Why I Chose To Leave My Country

I wanted to write this article for a very long time, but I guess something used to stop me from doing it. It may be because of the recent political events in Bulgaria that incited me with fury and anger to finally sit down and write this piece.

It’s a story that can serve as a prime example of the social injustice, lack of understanding, feeling of hopelessness we all can experience. My story is not the only one, there are many others, but we don’t talk about them, do we? We talk about incredible achievements, great success abroad, and about people who used to live abroad and come back home to contribute to the success of the economy. I presume that this article may be controversial to many of you who are from Bulgaria and that I shouldn’t be talking in that way, some of you may say something spiteful, but these are the things we need to talk about it and we cannot be silent anymore.

But before we start, let me give you some background about Bulgaria:

· Current population –less than 7 million people, it used to be 8 million but since 2000 the rate of the population steady decreases

· 22% of the population live below the poverty line

· Unemployment rate — around 5%

· 49% of the people with any type of disability or health condition are at risk of being socially excluded and live in poverty due to mass institutionalisation and lack of integration* (please see the graph below):

If that was a competition, we would have won it! (Apologies for my dark sense of humour in advance!).

So, you may wonder why I mentioned poverty and disability, because I am a person with a disability (I have been diagnosed with cerebral palsy when I was 1 year old) and I have experienced first-hand many forms of institutional discrimination, and I have been subjected to social exclusion in many cases.

I am from Bulgaria, have been living there for most of my life. I’ve graduated with a Bachelor degree in Social Science and I’ve studied in English language school. I have never thought of myself as a person with a disability because I didn’t see how my condition could affect my abilities, or affect myself as a person in general. Shortly after graduation, I decided that I need to leave my home, my country for the following reasons:

Lack of opportunities:

Before graduation, I was initially thinking of persuading a master degree, but during my first years at university I quickly realised that my employment prospects are minimum, or specialising in my area is unthinkable. Application forms and my CV would not help me much, especially with limited experience in the job market. The best alternative would have been to work in the social services for a wage below the minimum for the country and never escaping poverty. I was receiving benefits that were not even able to cover my food needs for the whole month (the equivalent of £50) but my father supported me while working on two jobs at the same time.

Integration of people with disabilities in Bulgaria is in its infancy, and it has been that way for years, that is one of the things we inherit from the time Bulgaria was a communist country. You would not see anyone with a health condition, especially a visible one, working in an office, or somewhere in a public place. However, you could see many institutions where people with disability live together, and nothing more. The integration levels are zero, and many people with disabilities live with their families.

People were surprised and shocked even how open and confident I have been in public among my friends, they were not expecting someone like me to go out, go to bars, go to the beach, drinking, laughing, or just having fun like everyone else. People lack the expose of seeing someone with a health condition, they do not expect us to socialise at all.

Lack of Independence:

In my country, I felt trapped within the social norm, I felt that someone has taken every opportunity from me and my life has been decided beforehand. What I wanted is just having independence, personal and financial. Many times, I used to make the conscious choice of saying ‘no’ to my friends because I simply couldn’t afford to go out. While sending applications and not getting responses, I thought I need to find a job in some corner shop at least, but people turned away when they saw me, one time someone said to me ‘We don’t hire people like you.’. Even from the legal side, I was discriminated on medical grounds as well as the medical record states that my disability affects me more than 80% of the time, which means that if I present it to the employer, they would not hire me because the percentage is so high. I used to appeal to the decision but in vain.

I was devasted, and I was feeling hopeless, but most importantly I started to feel like a burden to my family and mostly to my father. He doesn’t deserve this, I don’t deserve this, nobody does.

Social pressure and discrimination:

Discrimination, segregation, and social exclusion often go hand in hand when you have a disability in my home country, it’s part of your daily life. In some cases, you just go with it and get used to it. It’s evident in public places and institutions where people either look down at you or completely ignore you, in many cases, people refused to speak to me, but I was persistent and continue with the interaction.

In other cases, when they talk to you, they talk to the person next to you, sometimes people I met for the first time talk to my friend or relative and ask questions about me but do not dare to look me in the eyes and ask me directly, which is frankly downright offensive on every level. I believe that this is due to the biases and prejudices, as well as the lack of understanding and knowledge concerning disability.

Now living in the UK, having two Master degrees, and being employed is everything I am grateful for and I am happy with my decision, I wouldn’t look back. We know that disability and employment is a problem on a global scale, the disability employment gap in the UK is around 30%. We have discrimination in here as well, but there is a social force and things could change with the right decision-makers and people that could facilitate such a change.

However, in Bulgaria, even if we want a change, we cannot claim it, we couldn’t dare, we just persist and turn a blind eye to it. The high levels of corruption, the socio-political pressure and the dynamic couldn’t allow it to happen. I couldn’t help but wonder when things are going to change in my country when the system would give more instead of taking away from its people, if things are to change at all? When people like me could have a voice and have the final say?

We should understand that things need to change, on institutional, legal, social levels today as we cannot afford things like discrimination and biases to decide the future of many of us. We are the decision-makers and this is the time in which we live. We have to decide for ourselves.

Few suggestions and what the Bulgarian government and the Ministry of Social Justice could do (and everyone else):

1. Stop mass institutionalisation of people with disabilities and health conditions, set certain criteria for that and be precise.
2. Change the law and the medical record (TELK) requirement regarding the levels of disability and employment capabilities.
3. Make the educational institutions more accessible to people with disabilities- provide more alternatives to learning methods and practices on a national scale.
4. Create training concerning disability and accessibility at schools and universities, making it part of the mandatory training of the teachers and staff members.
5. Increase the disability benefits- preferably to be equivalent to a national minimum wage.
6. Create more opportunities for apprenticeships and skills training opportunities.