Tag: Bulgaria

Corona Diary #6

Whistleblower

Written On 18-06-2020, as part of my self-isolation diary.

Corona can be seen as the most successful whistleblower in recent history. A physical disease which denudes social diseases. In the wake of its rampage, it pointed out the staggering worldwide inequality and lack of access to medical care. 

In the US, corona had already addressed its weak social safety, for it’s mostly the financially vulnerable who have died there. Corona has also pointed out how spoiled we (me too) have become, indulging ourselves into limitless air travel, polluting the world. But in this particular case, corona has touched upon one of the most counternatural, outdated, hypocrite and hopefully one day condemned industries: meat processing. 

It is interesting to observe how corona sweeps across the European Union. Doing so, it cuts open all the incorporated flaws which haven’t been addressed but should have. Systematically, it removes the plaster from the normally hidden wounds of our union: the more dystopian aspects we don’t like to see, for they might destabilize the collective conscience and our way of depicting our beloved EU. 

Corona’s most recent discovery is the hidden world of massive slaughterhouses in Germany and The Netherlands. One outbreak after another has revealed that the majority of employees have been infected by the coronavirus. Its employees are predominantly recruited in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

Dodgy job agencies aim to recruit people so poor that they don’t have a choice, other than to do the dirty jobs we don’t want to do in the west. They’re then housed in derelict dorms and are driven in buses towards the meat factory each morning. And after a tiresome day of tearing away pork intestines, these modern slaves are driven back to their barracks, which on themselves look like a pigsty.

On the news yesterday, was an enormous plant, located in Rheda, Germany. It has some 7000(!) employees, who have the honorable task to kill and process about 20.000 pigs on a good day. On its roof stands an large billboard depicting a cheerful cow and pig. I think pigs are not smiling once they know the horrors inside the building. 

The gritty abattoir, which is owned by a billionaire, even has its own football club and a stadium! The irony would be even comical, but this matter is serious. As said, most of the employees are underpaid, overworked labour-migrants from the less wealthy regions of the EU, who now also have to suffer from corona. And I thought it was the European Union’s fundamental endeavour to increase equality. Not to exploit inequality, in favour of the already wealthy! European governments are struggling to excuse themselves for slavery in the past, while modern slavery is still alive and kicking.

So irony wants that here you have a factory full of pigs who weren’t supposed to be bred and killed in the first place, processed by workers who weren’t supposed to work there, to ‘produce’ meat of which 20% will be thrown away as a consequence of revenue calculations. (Throwing away packages of meat is ultimately cheaper than giving it discount tags.) 

Perhaps they’d disagree at first, but I guess that ultimately, corona will be a true blessing for the modern slaves working there, and for the pigs, who are definitely not smiling like the banner wants to make us believe.

In the places now affected by outbreaks, it is often not the outbreak which is the most alarming. It’s not the corona infections itself that engage me into the actual news coverages.

No, it’s becoming aware of the ongoing activities which makes it poignant: the incomprehensible facts that leak to the outside world, as an unforeseen consequence of the corona discovery. For instance, that apparently, there is still a large fur industry in the Netherlands. That also, 5,6 Million pigs are slaughtered each year in our small country. 15,500 a day. We must be damn hungry. 

Photo credit: KOBU Agency Portugal

© Stefan Hoekstra/The Social Writer, 2020. Unauthorized use/and or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full name and clear credit is given to Stefan Hoekstra and The Social Writer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 

Insights in Sofia

We had walked half the city to ultimately arrive at one of Sofia’s most prominent buildings; a grand orthodox church. Upon witnessing the mighty structure, my respiration stifled slightly. Its tremendous golden roof caught our attention at once. The surroundings consisted of a newly asphalted large parking lot, so we needed to criss cross through an abundance of cars before finally reaching the entrance.

Shortly after entering, we sat down on a wooden bench and sighed. For some time, we witnessed the ongoing rituals until I got drawn into some sort of reverie. Of a sudden and without being fully aware of it, the following phrase escaped my mouth;

“I’m feeling nostalgia for times in which I never lived.”

The comment awoke a curious look in my girlfriend’s eyes. She instantly nodded in an understanding way, confirming the recognizability of my remark. Somehow or another, it made sense. I desperately wanted to be, even for just a day, living in the times that this church reflects.

