My first three weeks back home. I still don't have a paid job but I am sure there should be some sequence for all good happenings that are coming. All my life I've been trying to build a bridge between two homelands - Bulgaria and Portugal. Since I love the city I was born in, I want to bring my Portugal in it. Many scattered attempts in the past to contact the right people, to understand the institutional policy and impediments left me with the impression that no matter I don't want to play one-man show but to be part of what has been done so far, I should be an one-man engine. Six months ago, before I set off, I neither have the time nor the power nor the belief that I can activate things by myself.
Now I am back. From the beginning of my trip I started taking off all the roles, patterns, prejudice, models, needs. Of course I couldn't get rid from all of them, but I has never got so naked, I has never gone so far. What I have now is the belief of the energy and the human energy as the greatest creator of what the world is. Human energy is the God energy by grace. You can do everything you would imagine. Not by yourself, but from yourself. If your energy is powerful, you will create a network and other people will be part of what you are imaging and trying to build. It should not be taken naive or pathetic... even though, why not. The desinger of Venezia must have been a super-naive madman to dare to imagine a floating city and to build it. And if I have to choose between Bay Ganyo and Columbus I am choosing Columbus. Francisco Nazareth is a Portuguese representative of Instituto Camões in Bulgaria and lector in Sofia University. We know each other for a couple of years but just now we decided to act together. We established our own brand Café Lusófono to iniciate and organize activities and events aiming to popularize the Lusofonia art, culture and language. We will not depend on any institutional policy, though we will rely on instituitional help and we will be pro-active toward the certain establishments. By the contribution of the Portuguese and Brazilian embassies in Bulgaria, the Lectureship of Instituto Camões in Bulgaria and good friends around, here we go with our first initiative: a two-month movie cycle with Portuguese and Brazilizan movies in the Apartmental - a nice city venue: a bar and art space in one. We are opening the event with a poetry reading, two Portuguese short movies and a lot of guests. A small step. But the first one. “Excuse me, beautiful ladies, I came to say good evening and that I really need some nicotine.” I gave him a cigarette and my friend was ready for kicking him out of the privacy of our circle. “Thank you very much, I would like to tell you that according to the Egyptian zodiac I am Amon Ra. Yesterday I felt in love with a gorgeous Macedonian girl, so no matter how beautiful you both are, I am not available any more. I am in love, sorry, my heart is already captured. Basically, I am a building engineer.” And suddenly I recalled what my friend Yunuz once said on pluralism – You have your God, he has his God, you talk with each other, sometimes your Gods talk with each other as well. All good. I know I couldn't curb my travel spirit but I should admit nothing feels like home. Especially after a half-year lack of social life. Especially when I adore the city I live in. My Sofia tru the eyes of strangers and friends during the Mellow Music Festival.
Господ ме дари с последни щастливи дни в Тайланд. Щедростта на Стив към мен е сякаш като към собствена дъщеря. Чианг Рай-Банкок - пътувах 13 часа. Монахът пред мен се захласваше от смях на идиотски скечове по телевизията. Всички музикални клипове разиграват любовен триъгълник и патетични сцени на ревност и разбито сърце. След 20-тия ми се доповръща :) Bus station Chaing Rai - a Turkish backpacker, sharing a beer and a nice conversation about our travel experiences so far and surprisingly about the situation between Israel and Palestine. He is some kind of engineer, 32, positive disposition, fluent English. We didn't notice when it got late. At 1 AM I headed for the airport. Прелетяхме над Индия, в момента сме над Каспийско море. 13.00 тай време, 9.00 българско. Девет чáса на Киевското летище без достъп извън гейтовете. 3 малки duty free shops, 3 бара. Имах пари за малка минерална вода и имам малък сандвич, който си спретнах от обеда в самолета. Естествено, изкушена съм да платя с кредитната си карта някакви си 6 евро за най-евтината бутилка вино от Южна Африка, но не виждам наложителност да продължавам да увеличавам минуса й, за да консумирам сама в грозния пушачески ъгъл само и само, за да правя нещо. 9 часа не са толкова дълго време. Освен това вярвам, че ако не запълня зорлем времето си с безсмислена консумация, нещо по-смислено ще дойде самó при мен. 9 часа са достатъчно дълго време :) 13.00 локално време, Киев, Украйна Опитах се да подремна почти успешно, разлях си почти цялата вода и си намокрих почти цялото одеало :D 14.10 Съвсем нищо интересно не ми се случва - спя, правя тигели и чакам търпеливо. Пък времето и то кротко си тече. Липсата на гълъби и хлебарки по гарата ме обърква. 