I’ve been enjoying a quiet week mostly at home. It’s nice to not have to do anything or go anywhere and the weather has been fairly sunny although slightly cold. I’ve spent most of the days getting caught up with my reading and doing some writing.
Yesterday I baked and made macaroni salad for our New Year’s festivities later tonight. People are getting the party started early and have been setting off firecrackers and fireworks since this morning. It doesn’t seem to make much sense since the sun is out, but the party atmosphere is already starting. I can still hear the turkeys outside making noise – but their time is extremely, extremely limited. Later this evening they’ll be another impressive civilian display of fireworks. I was talking to a friend yesterday and telling him that both “children and inner children alike enjoy seeing things get blown up.” I’m 26 and I still do, and the amount and size of the fireworks here is incredible. I don’t think most of them would be legal in the US but that’s what makes celebrating New Years abroad so much fun!
Service is winding down very quickly. In less than two months, we’ll have our final conference. I’m one of the conference's planners and we are discussing potential locations now. Then we’ll put the schedule together and pull teeth to get people to present. It’s been great to get conference planning / schedule planning / and session development experience. But it’s often very stressful to make sure everything lines up logistically and it’s difficult to get everyone to pull their weight. Luckily, we’ve got some new American staff at Peace Corps that should make the organizing a lot easier. The Albanian training manager is an absolute godsend. At the conference, I’ll be able to secure my COS (close of service) date… which I’m hoping is sometime in early May. This means that once the New Year starts, I’ll have about five months left. And picking up on the typical New Years vibe, there’s a lot to reflect on in the past year and for the future.
More so than any other time in my life, I can say that I have come in contact with some of the best people. Just the best people. Intelligent people, motivated people, caring people, considerate people. And the other side of the coin: here, during my time in Albania, I've come in contact with some of the worst people. Self-involved, competitive, insensitive and downright malicious people. Not to mention the intricacies of having to work with some of these people in a somewhat professional manner. My time with other volunteers has been either the most refreshing and invigorating battery charger, or it's been the most absolutely draining teeth-gnashing. I've learned about myself as an introvert, which is really what I am, even though I can't tell that to anyone without people laughing. I've learned to embrace the quiet and the time with myself, but I've also learned how to deal with people, to interact and to put myself out there a lot better than I ever did during the course of my undergrad years.
The best we can hope for is that we continue to learn about ourselves and that we're able to continue moving in some kind of forward motion, no matter what speed. I’ve learned a lot about myself this past year, both good and bad. There is a lot to be commended for but a lot to improve on. With the imposing end of service, PCVs are faced with a lot of difficult uncertainty. We wonder what the transition to the US will be like; what will happen to our relationships and friendships when they’re transported to a different continent; and what the next step in our lives will be. I don’t know what will happen in 2011 but I’m not worried. Anything can happen and that’s part of what makes life so exciting.
For those of us towards the end of our service, a quote from Buddha to keep you focused: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Enjoy the time you have left here with the people that are valuable to you. This is a time that won't come again and it should be enjoyed and appreciated as such.
Happy New Year, everybody.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Memory
I’ve been reading more and more about science lately. While in no way mathematically or scientifically gifted, it’s become an area of greater interest. Science is a way to see the world, and to a larger extent all the things that we take for granted in it, with a new set of eyes. It also fosters new appreciations for the infinite complexities of the universe and everything in it. My two favorite topics are memory and the brain.
“Have you ever been driving, heard a song on the radio, then immediately been taken to a certain place, a specific time in your life, or a particular person? Music is second only to smell for its ability to stimulate our memory in a very powerful way. Music therapists who work with older adults with dementia have countless stories of how music stimulates their clients to reminisce about their life.” – Psychology Today.
I think we all could come up with several examples to illustrate the memory/music phenomenon. When I read the above passage, I could immediately think of several instances where music jarred a memory. So much of music is tied to very specific experiences: the time when I was in a rented car driving through Germany with my family and an impossible 1970s Spanish-language song made me think of you; or that one particular evening where we listened to The Fugees; or walking around a snow-covered Gdansk listening to the Pan’s Labyrinth soundtrack. While time travel has yet to be proven scientifically possible, shuffle mode on any MP3 player opens a window into specific memories of the past, sometimes so vivid it’s like you’re reliving them. How does this happen? Is it because the linkage of music to a specific memory somehow separates the memory and makes it more concrete?
Of course, music isn’t the only memory prompt. What can be said of scent? You’re walking down a street and come in contact with a smell that’s so familiar but still takes you a second to place it. The smell of food, the smell of perfume that a friend wears… your brain has formed these connections and associations. Just a few days ago, I was hand washing some sweaters when the smell of the soap became familiar, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The body wash I grabbed to use as soap smelled exactly like the shampoo we use at home for our dogs. The smell combined with the fuzzy, wool sweater I was washing had my mind playing serious tricks on me.
As we continue to learn more about the connections and functions inside of the brain , someday we may be able to see “all of the connections among more than 100 billion neurons and unravel the millions of miles of wires in the brain.” All the advances in technology and computers, but the most sophisticated one is housed in the human body. How about that?
“Have you ever been driving, heard a song on the radio, then immediately been taken to a certain place, a specific time in your life, or a particular person? Music is second only to smell for its ability to stimulate our memory in a very powerful way. Music therapists who work with older adults with dementia have countless stories of how music stimulates their clients to reminisce about their life.” – Psychology Today.
I think we all could come up with several examples to illustrate the memory/music phenomenon. When I read the above passage, I could immediately think of several instances where music jarred a memory. So much of music is tied to very specific experiences: the time when I was in a rented car driving through Germany with my family and an impossible 1970s Spanish-language song made me think of you; or that one particular evening where we listened to The Fugees; or walking around a snow-covered Gdansk listening to the Pan’s Labyrinth soundtrack. While time travel has yet to be proven scientifically possible, shuffle mode on any MP3 player opens a window into specific memories of the past, sometimes so vivid it’s like you’re reliving them. How does this happen? Is it because the linkage of music to a specific memory somehow separates the memory and makes it more concrete?
Of course, music isn’t the only memory prompt. What can be said of scent? You’re walking down a street and come in contact with a smell that’s so familiar but still takes you a second to place it. The smell of food, the smell of perfume that a friend wears… your brain has formed these connections and associations. Just a few days ago, I was hand washing some sweaters when the smell of the soap became familiar, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The body wash I grabbed to use as soap smelled exactly like the shampoo we use at home for our dogs. The smell combined with the fuzzy, wool sweater I was washing had my mind playing serious tricks on me.
As we continue to learn more about the connections and functions inside of the brain , someday we may be able to see “all of the connections among more than 100 billion neurons and unravel the millions of miles of wires in the brain.” All the advances in technology and computers, but the most sophisticated one is housed in the human body. How about that?
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The Holidays
It hasn’t felt much like the holidays. After the most snow we’ve had in 20 years here, it was a week of upper 50s temperatures. I won’t lie, it’s nice to have a relatively warm indoors after an incredible cold streak. On any given day, it’s at least 10 degrees cooler inside than out because of the concrete construction and lack of central heating. But there’s something strange about lightning, thunder and seemingly tropical temperatures in late December.
As in most American families, baking is a holiday tradition. Not just for your family, but for others. My mom goes crazy at this time of year as our kitchen explodes with cakes and cookies. Seemingly everyone gets a “goodie plate”: the mailman, the postal workers at the post office, neighbors on all sides, etc. To bring that tradition with me to Albania, I made a huge amount of cake and cookies for teachers and students last year. This year, I spent three hours making a big chocolate cake, homemade buttercream frosting and “modified” cookie press cookies. I say “modified” because only after I made the dough did I realize that the cookie gun my host mom didn’t even know she had didn’t work. To add some extra flair, I used the food dye that my mom sent in a care package which really ooed and ahhed my colleagues.
Despite the warm weather, I’ve had a great set of holiday-related events. It started on Wednesday when I brought my baked goods into school and set up the plates in the teachers’ room. There’s something uniquely enjoyable in watching people talk and laugh while eating something you’ve prepared for them. To me, cooking and baking have always been about the joy of making something for someone and sharing it together. I’m glad that I could do something nice for my colleagues, people that I might not always understand but always appreciate and, for the most part, respect. They’ve added value and meaning into my time here.
