Cultural Education

In order to fulfill our required training, we had to complete three cultural education credits for our placing agency. They did give us some suggestions on how to receive these credits, but we chose our own activities as you can read below:

MacGahan Bulgarian-American Festival, New Lexington, OH, June 14, 2009 – 2 credits

The MacGahan Festival is an annual event to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Januarius MacGahan who was an American born in New Lexington, OH and who later worked as a journalist in Europe. His reports on the Turkish war atrocities in Bulgaria in 1876 changed the course of history and are credited with winning the country of Bulgaria its independence. You can learn more about MacGahan here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Januarius_MacGahan.

The MacGahan Festival draws an annual crowd of native Bulgarians who now live in the US as well as Americans of Bulgarian descent and New Lexington locals. Last year a delegation from Bulgaria was in attendance, including the Vice- President of Bulgaria, Angel Marin, and the Ambassador to the US, Lachezar Petkov. The VP’s hometown is Batak. MacGahan reported as follows from Batak, “We looked into the church which had been blackened by the burning of the woodwork, but not destroyed, nor even much injured. It was a low building with a low roof, supported by heavy irregular arches, that as we looked in seemed scarcely high enough for a tall man to stand under. What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance. An immense number of bodies had been partially burnt there and the charred and blackened remains seemed to fill it half way up to the low dark arches and make them lower and darker still, were lying in a state of putrefaction too frightful to look upon. I had never imagined anything so horrible.” This church remains in Batak today as a monument and remembrance that many Bulgarians visit.

The day began with a moving bilingual (Bulgarian/English) service at the grave of Januarius MacGahan. At the end of the service, VP Marin spread a handful of soil from Batak over the grave. After the ceremony, the group of about 100 visited the MacGahan statue near the New Lexington Court House for a photo op. Then we walked to the library where we participated in a live Skype chat with Bulgarian teenagers who have been researching MacGahan and who attend an English Language school in Sofia. After the chat, we had a meal which included some Bulgarian/Balkan specialties. The meal was followed by a number of speeches in Bulgarian and English and then by a slideshow about Bulgaria.

Craig and I even had an opportunity to speak personally with the VP who told us that his daughter is an adoptive parent and with Ambassador Lachezar Petkov who said that adoption procedures in Bulgaria had just been revised and should be more efficient and streamlined now. A few days later we found out from our agency that what he was referring to was the new family code the government had passed the day before the MacGahan Festival. We also met several native Bulgarians from Cincinnati who are part of an active group of about 100 in our area. We exchanged contact information with them and have since joined their online email group and taken part in some of their events.

All in all, this was a highly informative, interesting and touching day for us.

A Concise History of Bulgaria (Second Edition) by R.J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 269 pages (1 credit): I wouldn’t exactly call this book concise, but it is full of great historical information on the region that is now Bulgaria. The material is presented in an easily accessible way even for those who have no background in European history.

Kozijat Rog - Goat Horn (1 credit): This movie is set in the time of Ottoman rule over Bulgaria. A goat herder’s wife is raped and killed by Turkish men in front of her young daughter and husband. Witnessing this brutality becomes the bitterly defining moment for the path of both of their lives on which the movie centers. There are two versions of this movie, one from 1972 and one from 1994. The earlier movie is more cinematically stunning and artistically beautiful; it was submitted for consideration for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award in 1973. However, the 1994 version has English subtitles. Neither movie, in my opinion, is appropriate for children. Both movies are accessible for free online:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6158942232462202330# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2417750913312392171#.