Rewilding Rhodopes, Part II
A dramedy in three acts
If you somehow missed it, be sure to read Act I first.
Act II: But wait, there’s more (smoking)
The next morning we had to say goodbye to Emil as he had some other work to attend to. Christo and Desy and I piled back into the truck, this time with some local guy whose name and purpose I never deduced, and headed back down the track to the bison fence location.
I asked if I could fly my drone a bit when we arrived and Desy was very enthusiastic about getting some aerial shots of the location and the work, so I did that for a while. The team of Turkish contractors were already there working and had gotten a short section of the fence up. It was explained to me that the timing of their hire is very important. They like to make extra money right before the holy period of Bayram1, a three-to-five (depending who you ask) day holiday which marks the end of Ramadan. At the holiday the Muslims slaughter animals and then present gifts of the meat to friends and neighbors, regardless of whether or not said neighbors are Muslim.
According to Christo, the fence had to be finished before the holiday so that the guys didn’t lose their motivation to work. His words, not mine.
They were fairly ironic words, in my opinion. Once finished with the drone I found Christo and Desy taking smoke breaks. Without Emil there to – I don’t know, see them? Motivate them? Judge them? – they spent most of the day taking smoke breaks. We still had work to do but there was absolutely zero sense of urgency about it. Indeed it might be better to call it a “work break” when we actually did labor. We did move one trailer load of boards and posts, then went back to the area where everyone was parked and sat around for a while. Eventually the contractors made a campfire and cooked all the sausages and burgers that Desy had bought the day before. There was the usual shopska salad – a Bulgarian staple of tomato and cucumber and a dry, feta-like goat cheese -- and many loaves of bread.
After lunch we sat around for a while, doing literally f**k all. Christo was smoking and drinking and Desy was smoking. I was doing neither and bored as hell. Eventually we went back down to the clearing with the pallets of wood, and moved another load to place them where the fence should be. Then we spent another probably 45 minutes just sitting in the shade while they smoked. I was getting a headache from the heat despite trying to drink more water, and between that and not having slept well the night before, I was kind of irritable. My arms were so scraped and bruised that I had to fashion a sort of gauntlet from a paper towel and a hair band to protect them. Finally Christo said we had about an hour of work left, and after one cigarette more we would get started.
We moved another pile of boards and then had one last load to go. I was so afraid that Christo would stop for another 45-minute smoke break. I said something about almost being done and we should just push through to finish it up. Thank god we did. Towards the end we had more posts than boards left and we started putting one board instead of four to every three posts. Christo said that they would need to order another couple pallets of boards. It occurred to me that if we had just laid the fence out over a slightly smaller area, that also would have solved the problem. What do I know. I just wanted to get back to a life that didn’t involve so much cigarette smoke.
That evening back at the lodge I walked around the grounds and spotted some mountain sheep and fallow deer grazing on the hillsides. I played with the little brown puppy that lived at the lodge and climbed a cherry tree at the end of the lane to stuff myself full of freshly picked cherries.
The next day, after Desy and Christo had a morning meeting with the main Rewilding bigwigs in the Netherlands – which apparently did not go well, based on the amount of swearing and yelling that followed the meeting – we headed back to the fence area. We met the team of contractors on the pothole road coming in the opposite direction, but they’d stopped their vehicle and were all just sitting on the ground except for a couple guys who had gone up the side of the mountain for some reason. Of course this meant that it was time for a smoke break so we all got out and Christo and Desy lit up and started chitchatting in Bulgarian while I stood around being very bored and slightly uncomfortable as usual.
Eventually the other two guys came down from the side of the mountain from doing who-knows-what and everyone chatted some more. The team leader, who spoke no English, remembered my name from prior introductions and greeted me. He said something to Desy and Christo and gestured to me. Desy gave a sort of uncomfortable half-laugh and translated that he wanted me to stay. That definitely was not weird. Was that the closest I’ve ever come to being sold into slavery? As far as I could tell though, there was no talk of money changing hands. So maybe I was just being considered for a giveaway into slavery. A slavery freebee, if you will.
I learned that the wife of the aforementioned team leader had had an operation the day before for cancer and even though she was okay, he wanted to finish early today so that he could get back to Plovdiv to see her in the hospital. Wait, what?? What do you even say to that. There were a lot of things that were sort of baffling about the whole week and I suppose this wasn’t the baffling-est.
After a while all the guys piled back into their decommissioned Russian military Jeep and headed out while we headed in. We spent about an hour at the fence site; I put my drone back up to take some more images and videos of the progress so far, then we hitched up the trailer, Christo cracked open another beer, and we got on the road back to Kardzhali.
Muslims please correct me, I’m mostly going off what Desy (not a Muslim) explained to me. A little further research indicates that “bayram” is a Turkish word for any holiday, and they are actually celebrating Eid al-Fitr?
So glad you didn't end up enslaved! Hope your arms are healing well.