Built into the Albanian languages are a number of wishes or hopes that speakers share with each other. When you enter someone’s house, they say “mire se erdha,” which means “nice that you came.” The response is: “mire se u gjeta,” or “nice to find you here.” In regards to cooking, there are also some wishes. If someone makes something good, you tell them: “te lumshin duart,” or “bless your hands.” They may also say “kerko nje burre te mire,” which means, “may you find a good husband.” Not surprisingly, the importance of family to Albanians is evident in their blessings. When I brought the cake in for my colleagues, I heard a new one: “ne dasem,” which means “may you be married soon.” In my host mom’s office, someone said I should have “no trouble finding a husband with the way that I cook,” and someone said, “or the fact that they could get a visa from me [because of my American citizenship].” It’s a long-running joke that all Albanians want from Americans are visas and residency.
The next day was the last one before the break. Some of my students were in my host mom’s office making copies and they invited me to a dance they were having that evening. I said I would think about it but didn’t have any intention of going. Later in the evening, one of my best students called me and asked if I would go. I was hardly in the position to say no, and since there are so few opportunities to do anything at night, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and go for a little. I’m so glad I did because I had a great time! All the students were dressed to the nines. The event was held at a beachside restaurant where they had snacks and drinks before the dance started. Once we went into the restaurant and the party started, I sat with the geography teacher and her sister. We got dinner on the house – and it was amazing: a huge bucket of mussels and assorted fruit of the sea; 3 sea bass with carrots and potatoes; and risotto with fruit of the sea. There have been many times in Albania where each time another plate comes out, I think and hope it’s the last one. By the time the actual last one rolls around I am filled with relief. A great evening overall, even though they barely let me leave at 10:30 because it was too early.
The next day was the teachers’ party at a local restaurant. The weather was sunny and in the low 60s, so I got to wear a skirt for Christmas. I think that’s the first time this Pennsylvanian has ever done that. My host sister did my hair and makeup, and when I got to school, the teachers made me take off my jacket and turn in a circle to show what I was wearing. I’ll write a separate entry about workplace fashion shows because it deserves its own separate entry. I had yet another amazing meal (shrimp in red sauce) followed by lots and lots of Albanian circle dancing. A nice bonding time with colleagues, no matter how poorly I might dance.
Now to the big question: what do you do on Christmas in a Muslim country when most of your friends are away? My host sister and I went to City Park, a huge shopping mall that’s a year old. Miracle of miracles, it has a huge indoor ice skating rink as well as a nice grocery store; a great German version of CVS (Rossman); and air hockey and foosball tables. What more could I really ask for? Oh, and there’s also a fast food restaurant that is trying so hard to be McDonald’s (Kolonat). Yes, maybe this is cliché or too American but… on the other side of the world, sometimes you want to feel at home.
“Thank you for the best Christmas ever,” my host sister told me. No, thank you.
As in most American families, baking is a holiday tradition. Not just for your family, but for others. My mom goes crazy at this time of year as our kitchen explodes with cakes and cookies. Seemingly everyone gets a “goodie plate”: the mailman, the postal workers at the post office, neighbors on all sides, etc. To bring that tradition with me to Albania, I made a huge amount of cake and cookies for teachers and students last year. This year, I spent three hours making a big chocolate cake, homemade buttercream frosting and “modified” cookie press cookies. I say “modified” because only after I made the dough did I realize that the cookie gun my host mom didn’t even know she had didn’t work. To add some extra flair, I used the food dye that my mom sent in a care package which really ooed and ahhed my colleagues.
Despite the warm weather, I’ve had a great set of holiday-related events. It started on Wednesday when I brought my baked goods into school and set up the plates in the teachers’ room. There’s something uniquely enjoyable in watching people talk and laugh while eating something you’ve prepared for them. To me, cooking and baking have always been about the joy of making something for someone and sharing it together. I’m glad that I could do something nice for my colleagues, people that I might not always understand but always appreciate and, for the most part, respect. They’ve added value and meaning into my time here.
Built into the Albanian languages are a number of wishes or hopes that speakers share with each other. When you enter someone’s house, they say “mire se erdha,” which means “nice that you came.” The response is: “mire se u gjeta,” or “nice to find you here.” In regards to cooking, there are also some wishes. If someone makes something good, you tell them: “te lumshin duart,” or “bless your hands.” They may also say “kerko nje burre te mire,” which means, “may you find a good husband.” Not surprisingly, the importance of family to Albanians is evident in their blessings. When I brought the cake in for my colleagues, I heard a new one: “ne dasem,” which means “may you be married soon.” In my host mom’s office, someone said I should have “no trouble finding a husband with the way that I cook,” and someone said, “or the fact that they could get a visa from me [because of my American citizenship].” It’s a long-running joke that all Albanians want from Americans are visas and residency.
The next day was the last one before the break. Some of my students were in my host mom’s office making copies and they invited me to a dance they were having that evening. I said I would think about it but didn’t have any intention of going. Later in the evening, one of my best students called me and asked if I would go. I was hardly in the position to say no, and since there are so few opportunities to do anything at night, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and go for a little. I’m so glad I did because I had a great time! All the students were dressed to the nines. The event was held at a beachside restaurant where they had snacks and drinks before the dance started. Once we went into the restaurant and the party started, I sat with the geography teacher and her sister. We got dinner on the house – and it was amazing: a huge bucket of mussels and assorted fruit of the sea; 3 sea bass with carrots and potatoes; and risotto with fruit of the sea. There have been many times in Albania where each time another plate comes out, I think and hope it’s the last one. By the time the actual last one rolls around I am filled with relief. A great evening overall, even though they barely let me leave at 10:30 because it was too early.
The next day was the teachers’ party at a local restaurant. The weather was sunny and in the low 60s, so I got to wear a skirt for Christmas. I think that’s the first time this Pennsylvanian has ever done that. My host sister did my hair and makeup, and when I got to school, the teachers made me take off my jacket and turn in a circle to show what I was wearing. I’ll write a separate entry about workplace fashion shows because it deserves its own separate entry. I had yet another amazing meal (shrimp in red sauce) followed by lots and lots of Albanian circle dancing. A nice bonding time with colleagues, no matter how poorly I might dance.
Now to the big question: what do you do on Christmas in a Muslim country when most of your friends are away? My host sister and I went to City Park, a huge shopping mall that’s a year old. Miracle of miracles, it has a huge indoor ice skating rink as well as a nice grocery store; a great German version of CVS (Rossman); and air hockey and foosball tables. What more could I really ask for? Oh, and there’s also a fast food restaurant that is trying so hard to be McDonald’s (Kolonat). Yes, maybe this is cliché or too American but… on the other side of the world, sometimes you want to feel at home.
“Thank you for the best Christmas ever,” my host sister told me. No, thank you.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Murphy’s Law: The Week
Murphy’s law states that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” and it appropriately sums up my difficult, albeit humorous in hindsight, week.
Monday
I’ve begun working with a new English teacher at my school. We had a brief meeting on Monday to finalize the lesson plan for a lesson we were teaching the following day. When she asked me rules about zero, first and second conditional and I couldn’t recite them from rote memory, she asked me what I had studied in school. “Oh,” she said, “so you haven’t studied English teaching.” The funny thing is, neither did she. And most native speakers wouldn’t be able to tell you the rules she was wandering about off the top of their heads. Later in the session, she would ask me if I could read Albanian. Keep in mind, the entire time we are discussing a lesson plan for an English class… in Albanian.
Tuesday
We are teaching first and second lessons, so I need to leave around 8:00 to get to school, get the room ready, and get the computer and projector up and running. The lesson is about endangered animals (I know, completely essential for first-year English students) and I’ve created a PowerPoint with lots of engaging visual aids as well as a video showing people who work to prevent animal extinction. Sounds good in theory, right?