17.25 Беше някъде около 6, когато Артьом ме попита какво рисувам. Седна до мен и така се започна най-забавния разговор на българо-английски-руски. Симпатично хлапе на 25 от Казахстан, което изглежда на 20 в огромно, исполинско, славянско тяло. Малко преди моя полет бяхме закрили английския мост и ни беше по-забавно да си говорим на родните езици, от които понеже само отделни думи се разбираха, ръкомахахме като безумни. Българска леля от моя полет идваше да му подсказва от време на време какво искам да кажа. Български чичо ми се представи в трансферното автобусче и шеговито нарече малкото самолетче първо вентилатор, после като не видя въртящи се перки - прахосмукачка. Въпросната прахосмукачка е много ветровита и загърната с ръчноплетено си тайландско одеалце ям най-вкусния сандвич с най-благословената чаша вода. За първи път седя на редица със самостоятелна седалка и прозорче, през което наблюдавам най-червено искрящия залез на слънцено в облаците. И се чувствам щастлива. Връщам се у дома. 21.25 At first the word "hilltribes" provoked in me curiosity and interest. They have colourful clothes and distinctive jewlery, their own language and culture and are attractive to most of the tourists in Northern Thailand. What I didn't know, however, is that most of them are extremely poor, with no vision about their future and have a lot of uneducated children they are not able to cope with. Many of them are alchohol addicted and their villages are turned into Thai borderline slums. Their life is anything but fairytale. Let me give you some facts: Most of the hilltribe families live in remote upland areas where the nearest school is 10 km away. They dont' have the time or the means of transport to deliver their children at school. As a result, their kids work with them in the steep mountains to gather some food or stay at home alone with no meals all day long until their parents come back home in the late afternoon. Every day children in Northern Thailand are being orphaned by AIDS, disease, accident, abandoment or suicide. Many of them choose drugs and alchool as their best friends. Many children are being sold to the pirates - people who would give you money for your 7 year-old daugther to "take charge of her" and "give her an education". What really happens is that these girls are driven to some big city, put alone in a locked room with no windows for two years, serving 10 to12 customers a day. The men do NOT wear condoms because the competition is too great between the brothels and the friction wears sores on the girls. They will eventually get HIV and are beaten if they protest. After 2 years they are allowed to work alongside other sex slaves in the brothels and are watched very carefully. This is however the worst scenario. If, anyway, a hilltribe daughter is lucky enough to escape such a horrid destiny she will be married at the age of 13-14 continuing the same chain of a life in poverty, misery, illiteracy and hard labor. Stephen is an Australian guy, married to a hilltribe Lahu/Thai wife Sammy. They live and minister in Mae Suai, a village between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai and are the founders of Give Kids Hope NGO. They live in a lovely children's home, which they built by themselves solely relying on donations. Currently they live together with 22 children from hilltribe familes (including their own son, Mathew). The organisation does not take children away from the families by force. They are just aware of orpahned or abandoned children as well those in need of immediate care and usually the parents themselves approach them. They provide the children education, loving home environment in well-maintained facilities, warm home-cooked meals, everyday care to drive them to and from school, home activities, guidiance and assistance and most importantly - a vision of life that they can achieve whatever goal or dream they may have. For a European person it is hard to imagine that someone should be taught to have dreams in his life but this is what these children lack the most at their homes. Talking with Steve every evening about each child's case I start realizing how their personalities are blossoming out in this home full of love, care, play, security, faith and friends. Living already half of month with all of them proves my initial intuition - the organisation doesn't try to replace their uniqness with Western identification. On the contrary - they preserve their own hilltribe culture maybe even stronger than they would preserve it at home - sewing their traditional clothes, learning how to read and write their tribe language, celebrating their holidays. What Stephen and Sammy are daily doing is simply to give children faith - in God, in themselves, in the good, in life.
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AuthorA world is a book, which I am writing travelling and discovering that anything goes in a path full of miracles. Beast or an angel - it is up to you. My greatest life affair is just to keep on walking with respect. Archives
December 2013
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