Valley of Thracians (6 page)

Chapter
12

“You were mumbling about Scott.”

“What?”

“
It’s
okay,
Simon. May I call you that?”

He was lying on a bed, staring up at her
as she wiped his forehead with a wet washcloth. How long had he been out?

“Oh, well, that was embarrassing,” he
said, trying to work away the mists of unconsciousness that had overwhelmed
him. He attempted to sit up on the bed but lacked the strength to make the
move.

“Don’t try to get up just yet. You need
to rest,” she said calmly, as if taking care of retired American professors who
fainted in her living room was something she did every day.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “I’ve
ruined your dinner party. And it was such a good one. Where is everyone?”

“Everyone has already gone. I think you
gave them all a good excuse, as it was getting quite late.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but she
shushed him and kept mopping his face with the damp cloth.

“What was I saying?” he asked her, a few
moments later.

“You were saying something about your
grandson.
Scott, right?”

“Yes, Scott,” he sighed. “I will find
him, I just know it. The private investigator didn’t get to the bottom of this,
but I will. Tomorrow I have a meeting that will help me understand what
happened to Scott.”

“A meeting?”

"Yes, in a small town in the north.
Vartsa, I think. No, wait. Vratsa, that's the name."

 
“You need to go to Vratsa?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in no shape to go anywhere,” she
said, patiently wiping his forehead.

“I’m fine, really,” he said, forcing
himself up on his elbows. His head was still spinning somewhat, and he almost
fell back to the mattress.

“How exactly were you planning to get to
Vratsa?”

“I asked at the hotel. I could take a
bus or the train.”

“Oh, really?
Simon, I admire your undertaking this mission to find your grandson, but I
don’t think you’re capable of traveling to Vratsa on your own. You should get
some bed rest in the hotel for a day or two.”

“No, the meeting is scheduled for
tomorrow. It took a long time to set it up,” he said, rising slowly to his feet
in an effort to prove to her—and to himself—that he was up for the journey.

 
“Let me pour you a cup of coffee to help clear
your head,” she said. He followed her into the dining room while she put on a
pot of water.

As he sipped at the hot instant coffee,
not as rich as a Starbucks latte but exactly the caffeine he needed at right
now, he realized she was sitting across the table watching him intently, a look
of deep concern on her face.

“What?”

“Simon, I have an idea,” she said, and
he struggled to remember what they had talked about in the bedroom. “I will
drive you to Vratsa.”

 
“You can’t take me to Vratsa. That’s very kind
of you, but this doesn’t concern you at all. And you have your work at the
university to attend to.”

“I can’t allow you to travel there on
your own. Don’t you worry about my university
work.
I
will arrange that.”

 
“I wouldn’t think of involving you in this,”
he said, trying to dismiss her offer politely.

“Vratsa is a very interesting town, and
there’s something quite unique there. I will gladly drive you to your meeting.
Who knows? You may need a translator with you, a guide to the sights,” she
said.

“I’m not exactly on a sightseeing tour,”
he reminded her.

Nothing he could say would change her
insistence on driving him to the town of Vratsa. Why was she making this offer?
he
wondered. Was it because she felt sorry for him, a
visiting retired professor who was beginning to show his age and display a
growing number of physical ailments? Did she take pity on him for coming to a
foreign country with little hope of finding a missing loved one? Or was it
possibly because she felt a need to compensate for her own embarrassment that
he had fainted in her home?

He couldn’t figure out why Sophia from
Sofia was being so friendly to him. He smiled at her and sipped his coffee.

Chapter
13

Hi
Grandpa,

I
made it to Bulgaria! Who would have believed it?!? I’m sitting here on the far
side of the world, somewhere in Eastern Europe. I bet you can’t find Bulgaria
on a map. I certainly couldn’t until the Peace Corps accepted me and informed
me that this is where I would be volunteering.

I
made it all right, but my bags didn’t. I had to run to catch the plane in
Munich, but I guess my suitcases didn’t run fast enough. It looks like I’ll
need to wait another day until they get delivered. Good thing that I was
carrying my laptop in my hand luggage.