Well, we don’t leave the house until 8:15. I couldn’t have left earlier anyway because the projector is in my host mom’s office and she had the keys. When I get to school and open the room, I find out that the one electrical socket in the entire room isn’t working. Luckily, I remembered that we have a long cable on a spool that we could use to supply the power, running it from the neighboring small office to the larger classroom. I speak to the teacher responsible for the cable and he brushes me off. “Ku e di une?” is his response, which literally translates into, “Where do I know it?,” or “How should I know?” On top of everything, the power cord to the projector is starting to break and the wires are visible. I know it’s only a matter of time until it breaks. The bell rings, the students come in, and there is still no power supply. It isn’t until the other English teacher runs to her office and connects an extension cord to an extension cord that we can start the lesson.
It doesn’t go well. But I’ll save my description of a normal Albanian classroom for another day. To round things out, one of the extension cords explodes towards the end of class. No power.
Mercifully, I’m given a break during 2nd lesson, which I use to run and pick up some byrek. When I come back, the teacher responsible for the long power cable returns and then goes into the neighboring room and gets it for me. It had been in there the entire time and it would have taken him a minute at most to get it for me before first period. Frustrating much? This same teacher was also reluctant to give me a key to the room where I taught four times a week last year, meaning that for a while I would have to find him every day at school and ask for the key. I finally got one towards the end of last year, but because of the power situation, I now need a key for the outside door and the inner office door to run the cable. I only have one key, so now I am still forced to find him every time I need in.
Thursday
That’s not where it ends. I’ve been invited to see the students do a two-hour special presentation about Italy during the 5th and 6th lessons. I don’t have any classes that day nor any other reason to be at school, but I want to go and support them. Some of the students are previous and also new English students and I want to make the effort. As I’m getting ready, my host mom calls me and says that the Italian teacher wanted to remind me to come. “Of course I’m coming, I’m leaving now,” I say.
I trudge through the freezing cold to get to our unheated school. After I take my outside boots off, the Italian teacher comes down and asks me where my laptop is. “I didn’t know you wanted it, so I don’t have it.” “Oh,” she sighs. Boots back on, and back to the house to get my laptop. On the way there, my aunt sees me and asks why I’m going back to the house since I just left, and I explain the situation. Once I’m back at school, the Italian teacher is in the middle of “prova teknike,” or technical tests to make sure everything will work. Again, we need in the office to get the power. This time it’s worse, though: the teacher with the keys isn’t there, and when I look for my key that I’ve had for all this time, it seems to have fallen off my key chain. Perfect timing! I am beyond bewildered at this point but I’m told not to worry: a student returns with a pair of pliers and rips the nails out that hold the bracketed lock in place. Success, we have power! We set up the computer and the projector. Two minutes into the testing, the wire on the projector finally breaks and explodes in a tiny shower of sparks. It’s not looking good at this point, until one of my students asks for a “knife and some tape,” and proceeds to splice the wires back together. I’m astounded when, after five minutes’ work, we put the cord into the projector and it turns on. “I just did this yesterday,” he told me.
Friday
I wake up at 7:45 because I have a tutoring session with the Italian teacher during the first lesson. It’s less than 40 degrees in my room and the power is out. These are things I know before I even get out of bed since I see my thermometer and don’t hear the humming of the fridge. Last night, I slept in two pairs of pants, an undershirt, a t-shirt, a flannel, long-sleeved shirt, a turtle neck and a fleece hoodie… inside of a mummy bag with two heavy blankets over it. Those first moments getting out of bed are so difficult because you know this is the only moment you’re going to be warm the entire day. Seeing your breath is also unpleasant.
I get up and quickly dress. I open my curtain to see an unexpected sight: snow. We don’t usually have snow in Golem because the temperatures are moderated by the Adriatic. Usually, we just have rain. But today the snow made me think of home. Apparently earlier, my host dad was excited and woke everyone up. My host mom was adamant that he not wake me up, because, “Sofie has seen snow in Germany and America and wherever else.” I put on a few layers and head to school.
When I get there, I see a huge snowball fight with about fifty or so students. They’re outside, running around as the flakes are falling. Teachers are making snowballs. Everyone is coming down with snow craziness, that feeling that comes with snow that makes everyone feel like they’re 5 years old. No bell sounds for the first period and it becomes apparent that I’ve come to school for nothing. We wait on a decision about whether classes will be canceled, but that comes a half hour later because both the director and vice director are drinking coffee. The director says that if the students come in, they’ll have class. If not, classes will be canceled. The bell that would have started the second lesson sounds. The students file in, but one is still outside wearing nothing but an undershirt. The rest of them that file in are covered in snow and completely soaked without any hope of warming up. I decide that without power (it would remain out for eight more hours), the best I could do was head home and try to enjoy the strange weather from the comfort of my sleeping bag. Nothing surprises me much anymore.
Monday
I’ve begun working with a new English teacher at my school. We had a brief meeting on Monday to finalize the lesson plan for a lesson we were teaching the following day. When she asked me rules about zero, first and second conditional and I couldn’t recite them from rote memory, she asked me what I had studied in school. “Oh,” she said, “so you haven’t studied English teaching.” The funny thing is, neither did she. And most native speakers wouldn’t be able to tell you the rules she was wandering about off the top of their heads. Later in the session, she would ask me if I could read Albanian. Keep in mind, the entire time we are discussing a lesson plan for an English class… in Albanian.
Tuesday
We are teaching first and second lessons, so I need to leave around 8:00 to get to school, get the room ready, and get the computer and projector up and running. The lesson is about endangered animals (I know, completely essential for first-year English students) and I’ve created a PowerPoint with lots of engaging visual aids as well as a video showing people who work to prevent animal extinction. Sounds good in theory, right?
Well, we don’t leave the house until 8:15. I couldn’t have left earlier anyway because the projector is in my host mom’s office and she had the keys. When I get to school and open the room, I find out that the one electrical socket in the entire room isn’t working. Luckily, I remembered that we have a long cable on a spool that we could use to supply the power, running it from the neighboring small office to the larger classroom. I speak to the teacher responsible for the cable and he brushes me off. “Ku e di une?” is his response, which literally translates into, “Where do I know it?,” or “How should I know?” On top of everything, the power cord to the projector is starting to break and the wires are visible. I know it’s only a matter of time until it breaks. The bell rings, the students come in, and there is still no power supply. It isn’t until the other English teacher runs to her office and connects an extension cord to an extension cord that we can start the lesson.
It doesn’t go well. But I’ll save my description of a normal Albanian classroom for another day. To round things out, one of the extension cords explodes towards the end of class. No power.
Mercifully, I’m given a break during 2nd lesson, which I use to run and pick up some byrek. When I come back, the teacher responsible for the long power cable returns and then goes into the neighboring room and gets it for me. It had been in there the entire time and it would have taken him a minute at most to get it for me before first period. Frustrating much? This same teacher was also reluctant to give me a key to the room where I taught four times a week last year, meaning that for a while I would have to find him every day at school and ask for the key. I finally got one towards the end of last year, but because of the power situation, I now need a key for the outside door and the inner office door to run the cable. I only have one key, so now I am still forced to find him every time I need in.
Thursday
That’s not where it ends. I’ve been invited to see the students do a two-hour special presentation about Italy during the 5th and 6th lessons. I don’t have any classes that day nor any other reason to be at school, but I want to go and support them. Some of the students are previous and also new English students and I want to make the effort. As I’m getting ready, my host mom calls me and says that the Italian teacher wanted to remind me to come. “Of course I’m coming, I’m leaving now,” I say.
I trudge through the freezing cold to get to our unheated school. After I take my outside boots off, the Italian teacher comes down and asks me where my laptop is. “I didn’t know you wanted it, so I don’t have it.” “Oh,” she sighs. Boots back on, and back to the house to get my laptop. On the way there, my aunt sees me and asks why I’m going back to the house since I just left, and I explain the situation. Once I’m back at school, the Italian teacher is in the middle of “prova teknike,” or technical tests to make sure everything will work. Again, we need in the office to get the power. This time it’s worse, though: the teacher with the keys isn’t there, and when I look for my key that I’ve had for all this time, it seems to have fallen off my key chain. Perfect timing! I am beyond bewildered at this point but I’m told not to worry: a student returns with a pair of pliers and rips the nails out that hold the bracketed lock in place. Success, we have power! We set up the computer and the projector. Two minutes into the testing, the wire on the projector finally breaks and explodes in a tiny shower of sparks. It’s not looking good at this point, until one of my students asks for a “knife and some tape,” and proceeds to splice the wires back together. I’m astounded when, after five minutes’ work, we put the cord into the projector and it turns on. “I just did this yesterday,” he told me.
