Three Sandwiches and a Pack of Chips

A recent encounter with a mother & child in Bulgaria reinforced our view of how little we knew of each country and its people, being transient travelers on a schedule. Indeed the sights and sounds on touristy circuits were a woeful way of peering into each country’s soul and problems. No tourist bureau would advertise their country’s social problems, or like Bosnia, their scarred war history. And it was typical how it was transportation trouble we got into that day that this chance encounter occurred.

In our sub-consciousness, weekdays had blended into weekends. And so we can only blame ourselves when the agent’s office in Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria) was closed when we tried buying sleeper train tickets on a Saturday afternoon. Scrambles abound, we opted for the only viable alternative of neck-breaking overnight bus ride.

She couldn’t speak our language, and we couldn’t speak Bulgarian too. But her hand-signs were universally unmistakable. Gesturing to her mouth in a feeding motion and pointing to the boy beside her, the mother asked for money/something to eat. Now we’ve heard stories of syndicated begging and even of women “renting” babies out to use them as “begging collateral”. So we offered her our packed dinner instead – pizza (quite tasty) leftover from lunch. The mother inspected the food, thanked us, and walked away.

But kudos to her persistence. She came repeatedly even after that (we confess that it does get annoying) so Willy took her to the nearby food kiosk and paid for her selection of three sandwiches and a pack of chips. Interestingly, she re-appeared beside us shortly and starting deliberately eating the sandwiches together with the boy, right in front of us. We wondered if that was to show us that they were bona fide hungry and appreciated the food we got them. But language did pose a big barrier as she just kept nodding and smiling when we asked and gestured numbers about the boy’s age.

Then they did something pretty heartwarming. When we boarded our bus and it stalled for 15 minutes before leaving (driver’s smoke break), they appeared beside our bus and starting waving goodbye, with the boy making a whole range of funny faces, laughing away, being swung around by his mother. For a full 15 minutes. We could only keep waving back, but not knowing where they live, where they get their next meal, or basically their life stories. Neither do we understand if there’s adequate or any social support in Bulgaria for the poor, or if these are the disadvantaged Roma people who drift around.