These Feet Can Take Us Anywhere

When we last heard from our amazing Euro-trekking duo, they were enjoying the hospitality of our Sofia couchsurfing hosts Desi and her parents in the historic city of Veliko Turnovo. From there – with considerable assistance from Desi in purchasing tickets and finding the bus stop – we made our way to Voditsa, a large village in the beautiful countryside of north-central Bulgaria (less than 100 km from Bucharest, Romania and about 50km from the mighty Danube river, which flows to the Black Sea, 150 km East).  On the map below, Voditsa is north between Silven and Ruse.

We were attracted to the town of Voditsa because of it’s country location and because of the woman who is working a great eco-project out here.  Her name is Kathy McGowan and she lives alone (save many volunteers) on a beautiful few acres which she is planting and tilling and in turn receiving so much produce from she is almost totally self sustaining.  Besides extensive garden farming, her vision extends to an outdoor greenhouse using the graywater runoff from the outdoor shower and sink units.  This is the project Jon and I have been spearheading in our time here, but more about that later.

When we first arrived in Voditsa, near the end of August, summer was in full swing. The afternoons were so hot one had to take shady refuge until 4 or 5pm.  Our arrangement at Kathy’s place is to work six hours a day, six days a week, so our daily schedule would usually be to get up early and work for the morning then take a proper sietsa in the hottest part of the afternoon then resume in the early evening.  Since we were staying in a tent for the first two weeks, we were always vying for a turn in the one hammock under a large walnut tree (the second hammock soon developed an impossible hole).

This picture is taken from the very back of the property where it rises up a small hill.  From this vantage you’re looking down the back, the tent is on the left and the large walnut tree (which has the hammock under it) is on the right.  The fields leading up to where I’m standing are still in development but the land directly behind the house and up to about halfway is very developed and producing all sorts of veggies and fruit.

Initially, when it was still warm, we took showers in the outdoor shower block for which Jonathan began installing the greywater drainage and irrigation system. Hot water was heated by the sun in two shower bags and a couple small barrels.

From Jonathan’s journal:
After the first week of September, light banks of clouds have dramatically toned down the sweltering sun. Last night and this morning it had rained to finally dampen the parched earth and clay. Also this morning, our host Kathy left to visit friends in a small village near the sea, leaving no work for us to do other than feed the animals. It is such a blessing to have free time and cooler weather to enjoy it in! Our last free day, this past Thursday was forced upon us by illness stemming from an overindulgence of 40-year old rakia (the Bulgarian equivalent to moonshine). An empty stomach was the main culprit as was the generosity of our host Ivan – the rakia was made by his father and it was incredibly good, but Christine and I paid dearly for it the next day (and the day following). So with a feeling of “normal” I am set to enjoy the cloudy weather and free time that has graced us here at St. James’ Park.
During my sick day, I happily finished Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, and have now dove eagerly into Anderson’s biography of Che Gueverra – Kathy has a great store of wonderful reading and I am immensely grateful.

The days here pass by quickly but I am more present “in it” which makes time seem to drift slowly. A great deal of this is thanks to the calm of the rural valley and a quiet village, which is only disturbed by the occasional truck or tractor hauling down the main road. Aside from this we have dog barking mostly but with the accompaniment of songbirds, raindrops, horses with their carts, goats with their shepherds, all finally fading into the evening crickets.

Here’s Jon outside our “home” in Voditsa.  Life is enormously simple here.  If the information age has touched these people at all it’s only that cars show up as frequently as horse drawn carts and bicycles.  One woman in town has the internet…but she’s kind of a maverick and viewed with skepticism.  Every day, twice a day, the flocks of the village pass in front of our door.  First all the goats are taken out, then all the cows, and then later they all return.  All of the people in the village pool their grazing efforts and the one man whose job it is collects all the goats/cows in the center of the village and takes them out for the day of grazing.  Kinda like livestock daycare.  And in this way everyone is assured that their livestock get a varied diet and the community is assured that no one area is being over grazed and everyone’s happy and balance remains intact.

There’s water piped into the house, of course, but when we can we use the free flowing, clean and delicious water available constantly at our nearest spring which is only a few steps from the door of the house.  Voditsa, this village, derives its name from Voda which means Water.

Of course the springs (there are many of them all over town) are the hub of activity and used for many many things.  This picture was taken at the same spring during the noon hour when all the grazing sheep are brought down for a refreshing drink.  It’s like rush hour!

The spring is also used for many kinds of washing – from cart and horse washing to clothes washing.

From Christine’s journal:

Today I had the pleasure of washing our clothes at the village spring.  I had seen women do it and, as it was such a hot day, I was keen to get into the cool water and use the basin there that’s specifically meant for laundry.  I went to the spring with a basket of clothes, a scrub brush, powdered soap and a lot of confidence.  I set up a system of piles, working from left to right, which seemed sensible to me and got started.  It wasn’t long before I had an audience of 4 or 5 older village women all smiling down at me with about 10 teeth between them.  The people here are really really really nice but they all think these European forigners are dumb as bricks.  And they’re not far from wrong when you see it from their point of view.  After watching me for a little while and all of us exchanging smiles they could stand it no longer.  Gently their “leader” came behind me and nudged me up by my shoulders and moved me out of the way.  They all rapidly conferred in Bulgarian while rearranging my “logical” system into a more functional one and then proceeded to elaborately demonstrate for me how to do it properly.  Aha!  It made so much more sense when they showed me how to use the stream water that hit the concrete as scrubbing pressure and how to scrub everything downhill so it went right out of the drain (editor’s note: it may seem obvious to the reader that I should have set it up that way to begin with, but I defy you to approach a spring basin and immediately understand the mechanics of washing clothes by hand!).  My washing was completed much quicker and I was very proud.  As I walked home I ruminated about how growingup and being educated in the western world is only helpful if you stay
in the western world.  Here I am, a grown and educated woman, and Idon’t know how to do something as simple as washing my clothes in a spring — something that these women have so deeply ingrained in their psyche for generations.  Because my life has been run with the aid of machines.  It was a very interesting lesson for me, really opened my eyes to how narrow my box can be sometimes, and I was so grateful for it.  It was interesting to see myself the way those women saw me, kindly looking down at me bungling and fumbling and generously, lovingly, showing me the way as they would a child.  Yet a westerner would likely come to the countryside in Bulgaria and dismiss
these women as uneducated and worthless.  It’s all perspective, eh?