Friday
I wake up at 7:45 because I have a tutoring session with the Italian teacher during the first lesson. It’s less than 40 degrees in my room and the power is out. These are things I know before I even get out of bed since I see my thermometer and don’t hear the humming of the fridge. Last night, I slept in two pairs of pants, an undershirt, a t-shirt, a flannel, long-sleeved shirt, a turtle neck and a fleece hoodie… inside of a mummy bag with two heavy blankets over it. Those first moments getting out of bed are so difficult because you know this is the only moment you’re going to be warm the entire day. Seeing your breath is also unpleasant.
I get up and quickly dress. I open my curtain to see an unexpected sight: snow. We don’t usually have snow in Golem because the temperatures are moderated by the Adriatic. Usually, we just have rain. But today the snow made me think of home. Apparently earlier, my host dad was excited and woke everyone up. My host mom was adamant that he not wake me up, because, “Sofie has seen snow in Germany and America and wherever else.” I put on a few layers and head to school.
When I get there, I see a huge snowball fight with about fifty or so students. They’re outside, running around as the flakes are falling. Teachers are making snowballs. Everyone is coming down with snow craziness, that feeling that comes with snow that makes everyone feel like they’re 5 years old. No bell sounds for the first period and it becomes apparent that I’ve come to school for nothing. We wait on a decision about whether classes will be canceled, but that comes a half hour later because both the director and vice director are drinking coffee. The director says that if the students come in, they’ll have class. If not, classes will be canceled. The bell that would have started the second lesson sounds. The students file in, but one is still outside wearing nothing but an undershirt. The rest of them that file in are covered in snow and completely soaked without any hope of warming up. I decide that without power (it would remain out for eight more hours), the best I could do was head home and try to enjoy the strange weather from the comfort of my sleeping bag. Nothing surprises me much anymore.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Tirana, te dua
What can we say about Tirana, Albania’s capital city? As trainees, we tour the city at the beginning of summer heat. After months in the villages, the sudden burst of people and the traffic jams seem foreign. After navigating the city so long, things that initially seemed so odd now make sense. Buses that don’t have clearly marked routes? No central station for trains, buses and furgons, meaning different locations for every form of transportation and every direction? A Peace Corps office that is in no way close to anything else? No problem!
Whenever there is Peace Corps business in Tirana that keeps you there overnight, you’re usually placed in one of two hostels (both of which are on the other side of town from the Peace Corps office, naturally). To first get to the place, I had to ask a cop and several people on the street and then constantly verify locations. The hostel was conveniently located off a back street, under an underpass, and in a residential building without any marking whatsoever. Luckily the owner will come to find you if you give him a ring while you’re on your way. These kinds of things become normal in a city that is just now getting road signs and street numbers.
Tirana can be a good morale booster in a way. People are quick to help you get where you’re going and to compliment your Albanian skills. An early conversation when I was first in the city on my own went something like this:
Me: Excuse me, is this Rruga Kavajes?
The officer walks down from his perch several feet above me.
Officer: Hello.
Me: Is this Rruga Kavajes? Where is the south bus station?
After a while, the officer realizes that I couldn’t possibly be a native speaker, given the fact that I’m responding in Albanian at a fraction of the speed he is speaking.
Officer: You’re not Albanian are you… are you Italian? (Albanians always think we’re Italians, even when we’re speaking English)
Me: No, I’m an American.
Officer: But you are speaking Albanian (This has happened so many times, where people will tell me, in Albanian, that we are speaking Albanian, always with an amount of surprise).
Me: Yes, I’ve studied it for 5 months. I’m living here as a PCV.
Officer: That’s great, I have a lot of respect “shume respekt” for you.”
The officer then gives me an elaborate explanation and tells me that yes, it’s Rruga Kavajes, and that I should just keep going straight. “It’s not even five minutes,” he told me. This reminds me of a conversation I had with my host sister about Albanian minutes versus American minutes. To figure out the difference, multiply Albanian minutes by five and you get the American minutes. This rang true because the walk to the station was really about a half hour. The difference in time is also something you get used to after living here for a while.
Tirana also becomes more navigable. It’s hard when you’re used to American grid systems with some sense of organization. The In Your Pocket guide for Tirana sums up getting around in Tirana the best:
“Unfortunately for guidebook writers and other foreigners, Albanian addresses often do not include street numbers. Instead, a close landmark (like a building, school, ministry, statue, etc) is mentioned for reference, prefaced by pranë (‘near’), or përballë (‘in front of).
Even if the landmark is long gone, Albanians will still refer to that using ‘ish’ (former). The medieval logic behind this is that the locals know where it is and you can ask them, so why bother painting an ugly number on a building when you can sit down and have a nice cup of coffee instead?"
Whenever there is Peace Corps business in Tirana that keeps you there overnight, you’re usually placed in one of two hostels (both of which are on the other side of town from the Peace Corps office, naturally). To first get to the place, I had to ask a cop and several people on the street and then constantly verify locations. The hostel was conveniently located off a back street, under an underpass, and in a residential building without any marking whatsoever. Luckily the owner will come to find you if you give him a ring while you’re on your way. These kinds of things become normal in a city that is just now getting road signs and street numbers.
Tirana can be a good morale booster in a way. People are quick to help you get where you’re going and to compliment your Albanian skills. An early conversation when I was first in the city on my own went something like this:
Me: Excuse me, is this Rruga Kavajes?
The officer walks down from his perch several feet above me.
Officer: Hello.
Me: Is this Rruga Kavajes? Where is the south bus station?
After a while, the officer realizes that I couldn’t possibly be a native speaker, given the fact that I’m responding in Albanian at a fraction of the speed he is speaking.
Officer: You’re not Albanian are you… are you Italian? (Albanians always think we’re Italians, even when we’re speaking English)
Me: No, I’m an American.
Officer: But you are speaking Albanian (This has happened so many times, where people will tell me, in Albanian, that we are speaking Albanian, always with an amount of surprise).
Me: Yes, I’ve studied it for 5 months. I’m living here as a PCV.
Officer: That’s great, I have a lot of respect “shume respekt” for you.”
The officer then gives me an elaborate explanation and tells me that yes, it’s Rruga Kavajes, and that I should just keep going straight. “It’s not even five minutes,” he told me. This reminds me of a conversation I had with my host sister about Albanian minutes versus American minutes. To figure out the difference, multiply Albanian minutes by five and you get the American minutes. This rang true because the walk to the station was really about a half hour. The difference in time is also something you get used to after living here for a while.
Tirana also becomes more navigable. It’s hard when you’re used to American grid systems with some sense of organization. The In Your Pocket guide for Tirana sums up getting around in Tirana the best:
“Unfortunately for guidebook writers and other foreigners, Albanian addresses often do not include street numbers. Instead, a close landmark (like a building, school, ministry, statue, etc) is mentioned for reference, prefaced by pranë (‘near’), or përballë (‘in front of).
Even if the landmark is long gone, Albanians will still refer to that using ‘ish’ (former). The medieval logic behind this is that the locals know where it is and you can ask them, so why bother painting an ugly number on a building when you can sit down and have a nice cup of coffee instead?"
Turkish knock offs
Despite what the ride at Chocolate World would have you believe, it’s not really a “Hershey’s Chocolate World.” In fact, I’ve never seen a Hershey’s bar outside of the US. Cadbury, Mars and Milka are readily available here, and most people would argue that they’re better than Hershey’s anyway. But growing up with them as an American, it’s a little hard to believe.
While we can get Snickers bars, or Twix, or M&Ms here, they cost almost as much as they do in the US. Thankfully, we are blessed with the friend of all PCVs: THE TURKISH IMPOSTER bars.
