Tucked away in the Pirin mountains of southwest Bulgaria is the beautiful town of Melnik. The style of houses and businesses there is shown below. Milena, a nine-year-old girl, lives in there. Her father, Pavel, is an accountant and works at the hotel you see in this picture. Her mother works there too, cleaning the guest rooms. Milena’s grandfather lives with them and looks after Milena when her parents are working or running errands. The flag on the left is the flag of Bulgaria. The top stripe is white, the middle one green, and on the bottom is a red band.
Milena’s grandfather helped build the hotel and likes to tell his family about how he carefully selected the stones that were used for the lower floors of the building.
“All those stones had to be about the same size and the same color. I put those rocks into baskets hung on the sides of my donkey. Chocho was such a good donkey, he never sat down in the road when he was tired or hungry.”
“Why did you call him Chocho? That means ‘little man’ but he was a donkey?”
“Because he worked as hard as any man. We made many trips hauling those rocks to the building site. One day a few weeks after the hotel was finished, I woke up and I couldn’t find Chocho. The barn door had opened up during the night and Chocho had wandered off. I looked all around our yard, down by the river, and asked all our neighbors if they’d seen him. I even went to the place where the police had their office. One of the officers asked if I wanted them to make out a ‘missing donkey report.’ He thought that was a joke, but I was so fond of Chocho I thought about asking the officer to do that. I almost gave up on finding him when your mother came running up to me.”
“I found Chocho! He’s at the place where you collected the stones for the hotel.”
“Sure enough, I went there and Chocho was sniffing at a pile of rocks. I think he wanted to keep hauling them and I couldn’t get him to leave the area until I picked up some more stones for him to carry back to our home. I built that bridge over the river because Chocho was not done hauling stones.”
Above is a picture of some houses in Melnik. Milena’s family lives in the house on the right with the big tree over it. Milena likes to sit under that tree and draw pictures. Her favorite place to sit and draw or read a book is by the river just outside town. Her grandfather showed her that place and told her that Chocho liked to go there for a cool drink after he hauled a lot of rocks for the hotel and bridge her grandfather helped build.
One day Milena went to sit by the river and brought her pad of paper and drawing pencils. Even though Chocho was no longer alive, she imagined him standing by the river and drinking some of the cool water after he carried a big load of rocks to the hotel.
A few years later, when Milena was eleven, she decided to draw some more pictures of Chocho and added a story. She entered a contest at her school and her story won first prize. Milena’s teacher had her story printed in the nearby city of Blagoevgrad and they added it to their city library. Now children in Melnik can read about the donkey that helped build their famous hotel and bridge. Milena helped make Chocho famous. She also made the river where she liked to go and draw, a little too famous. No longer was it a quiet place to go and draw, but Milena didn’t mind. It was part of the price of fame!
