POSTCARD FROM BULGARIA

Finally home! What a feeling! Preparing to step off the plane, waiting 20 minutes for the right airport bus to arrive and take me from the plane to the terminal, then going through the fiasco of smuggling my laptop through customs (only with the help of a friend of a friend of a friend who works for the Intelligence Service--otherwise I'd have had to pay 70% of the purchase price in import duties) and finally feeling the holes in the road through the shock system of my family's car. Unmistakably home, unmistakably Bulgaria.

I am the only child of an ordinary family from Pleven, a city in Northern Bulgaria known for its fine wineries and its historical monuments. My mom is a professor of Human Genetics at the Medical University of Pleven, teaching part time, counseling at the hospital and also managing to lead some research despite enormous financial difficulties and antiquated equipment. My dad is a well-respected dentist with over 20 years of practice. And no, my parents are not well off, not even close. In the old Communist spirit, when everybody was (supposed to be) equal, now the majority of the population are equal in that they are barely making ends meet. And if anyone is benefiting from Bulgaria's young democracy and fledgling capitalism, it's the mafiosos whose "entrepreneurial" skills are ensuring them Mercedes sedans and the "Western" standard of living. There is a saying in Bulgarian that a fisherman's best catch comes when the water is muddy.

And the water has been muddy, quite muddy, ever since the Communist government fell in November 1989. Governments have changed several times, oscillating between the newly formed Democratic Forces and the Socialists (ex-communists). The much-talked-about restructuring of the economy from a planned to a market one has not yet taken place; the much needed privatization of industry and land reforms has been slow to progress in the face of vast squandering of land and capital. The result has been a quasi-market economy without a solid framework of law (much legislation is still in the making) and without private ownership of industry. Six months ago, the economy was said to have reached "the absolute rock bottom"--inflation was galloping at over 300 percent per month, interest rates were soaring, preceded by a bank run. All this coupled with various forms of crime (my parents' apartment was robbed the weekend before I came home) and a complete lack of confidence in the economy paints a sad picture of the country.

There is more to it, however. I was surprised when I came home by how many people in my home town "knew of me," that is, knew that I had been studying on scholarship in the U.S. for three years. I have had more than seven visits in the past three days from friends and relatives, anxious to hear about "life over there." Not only have I become a prime object of my parents' pride, but I have also (by word of mouth, seemingly) become an image of success. I left home at 14 to go to the first private high school in the country, the American College of Sofia, where I spent three years, after which I won a scholarship to represent Bulgaria at the Armand Hammer United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico. Two years later I was offered a scholarship by Harvard-Radcliffe.

What is disturbing to me when people here are talking about me or about other scholarship students from Bulgaria is that every parent (among the ones I have met) seems to know of some bright kid or some bright relative who has "succeeded" and is living abroad, either working or studying on scholarship. Instead of looking inward at the problems with which the country is faced and trying to figure out solutions, the usual Bulgarian is looking outward, more precisely westward, and hoping either that their child would be one of the "successful" ones or that, by some sort of magic, Bulgaria itself would "succeed" and become like a western nation.

What about our national pride? There is much of which Bulgarians can be proud. Be it our 1,317 years of history, our rich and complex folk music, our scenic country, our phenomenal math team or even the Bulgarian soccer team (for those who remember USA '94). And yet those potential objects of national pride seem lilliputian in the face of constantly rising prices, falling incomes, lack of opportunities and the plethora of other problems. It is a pity that only a small fraction of the bright kids who leave the country ever come back, apparently finding immigrant life a better alternative to life in our troubled Bulgaria.

Unfortunately, right now, I feel the same way. Whatever feelings of love and confidence that the situation would improve while I was away are all giving way to the reality of my suffering parents and the image of their lives, which have been a chain of problems and disappointments. I feel that if I were to devote my life and career to my country right now, my education and abilities would go to waste. I don't think I would be happy.

Despite all, I am optimistic about the future. Once a solid system of law and law enforcement is established, once the economic outlook becomes more positive and people become more confident, the economy will grow, there will be more jobs, more opportunities and a higher standard of living. Young Bulgarians will be less inclined to immigrate and the well-educated Bulgarians from abroad will be more inclined to come home. Until then, as they say here, may God be with Bulgaria!

Nickolay T. Boyadjiev '01 is a social studies concentrator in Mather House. A native of Bulgaria, Nickolay is currently home for the summer for the first time in two years.