Made with vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter, this waxy, extensive line of knockoffs cost .10 - .20, instead of .50. Who would have thought that you get what you pay for? The other highlight is the borderline copyright infringements that make up the outside wrappers. Everything about these chocolate bars screams: “If you just squint and pretend a little…it’s like you’re eating something of much higher quality.”
And now, I present to you my top 3 Turkish knockoffs:
1. Albeni, the knockoff Twix. Wider than a normal Twix, this picture shows you how hard Albeni is trying to be a real Twix. Keep tryin’, buddy.
2. The role of Snickers is now being played by Winergy. In a market largely dominated by hazelnut, the European equivalent to peanuts, Winergy stands alone in all its waxy peanut goodness. It gets extra points with me because it’s label makes it look like Snickers, but it’s overly tarlike goo layer gives its disguise away.
3. Biscolata Starz. Ask me several months ago what my favorite cookie/chocolate combination was, and I would have told you Biscolata Starz, without a doubt. What’s not to like? It’s a piece of chocolate with a milk layer and it’s sitting on top of a cookie. Plus, they are dirt cheap. It was the chosen snack of students and teachers alike for a long time, but they’ve lost their effect on me because I’ve had too many. When I went to Egypt, I was slightly but not really surprised to find out they’re a knock-off of some Milka cookies.
While we can get Snickers bars, or Twix, or M&Ms here, they cost almost as much as they do in the US. Thankfully, we are blessed with the friend of all PCVs: THE TURKISH IMPOSTER bars.
Made with vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter, this waxy, extensive line of knockoffs cost .10 - .20, instead of .50. Who would have thought that you get what you pay for? The other highlight is the borderline copyright infringements that make up the outside wrappers. Everything about these chocolate bars screams: “If you just squint and pretend a little…it’s like you’re eating something of much higher quality.”
And now, I present to you my top 3 Turkish knockoffs:
1. Albeni, the knockoff Twix. Wider than a normal Twix, this picture shows you how hard Albeni is trying to be a real Twix. Keep tryin’, buddy.
2. The role of Snickers is now being played by Winergy. In a market largely dominated by hazelnut, the European equivalent to peanuts, Winergy stands alone in all its waxy peanut goodness. It gets extra points with me because it’s label makes it look like Snickers, but it’s overly tarlike goo layer gives its disguise away.
3. Biscolata Starz. Ask me several months ago what my favorite cookie/chocolate combination was, and I would have told you Biscolata Starz, without a doubt. What’s not to like? It’s a piece of chocolate with a milk layer and it’s sitting on top of a cookie. Plus, they are dirt cheap. It was the chosen snack of students and teachers alike for a long time, but they’ve lost their effect on me because I’ve had too many. When I went to Egypt, I was slightly but not really surprised to find out they’re a knock-off of some Milka cookies.
Irrational rationing
A friend of mine and I talk a lot about the greatest generation because both of us have members of it that have played large roles in our lives. We talk about “typical” things they do: their obsession with turning out the lights and turning down the heat, or being able to afford to eat better but not doing it because they want to save money, etc. The kind of deprivation and hardship they faced early on in their lives has permanently influenced them.
We can’t ever really understand what people who lived through the Depression and World War II went through. My grandma would tell me stories about the men who would try to find temporary work on the railroads, and how my great-grandmother would make them sandwiches because they didn’t have anything else to eat. There were many times when there wasn’t a lot of food. Then, when most of them were in their teens, the war came. Somewhere our family has a WWII ration book from the time when rationing was introduced to continue the war effort. Think about it: civilian rationing. In an age of globalization and ever-expanding markets, the mere idea of rationing materials seems strange. And with obesity rates skyrocketing in the US, I don’t think most Americans are experiencing what it’s like to go to bed hungry.
Which brings me to my point: it’s almost a common thing to see PCVs rationing their food. Or rather, their “American” food. Most of us don’t receive many regular packages, so the things we get, we save. Why? I don’t know really. I’ve been hoarding confectioner’s and brown sugar since I came here. I’ve barely baked as a result. I was afraid to use a lot of cumin and ginger because I wasn’t sure where I would find it again. This saving mentality becomes easier to understand when put in a situation where items are not readily available. Of course we aren’t starving or undergoing our own personal Great Depressions, but the lack of stable supply encourages us to hold onto our food items instead of using them. It’s starting to get ridiculous now: I have 6 months left and two pounds of confectioner’s sugar that I’ve carefully gathered throughout my time here. I’m going to take it to a level that many Greatest Generation members wouldn’t: I’m actually going to use it. All.
We can’t ever really understand what people who lived through the Depression and World War II went through. My grandma would tell me stories about the men who would try to find temporary work on the railroads, and how my great-grandmother would make them sandwiches because they didn’t have anything else to eat. There were many times when there wasn’t a lot of food. Then, when most of them were in their teens, the war came. Somewhere our family has a WWII ration book from the time when rationing was introduced to continue the war effort. Think about it: civilian rationing. In an age of globalization and ever-expanding markets, the mere idea of rationing materials seems strange. And with obesity rates skyrocketing in the US, I don’t think most Americans are experiencing what it’s like to go to bed hungry.
Which brings me to my point: it’s almost a common thing to see PCVs rationing their food. Or rather, their “American” food. Most of us don’t receive many regular packages, so the things we get, we save. Why? I don’t know really. I’ve been hoarding confectioner’s and brown sugar since I came here. I’ve barely baked as a result. I was afraid to use a lot of cumin and ginger because I wasn’t sure where I would find it again. This saving mentality becomes easier to understand when put in a situation where items are not readily available. Of course we aren’t starving or undergoing our own personal Great Depressions, but the lack of stable supply encourages us to hold onto our food items instead of using them. It’s starting to get ridiculous now: I have 6 months left and two pounds of confectioner’s sugar that I’ve carefully gathered throughout my time here. I’m going to take it to a level that many Greatest Generation members wouldn’t: I’m actually going to use it. All.
Fun with Ebay
My 15 year-old host brother Alkys and I don’t have a ton of things to talk about. After careful observation, I see that he’s most passionate about Dragon Ball Z, his handheld PSP and the internet. He likes science shows, too. That’s about all I’ve been able to gather after my time here. Unfortunately, his entire vocabulary is something foreign to me. Whenever he talks, I can barely follow along with what he’s saying. That happens sometimes when you are learning a language in a country, coming into contact with different speakers. Some people, like my host mom, you can understand perfectly. Others, like my brother, make it seem like you know no Albanian at all.
The things we’ve bonded about are pretty random. One day, he was asking me about something that, surprise, I couldn’t understand. I finally figured out that he was talking about Ebay. The Albanian pronunciation sounds completely different from the English. Anyhow, it’s lead to some interesting conversations. Alkys wanted me to bid on some throwing stars (too much Dragon Ball, perhaps?), which in turn lead to a discussion about why I couldn’t have them shipped here. We had a general discussion about how many sellers don’t ship to Albania and the lack of credit cards here. However, I spared him a political analysis on Meg Whitman.
The things we’ve bonded about are pretty random. One day, he was asking me about something that, surprise, I couldn’t understand. I finally figured out that he was talking about Ebay. The Albanian pronunciation sounds completely different from the English. Anyhow, it’s lead to some interesting conversations. Alkys wanted me to bid on some throwing stars (too much Dragon Ball, perhaps?), which in turn lead to a discussion about why I couldn’t have them shipped here. We had a general discussion about how many sellers don’t ship to Albania and the lack of credit cards here. However, I spared him a political analysis on Meg Whitman.
There’s always room in the furgon!
Here’s a description of a typical furgon ride, which started in Erseka and ended in Elbasan: I get in and sit behind the driver as we’re waiting to leave. I’m the only one sitting in the furgon. Most Albanians have claimed their seats and are sitting at cafes, waiting for the driver to get in the furgon, turn the engine on, and honk the horn, signaling to everyone that it’s time to go. Two minutes later, the driver comes over and tells me that the seat I’m in is taken. I move to the second row, door side. Once people start coming into the furgon, the driver asks me if I wouldn’t mind moving back a row. I do, to the final row in the back, door side. We circle around Erseka picking up the rest of the people, and I’m asked to move yet again. I end up sitting in the very back, center seat. I slide over to let an old woman take the seat I had been sitting in for about two minutes, and the man sitting next to me opens his hand to randomly offer me four, uncracked walnuts.
