on rethinking home and hope
via new.facebook.com
I've written here before about the work of Paul and Judy Ridgway who are working in and among orphanages in Bulgaria. Jen and I have gone over there 3 times in the last two years and every time I struggle to put words to the experience. We're not alone in this task, others have gone with us, and one of the teenagers leaves Monday to spend a month helping take shoes to the orphanages and work alongside the Ridgways. (prayers welcome for you praying folk reading this--I know he'd appreciate it).
I'm not expert on the socio-political structure of Bulgaria, and the last thing anybody needs is some well-intentioned Westerner saying "Now here's your problem..." I have learned some things when we've been over there, however, that I'd like to share here, and hope that maybe they are challenging and helpful to you as they have been to me.
Bulgaria is an Eastern European country that up until the fall of communism was functionally under Soviet control. There are civic buildings in remote mountain cities that depict the faces of Bulgarian leaders and solider on one building and mirror-images of Lenin and Kruschev on the other. Soviet statues and monuments litter the countryside, as grass begins to cover a very dark time in Bulgaria's history.
The visage of Soviet politics still lies under the creeping democracy, though it is more routinely experienced in the iron fist of the new regime--organized crime and political corruption. After being a member of the EU for only two years, Bulgaria has had it's EU funded projects frozen until it combats what the EU has labeled as "widespread politcal corruption on the national and local levels."
But there's more than just the daunting task of a country emerging from underneath an oppresive regime--there is the distinct impression that things ought to be cosmopolitan--European, as much as MTV can be European, but nonetheless trendy, affluent and successful. There is the fear that the best and brightest students will leave the country and go elsewhere to make more money.
Beneath all these tensions lies the most pervasive problem in any culture--conflicting people groups. While many Bulgarians can rightly claim a distinctly Eastern European heritage, the country is dotted with pocket communities of Roma, or, as they are more normally known, Gypsies.
When I was growing up, Gypsies were portrayed in television and film as deceitful hucksters and theieves, seeking only to scam you of precious money or goods. Maybe I shouldn't have been suprised when we returned when one (traditionally open-minded) senior adult said "Did you leave with your watch?" I was shocked, outraged--I wanted to yell at him and tell him that was not the people I had met--the people I had met had been ghettoized--the "home" they had was not really "home". They were a displaced people, in a sense.
It turns out the administration under Communism didn't know what to do with the Gypsies spread across Eastern Europe. A "Trail of Tears" forced exodus was too complex, and a further holocaust would draw too much attention. The solution was to leave them where they were--to build shanty towns buildings with no running water or electricity. If this sounds like the rural South during Reconstruction you're starting to get the right idea.
If you're thinking what I was thinking when I first heard this, you might say "Well, at least they have a place--that's not so bad." The problem is the stereotype of the Gypsy people--a meandering, nomadic community--well, there's some real truth to that.
To the Roma people the community is the home, for good or ill. Home is not permanent, nor was it ever intended to be.
This is not ideal, in many ways, as there are, in any community, a number of nefarious folks who will exploit the system and take advantage. In some places, these patterns have become routine--brothers selling sisters into prostitution. This, in and of itself is tragic, but, as is often the case even in rural America, poverty can be a terminal disease--people only act out of what they know or have been reared in.
And so now there are Gypsy villages all across Bulgaria, very few with schools or basic hygiene. There is even a large community in downtown Sofia, the burgeoning capitol so eager to enter the 21st century.
I can't pretend to know all the issues involved in working in and among the Roma, but thankfully there are many there who do. One of our translators posted the video above on Facebook. It's a short film at only 13 minutes or so, but it draws attention to the many issues in working among the Gypsy population in Bulgaria. It also shows the power of the indigenous local church to work to bring the kingdom of God and shine light in places traditionally characterized by darkness. I share it here and invite you to learn along with me--that we might pray and talk and struggle and question what it means to be the presence of Christ everywhere.
I think the tendency for any of us is to think that this kind of thing is simply out our hands--that there's nothing we can do. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Teodor (the pastor in the video) says something similar, but he brings Jesus into the equation.
I have to admit, I don't know the answer here, but I think I can more fairly ask "What do I do?" after I've opened my self up to learning more about it.
So if anybody out there is game to watch and listen, talk and struggle, here's a chance-
what can we do?
how can we help?
(now taking suggestions....)
