football Championship. They were also more than willing to tell stories about their first two months in Bulgaria. The B-13s, a group of people that has developed an unhealthy attention to the smallest bits of gossip, adapted quickly and left off cannibalizing our own group's skeletons in the closet when we learned that, while they may not be interested in love (yet), the B-15s had done quite a few things that were worth talking about. None of which, of course, can be mentioned here.

If all this means nothing to you, I understand completely. It wouldn't have meant anything to me a year ago. But a year in PC-Bulgaria changes a person. He becomes institutionalized. Learns the rules of the game he's in. And if he's not a complete gossip-hound when he comes in, he'll learn what little bits need to be talked about in a hurry. Allies need to be made. You need to learn which confidantes will drop news like an 8 AM class and which couldn't care less about what you have to say and will soak up your torrid little stories like a sponge that'll never get squeezed (That's two--two!--lame similes for the price of one sentence, ladies and gentleman!). Gossip and "love," then, might as well be the same among volunteers and Bulgarians living in Bulgaria.

An honest pursuit of the one in quotes will always need to go through the gauntlet of the other. If it survives and the quotes come off, well, that's something to be proud of, and it's happened a couple of times in the past year, happily enough. Not to me, unfortunately, but I hear it's certainly possible. For myself, I guess I'll see what happens in the next few months, keep my eyes and ears open, keep my mouth shut when it should be, and be the unfathomably nice guy the gossip reports tell me everybody sees me as.

Basically, I'm waiting for emotion to come into play at some point. I'm not one to go around spraying deodorant on false pretenses, partly because I'm a bad liar in general, but mostly because when it comes to the important things in life, I just find it impossible to fake something I don't have. But if it comes, it'll come, if it doesn't, it's just another year before I go back to America and life will go on.

If all this seems like the bitter ramblings of a guy who hasn't had a date in over a year, it's because it is! And if all this seems like angst on the level of a FOX high school soap opera, it's because it really is! Peace Corps has given us the chance, when we're not doing good, to live out all of our Dawson's Creek, 90210, and Saved by the Bell fantasies. And in our twenties, too, when the actors that made those shows come alive were at their best and playing freshmen in high school. Nobody's taken to pep pills like Jessie Spano, or seen their fiancee get gunned down in a car the day before the wedding, but that doesn't mean those things couldn't happen. Summer's arrived, everybody will have free time, and in a world where a radio DJ plays a dance re-mix of Eamon's "F___ It, I Don't Want You Back" and follows it up with Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" anything's possible.

--Reading over all this stuff a second time leads me to believe that some people could read all this as being pretty negative stuff and get the idea that the Peace Corps is some kind of cesspool of depravity and that PC-Bulgaria is Sodom revisited. It really isn't, as a year of other posts has attested to. Sometimes, a guy has to vent about the little things. Hence, posts like today's. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Rob at June 28, 2004 06:56 PM