An hour later, we arrive in Korca. No one gets out, but three more people get in. This is the main idea behind furgons, something I both love and hate about Albania: there is always room in the furgon. When it’s pouring down rain and you’re stranded on the side of the road, there’s always a seat in the furgon. When it’s a thousand degrees and someone sits next to a window and closes it, there’s still room in the furgon for at least one more passenger. In Korca, our 11 person furgon becomes filled with 14 people. Children sitting on their parents’ laps and people squeezing into the furgon, sitting on plastic step stools. We stop to get gas. The driver lights up a cigarette right next to the gas tank while the engine is running. Maybe we have too many rules, regulations and precautions in the US?
And then the “pilaf stop.” It’s a 15-20 minute coffee/rice break in the middle of the journey, and often takes place close to the town of Librazhd at restaurants of varying scales. As a result, you never quite know what to expect when you make a trip to the bathroom. It could be a normal toilet, or it could be a turk, or better yet, a turk with a hose of constantly flowing water connected to it. That’s part of the adventure.
Somewhere after the pilaf stop, the older lady sitting next to me becomes distressed about her cell phone. Speaking a mile a minute, she tells me to find Hussein’s number and call it. I read off a list of names store in her phone’s memory, and Hussein is unfortunately not on the list. I explain this several times to no avail. “I just got this phone today, my son’s wife gave it to me…” Somewhere much, much later into this conversation she realizes that I’m not Albanian, at which point the conversation switches.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“I’m an American.”
“Ua! (expression of surprise),” she responds. Then, like many people do, she turns to the man next to her, tells him she’s going to ask me what part of Albania I like best, and when she turns around to ask me, I’m already chuckling. Yes, I did hear and understand what you just said, even though people frequently don’t think we’re capable of either thing. I answer diplomatically, in a way that would make my host mom laugh: “I like Erseka in the winter and Golem in the summer.” The woman accepts this answer, smiles, and pinches my leg.
An hour later, we arrive in Korca. No one gets out, but three more people get in. This is the main idea behind furgons, something I both love and hate about Albania: there is always room in the furgon. When it’s pouring down rain and you’re stranded on the side of the road, there’s always a seat in the furgon. When it’s a thousand degrees and someone sits next to a window and closes it, there’s still room in the furgon for at least one more passenger. In Korca, our 11 person furgon becomes filled with 14 people. Children sitting on their parents’ laps and people squeezing into the furgon, sitting on plastic step stools. We stop to get gas. The driver lights up a cigarette right next to the gas tank while the engine is running. Maybe we have too many rules, regulations and precautions in the US?
And then the “pilaf stop.” It’s a 15-20 minute coffee/rice break in the middle of the journey, and often takes place close to the town of Librazhd at restaurants of varying scales. As a result, you never quite know what to expect when you make a trip to the bathroom. It could be a normal toilet, or it could be a turk, or better yet, a turk with a hose of constantly flowing water connected to it. That’s part of the adventure.
Somewhere after the pilaf stop, the older lady sitting next to me becomes distressed about her cell phone. Speaking a mile a minute, she tells me to find Hussein’s number and call it. I read off a list of names store in her phone’s memory, and Hussein is unfortunately not on the list. I explain this several times to no avail. “I just got this phone today, my son’s wife gave it to me…” Somewhere much, much later into this conversation she realizes that I’m not Albanian, at which point the conversation switches.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“I’m an American.”
“Ua! (expression of surprise),” she responds. Then, like many people do, she turns to the man next to her, tells him she’s going to ask me what part of Albania I like best, and when she turns around to ask me, I’m already chuckling. Yes, I did hear and understand what you just said, even though people frequently don’t think we’re capable of either thing. I answer diplomatically, in a way that would make my host mom laugh: “I like Erseka in the winter and Golem in the summer.” The woman accepts this answer, smiles, and pinches my leg.
Visa Liberalization
I’ve spent most of November on the road thanks to a program that pairs old Peace Corps Volunteers with new ones – so after 1 ½ years here, I’ve been matched with two volunteers from the new group who have been here seven months. It’s been interesting visiting them in their sites and seeing what their lives are like and hopefully I’ve been able to add some helpful insight in dealing with their issues.
I visited a volunteer Himare, a small coastal town in southern Albania. Southern Albania is very different from the northern Adriatic coast that I call home. Going south, you pass through Vlore, go through a national forest, and come out to see the Ionian Sea with huge mountains that run right into the sea. Himare has a Greek minority. Greek is spoken on the streets. Students speak Greek amongst themselves. I’m not quite sure if this area was always Greek or if it was created by Albanians returning from work abroad, but there is a lot of ethnic tension. Many people there speak Greek as a first language. In the north where I live, many people speak Italian but there isn’t any sort of Italian community. The challenges of teaching large, multi-leveled classes are multiplied when students’ first language might not even be Albanian. It’s a unique challenge to volunteers in border towns along the south and southeastern part of the country.
While I was visiting, the EU approved short-term, visa-free travel for Albanians (Eastern Approaches analysis here). Visa-free travel has been a topic of discussion in the news since I’ve been here, with channels covering and discussing it even when there wasn’t anything new to add to the conversation. On November 9th, a day after the visa liberalization, the EU moved to launch membership negotiations with Albania. There were concerts and celebrations. The Albanian government spent countless money putting up signs and advertisements throughout Tirana about Albania becoming part of the EU.
Certainly, this is something to look forward to. But I, along with many other Albanians, am skeptical. Firstly, of the 13 million illegal immigrants in the US today, half of them are estimated to have entered the US legally. Given the huge brain drain facing Albanian society, how will this affect the EU countries receiving Albanian immigrants, and how will it affect Albanian society? The travel is visa-free only for a period of 3 months, but how often will Albanians, who have a history of illegal immigration to Greece and Italy, actually return? The EU has already said that visa-free travel through the Schengen Zone is a privilege than can be revoked. It would be terrible to have to lose it since it’s taken so long to get it in the first place. Secondly, one can’t help but feel that this just one big political distraction from the other problems facing Albania. The Socialists are still complaining about last June’s elections. Albania still has a long way to go in meeting EU benchmarks for parliamentary organization and rule of law, amongst other things. And the latest flooding in the northern regions of the country have been devastating. How important is visa-free travel when ranked with all this other issues? While I think it’s critical for Albanians to go abroad and experience other parts of the world, and while they deserve the freedom to do so, the weight that visa-free travel has been given in current discourse is disproportionate to the real issues facing the country.
I visited a volunteer Himare, a small coastal town in southern Albania. Southern Albania is very different from the northern Adriatic coast that I call home. Going south, you pass through Vlore, go through a national forest, and come out to see the Ionian Sea with huge mountains that run right into the sea. Himare has a Greek minority. Greek is spoken on the streets. Students speak Greek amongst themselves. I’m not quite sure if this area was always Greek or if it was created by Albanians returning from work abroad, but there is a lot of ethnic tension. Many people there speak Greek as a first language. In the north where I live, many people speak Italian but there isn’t any sort of Italian community. The challenges of teaching large, multi-leveled classes are multiplied when students’ first language might not even be Albanian. It’s a unique challenge to volunteers in border towns along the south and southeastern part of the country.
While I was visiting, the EU approved short-term, visa-free travel for Albanians (Eastern Approaches analysis here). Visa-free travel has been a topic of discussion in the news since I’ve been here, with channels covering and discussing it even when there wasn’t anything new to add to the conversation. On November 9th, a day after the visa liberalization, the EU moved to launch membership negotiations with Albania. There were concerts and celebrations. The Albanian government spent countless money putting up signs and advertisements throughout Tirana about Albania becoming part of the EU.
