By Jesse Serwer
It is at once a picturesque nation with 13 centuries of history and a growing tourism industry, and a place with stifling poverty, rampant commercial piracy and minorities most notably the Romas, or gypsies that are routinely discriminated against.
Enter Shirley Gable, a Rockville Centre resident and professor at Fordham University-s graduate school for social work. Selected as a Fulbright Scholar, Gable will have the unique opportunity to help shape the social policy of the country her mother left more than a half-century ago when she begins work in Bulgaria-s capital, Sofia, next fall.
One of seven American Fulbright Scholarship recipients in Bulgaria this year, Gabel will mingle with the country-s intellectual elite at Sofia University, or Saint Kliment Ohridski, and the New Bulgarian University, where she will teach courses in comparative social welfare policy and child and family policy.
I thought it would be great to study internationally in central and eastern Europe, because you are literally watching policies develop, said Gabel, a social policy professor who focuses her studies and work on policy dealing with children, families and the elderly in industrialized nations.
Every country has its own standards of responsibility for the government, employers, Gabel said. I thought it would be interesting to look at how former Soviet Union countries, which had very strong family policies, are transitioning to a market economy, and what kinds of policies evolve from that. All the decisions we made [in the U.S.] are decisions those countries are re-thinking now as they decide what kind of country they are going to build.
Since it is her mother-s homeland, and since she has never been there herself, Bulgaria was a natural choice for Gabel, a native of Brooklyn. Bulgarian which, like Russian, uses a Cyrillic alphabet was the secret language used by her mother and her father, a Greek national from near the Bulgarian border. Both were among the few Jews in the region who escaped the Holocaust, and they met shortly after the end of World War II.
My father was looking for relatives on the Bulgarian side, and his cousin was my mom-s neighbor, Gabel explained.
While she has only a limited grasp of the language, Gabel has been reading up, with the help of some friends who bought her books on the country.
Gabel-s daughter, Estee, a freshman at South Side High School, will accompany her on the trip, and take classes at one of several English-language schools in Sofia. I wouldn-t have done it if she wasn-t interested, the elder Gabel said of her daughter. I asked her how she would feel about it and she thought it was very exciting. She has friends that live in England who she-ll be able to visit with and, for her age, she is very aware of the world beyond Rockville Centre.
Estee said she hopes to coordinate a project with her school so her schoolmates can also learn from her Bulgarian experience. Hopefully I can do something to help the Romas, she suggests. I don-t know a lot about what-s in Bulgaria. I-ll find out if the food is good there or if my mom is just a good cook and, oh yeah, I would definitely like to ski.
In addition to the growing popularity of its Black Sea resorts, Bulgaria, Shirley Gabel explains, is the secret ski area for many Europeans looking to avoid the crowds in the Alps.
After the fall of communism, they had a very rough time for a while with their economy and political corruption, but in the last five years the economy has been growing and the future looks very promising, Gabel says. Bulgaria is not a part of the [European Union], so for an American it is very affordable at this point.
Another of Gabel-s goals is to serve as a sort of goodwill ambassador for America. I hope to get a better understanding of how Americans are perceived at this time in central and eastern Europe, she says. Post 9/11, it-s even more important that Americans be out there and participating in other societies and not become isolationists. Hopefully I will be able to share a little of what I know, and help them develop their programs. I hope [Bulgarians] will understand more about Americans from talking with [my daughter and I].
Comments about this story? JSerwer@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 221.