One
of the trainers in the program met me at the airport, and we traveled together
by bus to Vratsa, a town in northern Bulgaria where I’ll be doing my initial
training. Everything is an adventure for me—even riding the bus. We bought
tickets at the central bus station in Sofia and were assigned our seats. We
waited quite some time for the bus to arrive, but finally it pulled in. From
the outside, it looked like something real ancient, but when we got on, I was
surprised to see that the seats actually were quite comfortable. We weren’t the
first ones to board, but when we did, we discovered that two older women were
sitting in our places. We had a huge argument with them, showed them our
tickets, we even had to get the driver involved (which was a story in itself
because no one spoke any English). Finally, the two women agreed to move to
their own seats, which were at the very back of the bus. They kept mumbling the
whole time—maybe even cursing us—and we finally sat down for the two-hour trip.
Hmm, I guess that could happen anywhere, and it’s not necessarily a Bulgarian
thing.

We
got to Vratsa, and, for some reason, the trainer insisted that I immediately
see where our course would take place. It’s in one of the local schools, quite
a run-down building. They don’t have much money for renovations, and the budget
for repairs is practically non-existent. In any case, the only memorable thing
to say about the school is that the view through the windows is of some high,
beautiful mountains in the near distance. It's absolutely gorgeous! I can’t
wait to go hiking in the countryside. I think I’ll like the mountains!

I
was shocked to learn that one of the first things I have to do here is learn
Bulgarian. Ok, they may have mentioned something about this when I was given
details of the Peace Corps program. We’re going to start intensive studies
right away. Each of us will be assigned a local host family—one that doesn’t
know any English at all. We’ll be spending a lot of time with our families, and
I guess it will be a sink-or-swim situation. Either we learn Bulgarian quickly,
or we starve.

I
guess that’s all for now.

Scott

P.S.
The Bulgarians are very interested in my Magen David. One of the people I met
commented by saying that the Jews are truly respected in Bulgaria. Not exactly
sure what that means, but I guess I’ll be finding out a lot about this country
in the coming months.

Chapter
14

“The first Peace Corps volunteers came
to Bulgaria in 1991, shortly after the change in the Bulgarian political
system. We currently have some 130 volunteers, but over the course of the
years, more than 1,100 young Americans have served with the Peace Corps in
Bulgaria. We have two groups of volunteers coming a year, although that may
change. All of our volunteers work to help Bulgarian youths learn life skills.
Even so, English-language instruction remains a key part of our programs. Our
volunteers who are focused on youth and community assistance also actively help
community members improve their English-language skills.”

The woman proudly describing the Peace
Corps program in Bulgaria and its accomplishments was Gloria Peters, the
organization’s program and training officer responsible for the Vratsa
operations. Peters, a veteran Peace Corps staffer was originally from New
Mexico
,
and she had previously served in
Honduras. Having been appointed to lead the training staff in Vratsa six months
before Simon’s arrival, she hadn’t personally known Scott.

The Peace Corps position Peters was now
filling had a five-year limit, intended to keep the program’s workplace vibrant
and fresh. Peters said that she deeply missed her family and friends back in
the United States, but her work with the residents of other countries—teaching
them the English language and American values—was so rewarding that she would have
difficulties going back to live in the States when her term ended.

“And I’ve developed a personal
connection to Bulgaria as well,” she informed Simon and Sophia, who sat across
the table from her in the small lounge. She mentioned briefly that she had a
Bulgarian boyfriend, and they were planning to get married.

Peters was a friendly woman in her
mid-thirties with a pleasant face and a long braid of prematurely gray hair.
She was very eager to describe the training program and the service the
volunteers did once they had been officially sworn into the Peace Corps.

“We call their initial period with us
pre-service training, or PST. PST lasts about eleven weeks, with much of the
time devoted to Bulgarian language and culture. We also train our personnel in
the technical skills they need to fulfill their assignments. The
TEFL volunteers—that’s
Teaching English as a Foreign
Language—receive training in teaching methodology. They are actually training
to become teachers and must know how to manage the classroom environment. We
have youth-development volunteers, who learn how to work with at-risk youth.
They get practical skills, learning how to develop short camping sessions and
after-school programs for youth. And our community-development volunteers learn
to manage projects, write grant requests, and organize grassroots community
initiatives.

“Our volunteers work within the
Bulgarian school system, many of them team-teaching with Bulgarian teachers,”
she explained. “This helps the teachers improve their English competence and
learn new language-enrichment activities, both formal and informal. And of
course, our volunteers work directly with the students themselves, teaching
English through various hands-on projects such as school renovations,
English-language summer camps, after-school language workshops, and community
or sports activities. The volunteers also help run camps for Roma and other
minority children, and help girls and boys develop leadership skills.”