Certainly, this is something to look forward to. But I, along with many other Albanians, am skeptical. Firstly, of the 13 million illegal immigrants in the US today, half of them are estimated to have entered the US legally. Given the huge brain drain facing Albanian society, how will this affect the EU countries receiving Albanian immigrants, and how will it affect Albanian society? The travel is visa-free only for a period of 3 months, but how often will Albanians, who have a history of illegal immigration to Greece and Italy, actually return? The EU has already said that visa-free travel through the Schengen Zone is a privilege than can be revoked. It would be terrible to have to lose it since it’s taken so long to get it in the first place. Secondly, one can’t help but feel that this just one big political distraction from the other problems facing Albania. The Socialists are still complaining about last June’s elections. Albania still has a long way to go in meeting EU benchmarks for parliamentary organization and rule of law, amongst other things. And the latest flooding in the northern regions of the country have been devastating. How important is visa-free travel when ranked with all this other issues? While I think it’s critical for Albanians to go abroad and experience other parts of the world, and while they deserve the freedom to do so, the weight that visa-free travel has been given in current discourse is disproportionate to the real issues facing the country.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Same river twice
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said that “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” Basically, everything is changing. As the river changes and flows, so do you and your life. I was a little nervous to go back home because it’s hard to predict in advance how you and your home have changed after time.
I flew from Tirana to Rome, then Rome to NYC. I spent a night in Queens and took the first Amtrak train out to Harrisburg the next morning. Michele and Todd, friends of the family, picked me up from the train station. They remarked that I’d gotten thin and laughed about how they had an entire junk food bag waiting for me in the car. I had mentally prepared myself that no one would care about life in Albania, but that wasn’t at all the case. When I came home from Germany the first time, it was all I talked about. I’d like to think I’m better prepared this time around. The other thing is that I can talk and talk and talk and talk, but it’s still very difficult to capture just exactly what it’s like here.
From the train station, we went to drop my stuff off at the house and then up to the hospital. Since there is a camera on Mom’s floor, we had her paged to come down to the snack bar. As she came out of the elevator, she looked at Michele and then at me, and it took a split second to sink in. That would become my favorite part of surprising people – that brief second where they look at me but can’t put together the fact that I’m standing there. She burst into tears in the hospital hallway and hugged me. As I told my host mom this story in detail, she started tearing up. She thought it was unfair that I didn’t tell my mom in advance that I was coming home, where I insisted that surprising her was the best way to go. “You’ll understand someday when you’re a mom,” my host mom said. From there, we called my dad from an office on mom’s floor, but not before she introduced me to everyone and struggled to put the correct key in the door. I went home with Michele and had a coffee until my dad got back, and we went out for celebratory steaks at Front Street.
I spent the next two weeks in a comfortable state of disorientation, feeling often like someone who just plopped down from another universe, experiencing things for the first time. I learned about Silly Bandz, packages of shaped rubber bands that cost as much as I spend on food for a couple days. In the year and a half since I’ve been gone, Smartphones have entered a completely new level; practically foreign to a person used to a green-screened Nokia.
The trip home also gave me a sneak peek. What I learned is that it will all be alright. All of it. The seven months I have left in Albania, the continuation of my work here and my return home. I know I can do it, even as winter approaches and brings its own unique problems. I don’t feel quite as afraid anymore about my life in the US post Peace Corps and what going home will be like, even though I know it’s only been 2 weeks there and I still don’t have many answers to my questions. I’m just trying to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the changes and tough decisions that are coming and the test run really helped.
And all the travel time brought time for reflection. I feel set free from some of the more negative aspects of my life. Time, distance and thought have gone a long way. I know that in a year, the things that weighed so heavily upon me will be of little significance. It’s amazing, the difference in the perception of time. In Albania, we have nothing but time while our people in the US scramble. In the US, I barely had any time to myself, days and nights full of activities. I’m pleased about that, pleased to be free again with nothing but possibilities and opportunities. With the remembrance and growth caused by experience and pain, but without the weight.
I flew from Tirana to Rome, then Rome to NYC. I spent a night in Queens and took the first Amtrak train out to Harrisburg the next morning. Michele and Todd, friends of the family, picked me up from the train station. They remarked that I’d gotten thin and laughed about how they had an entire junk food bag waiting for me in the car. I had mentally prepared myself that no one would care about life in Albania, but that wasn’t at all the case. When I came home from Germany the first time, it was all I talked about. I’d like to think I’m better prepared this time around. The other thing is that I can talk and talk and talk and talk, but it’s still very difficult to capture just exactly what it’s like here.
From the train station, we went to drop my stuff off at the house and then up to the hospital. Since there is a camera on Mom’s floor, we had her paged to come down to the snack bar. As she came out of the elevator, she looked at Michele and then at me, and it took a split second to sink in. That would become my favorite part of surprising people – that brief second where they look at me but can’t put together the fact that I’m standing there. She burst into tears in the hospital hallway and hugged me. As I told my host mom this story in detail, she started tearing up. She thought it was unfair that I didn’t tell my mom in advance that I was coming home, where I insisted that surprising her was the best way to go. “You’ll understand someday when you’re a mom,” my host mom said. From there, we called my dad from an office on mom’s floor, but not before she introduced me to everyone and struggled to put the correct key in the door. I went home with Michele and had a coffee until my dad got back, and we went out for celebratory steaks at Front Street.
I spent the next two weeks in a comfortable state of disorientation, feeling often like someone who just plopped down from another universe, experiencing things for the first time. I learned about Silly Bandz, packages of shaped rubber bands that cost as much as I spend on food for a couple days. In the year and a half since I’ve been gone, Smartphones have entered a completely new level; practically foreign to a person used to a green-screened Nokia.
The trip home also gave me a sneak peek. What I learned is that it will all be alright. All of it. The seven months I have left in Albania, the continuation of my work here and my return home. I know I can do it, even as winter approaches and brings its own unique problems. I don’t feel quite as afraid anymore about my life in the US post Peace Corps and what going home will be like, even though I know it’s only been 2 weeks there and I still don’t have many answers to my questions. I’m just trying to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the changes and tough decisions that are coming and the test run really helped.
And all the travel time brought time for reflection. I feel set free from some of the more negative aspects of my life. Time, distance and thought have gone a long way. I know that in a year, the things that weighed so heavily upon me will be of little significance. It’s amazing, the difference in the perception of time. In Albania, we have nothing but time while our people in the US scramble. In the US, I barely had any time to myself, days and nights full of activities. I’m pleased about that, pleased to be free again with nothing but possibilities and opportunities. With the remembrance and growth caused by experience and pain, but without the weight.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Jetzt geht’s los
How to know it’s the first day of school in Albania? The four inch heels and fire engine red dresses come out. Also, life becomes a little more Kafkaesque as far as multiple levels of confusion and overall ambiguity are concerned. Thankfully, we’re all long past the stage of being surprised by anything anymore.
My counterpart was let go the week before school started. Our enrollment continues to drop and the outlook isn’t great going forward. It’s not so wonderful for me either. I wanted to work on a more solid and beneficial relationship with my counterpart this year and was disappointed for the both of us when I got the news. Even though I have a year under my belt, it’s every bit as difficult this year to define my role and get activities up and running. The other English teacher that remains at our school is openly hostile towards me ever since he asked me to help students cheat on national exams and I denied him. He interpreted my saying no as me thinking I’m somehow better because I’m an American and inexplicably brings all conversations back to my nationality. Dealing with him is tedious and I largely try to avoid him. This year may be more challenging than the last.
Staying motivated is hard right now. We have eight months left and it’s simultaneously under- and overwhelming. Fortunately, my old counterpart ended up getting a job at the neighboring 9-year school. I asked her if I could go help her there, where she’ll be teaching much more agreeable 4 – 8th graders, and she accepted my offer. I feel good about that and I’m hoping we can take this time to finally get on the same page. Aside from school work, I’m developing an entire course on American History through the Arts with another volunteer who teaches at the university level. Another friend of mine has extended to serve a third year and is working with the English Language Teachers Association, so opportunities exist there as well. There’s also a teacher training that I’m helping to plan and conduct with two other volunteers as well as the Peace Corps projects (the newsletter, VAC) to keep me busy. So although my formal assignment is a high school, I’m involved in so many other things that it’s hard to keep track. I’m trying to document things well so I can easily recall them for job interviews and applications as well as examining my experience and seeing what other things I’d like to add to it in this last year. I’m trying to think about the future and what I can do here.