On towards October now, there’s only a handful of crickets now (compared to the racket they made three weeks ago) and they’re joined by the pops and crackles of our pechka (wood stove) in the corner of our sleeping room.  We’ve upgraded from the tent to the room since we’re now the only volunteers here.

The room is great for the wood burning stove contained within and it keeps us toasty.  Unfortunately it keeps the fleas which have been persecuting us toasty too.  I don’t know where they came from (well, probably the animals) but for the past week we’ve been marauded by fleas in the bed and then in our clothes. We’re told they’ll pass when the weather turns really cold in a week (but we’ll be gone by then!).  We’re scratching in the meantime.  Fortunately, Kathy has a wood burning hot shower and those have been nice.

The food here has been wonderful with much of the produce coming direct from the garden: aubergines (eggplant), courgettes, cucumber, peppers, peaches, apples, plums, grapes, pumpkins (generic term for squash), leeks, many more, and of course the especially delicious tomatoes. A regular tomato off the vine here looks smallish but their flavor is huge and compares to an heirloom tomato in the States. Every single tomato is bursting with brilliant taste delight and it’s quite easy to make unbelievably good sauces and ratatouille.

 

While Jon has been working on the greenhouse/graywater system, Kathy and I have been pickling, jamming, chutney-ing, bottling and every other conceivable method of preserving and using veggies and fruit while they’re in abundance.  Some interesting things have come from our mad rush to do something with everything: green tomato & peach chutney, pickled aubergine stuffed with walnuts, tons of variations of peppers and garlic, tomato sauces, pear and lemon spread (this one was suprisingly delicious), and of course the standard jellies and jams.  It’s been so much fun and very satisfying to aim to use absolutely everything in her extensive garden.  I think we’ve gotten quite close to that goal…though there are still green tomatoes on the vine as I type.

Some pictures of other projects we’ve been working on:

This is a montage of the outdoor shower unit I completed.  To begin with it was a brick and cob structure with a concrete floor.  I used a waterproof material called Terraflex to seal the walls and create a small hump/water barrier on outside wall closest to the door.  Then I tiled the floor, grouted the tiling and chose a paint color.  After painting and finish grouting it was complete!

Jon and I built the box casings for the plumbing of the outdoor sinks.  The wall which the faucets are coming from is a shared wall of the shower unit pictured above.  The aim is to tile the concrete surface of the sinks and up the boxes, creating a unified tiled bathroom-like surface.

Unfortunately problems with Bulgarian tile cutters (their lack of effectiveness) has caused this project to be sidelined until a proper tile cutter can be purchased.

Probably the biggest project of all is the on Jon has been working on, and me too when I can get over to help him.  The outdoor bathroom/shower unit is a L-shaped building, and Kathy has the idea to build a greenhouse in the rear space that the L creates, and to use the graywater runoff from the showers and sinks to irrigate the raised beds.  A fabulous and innovative idea, but no small feat.

So you can see the transformation take place from a field of weeds to the skeleton of a rustic greenhouse! We’ve all gotten into the fun.  Here I am attempting to help by sawing wood (not very well, this is not a talent of mine) and our beloved Bulgarian neighbor, Jorgay, giving Jon the finer points of building via sign language, gesturing, and loud emphatic repetition of key Bulgarian words.

      

The work is pleasant and educational and the experience unparalleled.  In our free time we do things like take Bulgarian lessons at the library (a program which Kathy set up for the increasing number of English speaking ex-pats moving here):

And we go hiking or walking along the hills and ridges as much as we can.

We’re extremely happy here in Bulgaria and are taking in the unspoiled countryside, highly productive farmland and unpretentious friendly people as much as we can.  The village of Voditsa has no internet access although they say it’s coming. To write our blogs posts and stay in touch with the world means we spend at least a half day taking the inter-village bus into Popovo, the nearest town with a population of 36,000 to the internet cafe and back. The internet cafe is reasonably priced but the round trip bus is about 2.2 euros each.  So this may be our last post for a while…but the next post should be well worth the wait as it will detail our trip to Istanbul and passage to India!

Yes, our visas came through to India which was a real cause for celebration!  We’d sent our passports via DHL from our tiny tiny village to the Washington DC India Visa office and then had Washington send them to Jon’s parents in Virginia who (thank you thank you thank you) them sent back to us in our tiny tiny village in Bulgaria.  The whole thing was made tricky by timing and it was quite nervewrecking to be without a passport for a few weeks.  BUT it all went off without a hitch and now we have our passports back in hand and within them our visas to India.  We’ll be leaving for Istanbul in about a week and a half where we will spend a few days before flying to Chennai, India, on October 16.  We’re going to be in India for an unbelievable five months and spending much of that time working on a reforestation project in the south.

So until next time, thank you for all of your good wishes and participation in this blog. Your messages keep us connected to friends and family who sometimes feel so very far away.  We’re having the time of our lives, thanks for joining along!

SO MUCH LOVE TO YOU!

The required champagne toast picture taken at my (Christine’s) birthday dinner. Yay – I’m 33!

Tags: Sept. 2008, Tag Index

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