Untraceably, this thought surfaced somewhere in my consciousness, coming from the unknown depths of my psyche. Precisely at the moment when the main priest went around the hall to spread around incense smoke, I felt an abundance of unexplainable melancholy, hence the need to inform my girlfriend. I suspect it was the scent which triggered it. 

Either way, it was just a matter of time before such melancholy would strike me, as lately I find myself drawn more and more towards ancient places. In particular old churches and cathedrals, regardless of the religious stream they might embody. Whenever the door is ajar, I aim to slip inside and enjoy its tranquility and order. For me as being not officially religious, such places are beginning to fulfill a more transcending role against modern difficulties. It’s most certain that the value of old churches is not restricted to merely tourists or the religious. 

Imposing environments like these feel growingly like a safe haven, a sanctuary as it were. A place with a low pace. The origin of this feeling seemed disguised and hidden deeply in an ancestral past. It presented itself in a fierce longing for the centuries far before I was introduced to this world. As if I were accidentally born in the wrong times. 

From the wooden bench, we observe the authentic, magnificent columns and impressively decorated ceilings. We witness the simplicity of a priest taking his time to light candles for the remembered and the forgotten, while the low soothing voices of a male chorus echo gently throughout the hall. Visitors, on the other hand, remain silent. Distracting gadgets are seen only sporadically. Every visitor, tourist or local, appears to be well aware of the unspoken commandment in such places and respect them. 

Altogether, the patient and attentive atmosphere infatuated a strong desire for an unknown but desirable past. One beyond the recordings of my memories. It all reminds me of a life I would probably never live. Anyway, it would be sheer impossible during my brief but already stressful and competitive existence. Surely it’s something I (and maybe others) lack of nowadays. 

The serene ambience of these places exposes painfully precise what we have been neglecting in modern societies. Retreats in this form have become a rarity, but are ironically needed more than ever. Over the years, spirituality, calmness and moralism became increasingly replaced by overconsumption and demoralisation. 

Simultaneously, the warmth and inclusiveness that might have existed in the centuries prior to ours, had vanished over the years. Caught up in the obsession of economic development, we have left behind a valuable past and have forgotten some of its advantages along the way. We have simply thrown away the baby with the bathwater. Luckily, some old churches and cathedrals have withstood the test of time, to show us it wasn’t always like this. In the weakly lit halls of ancient churches, the neverending fixation on work and consumption is outweighed by human kindness and patience.

In this sense, priests and clerics fulfil an essential role. They demonstrate to us the necessary attitude when it comes to downshifting from a fast and chaotic towards calm and orderly mindset. For instance, taking the time to light two-hundred candles in remembrance of the dead, is a lengthy ritual. Nonetheless it is likely to be one out of few daily tasks to be fulfilled by this holy man. The devotion given to merely one task simply doesn’t merge with the contemporary lifestyle anymore. In contrast to these disciplined priests, our daily tasks have multiplied endlessly, but the devotion (or possibility) to finish them has weakened.

Today, numerous social contacts are expected to be maintained, next to functioning flexibly and eagerly at work. Essential life aspects have been transferred to the online world. But this is a world without clear limits and borders. And most of all, an unstoppable world that constrains time and pushes it far beyond the limits of our mental and physical abilities. Eventually, this unframed way of living is often halted by what we call a burn out. Likewise, spirituality and devotion have lessened, as they became subject to the hastiness of our time consuming society. 

It might, from this perspective, be pleasant to daydream of the times we have missed out on. Even if the picture is not quite accurate in our fantasies. Old buildings like a cathedral appeared the ideal practising grounds to do so. To deprive yourself from technological gadgets and step into a hall of calmness, dreamily depicting the lives of people before highly developed technology. When spirituality was more apparent. Times when sorrows were diminished by prayers and philosophy instead of prescribing pills. When the world’s population was far under a billion, while borders and bureaucracy were absent for the most part. Things were yet a little more undetermined. 

Amidst the chaotic and unorderly world of today, old and dusty churches can make you feel serene, and offer solace. Yet, castles or other ancient places might provoke similar mental refreshment. I hope that these sanctuaries of existential guidance will withhold far into our doubtful future. For everyone. Not as a beacon of religious divide, but as a modest hideaway from our evermore accelerating society.

© Stefan Hoekstra/The Social Writer, 2019. Unauthorized use/and or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full name and clear credit is given to Stefan Hoekstra and The Social Writer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.