“Roma?”
Simon asked, not familiar with that term.

“The Roma are an ethnic group spread all
over Europe,” Sophia volunteered.

“They’re commonly known as gypsies, but
that’s a bit misleading,” Peters continued. “Let’s just say that they’re a
minority group here in Bulgaria, one that needs our special attention.”

“Everything you’ve said is quite
impressive,” Simon admitted. “What I would like to know are details about my
grandson’s time working with the Peace Corps. Would he have selected Bulgaria
on his own?”

“Many of our candidates submit a
preference, suggesting a country or a part of the world where they would prefer
to work. But the Peace Corps doesn’t guarantee anything. We send our volunteers
where they are needed the most. Do you know the history of the Peace Corps?”

Without waiting for a reply, Peters told
Simon that, contrary to public opinion, it was not actually President John F.
Kennedy who had first proposed an American government-led corps of volunteers
serving around the world.

“It was Hubert Humphrey, then a
democratic senator from Minnesota, who in 1957 first introduced to Congress a
bill that would establish an organization of students volunteering overseas.
Even so, Humphrey didn’t fully support his own initiative, citing in his
autobiography that traditional diplomats hesitated at the thought of sending
thousands of young Americans to different locations across their world. Many
senators, including liberal ones, thought it was a silly and an unworkable
idea, Humphrey wrote.

“During the 1960 presidential campaign,
then-Senator Kennedy, speaking at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor,
challenged the students to give two years of their lives to help people in
developing countries. Later Kennedy would dub his proposed new organization as
the Peace Corps. His opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, reportedly said in
response that the Corps would serve as nothing more than a
government-sanctioned haven for draft dodgers.

“And of course, we all know of Kennedy’s
famous inaugural speech, when he stated in clear reference to his proposal,
‘Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your
country.’

“In March 1961, Kennedy signed the
executive order that formally established the United States Peace Corps, and he
appointed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to be the program’s first
director.

“Since that time…,” Peters said,
preparing to continue relating the organization’s history, but Simon
interrupted.

 
“Can you please give me details of what my
grandson did here in Bulgaria? Where he volunteered?
Whom he
helped?”

Peters seemed a bit disturbed with the
interruption. “As I told you when you first contacted me by email, Professor,
your grandson served in the Peace Corps three years ago. That was before my own
arrival in Bulgaria, so I never had the opportunity to meet Scott. What I can
see in our records is that he arrived in Bulgaria in 2006 as part of group B19.
That name is due to the fact that it was the nineteenth group of Peace Corps
volunteers to serve in Bulgaria. I’m sorry, Professor, but I can’t tell you
anything else that you don’t already know about his service in the country.”

Simon was disappointed. He had expected
someone from the current Peace Corps staff to have personally known Scott from
his time in the country. “What about the other volunteers? Maybe someone who
knew Scott from that time is still working in Bulgaria?” he asked. “Is there
someone I can see to get more information about Scott, his activities and
travels during his volunteering stint?”

“You could possibly talk to his host
family.”

The host family.
The mention of that element of the training program shook a memory in Simon’s
mind. What was it?
Host family
.
There was
something significant with this, of that he was convinced.

“Just a few days after their arrival in
Bulgaria, trainees are assigned a local host family and go to live with them,
to become fully immersed in Bulgarian culture,” Peters explained. “Trainees eat
meals with their families, interacting with them as much as possible. The
families are encouraged to reinforce the study of Bulgarian by speaking with
the trainees in that language at home. I can assure you that all our host
families are carefully selected and trained specially for this role. We inspect
their houses in advance to make sure they have a private room for the trainee
and that they are located within a short distance of where we conduct our
training sessions.”

“Yes, I would like to meet them, Scott’s
host family. That would be very helpful, indeed. Do they live here in Vratsa?”

“They live in Montana,” Peters replied,
looking up from the file on her desk.

“Montana!” The knowledge that Scott’s
host family was now living in the western United States made his whole visit to
Bulgaria seem pointless.

“Yes, Montana.
It’s a town about an hour’s drive north of Vratsa,” Peters said. “It’s good
that we keep records of these things.”

Sophia, who had kept quiet during the
entire meeting, sat forward suddenly. She touched Simon’s hand and said, “I’ll
drive you there.”

“There’s a town in Bulgaria called
Montana?” Simon asked incredulously.