I don’t need a lot of praise. Most of our work is undervalued or goes unacknowledged, and that’s fine. We don’t often see the results of what we do. So maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that I was close to tearing up last week when I was at the village seamstress’s house. I have taught and privately tutored her daughters pretty much since I’ve been here. She said she wanted to buy me a gift because of how grateful she is for what I’ve done. “I would never be able to afford it,” she told me. That’s something I’ve always known and always kept on my mind during the times when I’ve wondered what I’m doing here. I think it’s that really, so many of the small, regular interactions add up for a much larger and significant effect that we sometimes can’t see. And Serg spoke for me when she said, “Sofie doesn’t want anything. Being able to work with such great students is enough.” And it is.
My counterpart was let go the week before school started. Our enrollment continues to drop and the outlook isn’t great going forward. It’s not so wonderful for me either. I wanted to work on a more solid and beneficial relationship with my counterpart this year and was disappointed for the both of us when I got the news. Even though I have a year under my belt, it’s every bit as difficult this year to define my role and get activities up and running. The other English teacher that remains at our school is openly hostile towards me ever since he asked me to help students cheat on national exams and I denied him. He interpreted my saying no as me thinking I’m somehow better because I’m an American and inexplicably brings all conversations back to my nationality. Dealing with him is tedious and I largely try to avoid him. This year may be more challenging than the last.
Staying motivated is hard right now. We have eight months left and it’s simultaneously under- and overwhelming. Fortunately, my old counterpart ended up getting a job at the neighboring 9-year school. I asked her if I could go help her there, where she’ll be teaching much more agreeable 4 – 8th graders, and she accepted my offer. I feel good about that and I’m hoping we can take this time to finally get on the same page. Aside from school work, I’m developing an entire course on American History through the Arts with another volunteer who teaches at the university level. Another friend of mine has extended to serve a third year and is working with the English Language Teachers Association, so opportunities exist there as well. There’s also a teacher training that I’m helping to plan and conduct with two other volunteers as well as the Peace Corps projects (the newsletter, VAC) to keep me busy. So although my formal assignment is a high school, I’m involved in so many other things that it’s hard to keep track. I’m trying to document things well so I can easily recall them for job interviews and applications as well as examining my experience and seeing what other things I’d like to add to it in this last year. I’m trying to think about the future and what I can do here.
I don’t need a lot of praise. Most of our work is undervalued or goes unacknowledged, and that’s fine. We don’t often see the results of what we do. So maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that I was close to tearing up last week when I was at the village seamstress’s house. I have taught and privately tutored her daughters pretty much since I’ve been here. She said she wanted to buy me a gift because of how grateful she is for what I’ve done. “I would never be able to afford it,” she told me. That’s something I’ve always known and always kept on my mind during the times when I’ve wondered what I’m doing here. I think it’s that really, so many of the small, regular interactions add up for a much larger and significant effect that we sometimes can’t see. And Serg spoke for me when she said, “Sofie doesn’t want anything. Being able to work with such great students is enough.” And it is.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Devil’s Highway
I’ve always been interested in immigration issues, especially as they pertain to human rights. In fact, my first internship was at an immigration law firm. While I’m definitely not lawyer and/or paper pusher material, it provided an interesting insight into very personal stories of what it takes to go to America. Recently, I read Luis Alberto Urrea’s shocking The Devil’s Highway, a book which details a harrowing cross-border trip taken by twenty-six Mexicans to the US through southern Arizona. Only fourteen survived the scorching temperatures as Urrea graphically details what happens to a person who dies of hyperthermia.
I find the growing American xenophobia, fear-mongering and right wing extremism disheartening, and on occasion, terrifying. People have forgotten in the wake of 9/11 panic that we are a country of immigrants and that one of the things that makes America unique is this diversity. Albania is 98% ethnically homogenous; Germany is 88%. The largest ethnic group in the US comes in at 66% of the population.
Maybe I cannot fully understand the situation in the Southwestern United States, but I do understand illegal immigration and the push/pull factors that drive the system: Albania is a perfect example. I asked my host sister how many Albanians she knew that had “illegally left Albania for work in Greece or Italy,” and she told me: “A zillion.” Like Mexican immigrants, Albanians leave to do the grunt work their European Union counterparts refuse to do. Like Mexicans, Albanians have a less elaborate system of “coyotes,” professional guides that escort would-be illegal immigrants over the border for hefty sums. Like Mexicans, Albanians leave mostly for financial reasons. Any complete immigration policy must address these human and economic factors. Living here has allowed me to see how people deal with poverty, broken and corrupt public systems, and an overall lack of hope. Most Americans have no idea what any of these things mean.
I agree with President Obama when he says that our immigration system is “broken.” Firstly, the system is infinitely more complicated than most people are aware of. I feel that the media does not adequately inform the public when it comes to the complexity of the issue.
Probably the largest complaint against illegal immigration is that undocumented workers enter the United States, take American jobs, don’t pay taxes and use social services that they don’t pay for. It’s hard for me to explain how wrong those statements are. In a nutshell: most workers take jobs Americans would refuse to do, they frequently pay taxes in some form, and are less likely to use social services due to fears of deportation. For those claiming they are a burden on the system, consider the costs of rounding up an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants and then deporting them. Wouldn’t it be better to give them amnesty and turn them into taxpayers, since an appeal to human rights isn’t enough by itself? Economically speaking, illegal immigrants contribute to the economy by buying goods and services in their communities. Even if they send money home they still pay bank fees. I think anti-illegal immigrant groups conveniently pick and choose statistics. If Americans want to pick fruit in the sun, let them. If you want to deport illegal immigrants, consider how many people would want to pay $20 for a couple oranges picked by Americans. Illegal immigrants fill an important need in the American economy and should be appreciated for the back breaking and often unpleasant work that they do. It is simply reality: the US benefits greatly from this arrangement and anti-illegal immigrant groups need to stop acting like this is just a taker in this Mexico/US relationship.
What would a new solution to immigration look like? First and foremost, it’s a human rights issue. We are talking about human beings whose only crime is trying to improve their lives by any means possible. They are without any legal standing, meaning that crimes against them often go unreported. Think about how this effects people brought to the US against their will: trafficking victims. Are they supposed to be punished? People, illegal and legal, deserve protection in the eyes of the law. Status shouldn’t be a prerequisite for having rights. We can agree that illegal immigrants have broken a law by entering without the proper papers, but there needs to be a solution based on amnesty. Why should people who have spent ten years here as otherwise model citizens be punished? Some people think that amnesty will increase the number of border crossings, but I think it’s just more fear tactics. A person who can’t feed their family isn’t going to be more likely to chance it just because they may get amnesty. We are talking about people who live day-to-day, something that it’s taken me a long time to understand living in a developing country. People in poverty aren’t thinking about the future, they aren’t thinking about school or the newest shiny gadget like most of us in developed countries do. They are thinking about survival and usually no more than a week in advance. They aren’t going to be reading up on amnesty status before packing a backpack and going into the desert.
A finally, no political discussion can be complete without somehow coming to the topic of terrorism. Given that most of the debate centers around the US/Mexico border, it’s very unlikely that the type of terrorists we are told to be afraid of are crossing this border. I know this is probably scary and amazing, but no border is safe. Ever. The way I see it, we have two options: to be paralyzed with the fear of an imminent attack from people who aren’t white just like us and to regard anyone of foreign extract with suspicion, or to accept the realities of life in 2010, doing what we can to avoid and prevent attacks but otherwise having the courage to live our lives and still feel more love than fear for our fellow inhabitants of earth. I overwhelmingly chose the latter.
“There should be no such thing as an illegal person on this planet.” – Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, advocate for border reforms and more human treatment of the undocumented.
I find the growing American xenophobia, fear-mongering and right wing extremism disheartening, and on occasion, terrifying. People have forgotten in the wake of 9/11 panic that we are a country of immigrants and that one of the things that makes America unique is this diversity. Albania is 98% ethnically homogenous; Germany is 88%. The largest ethnic group in the US comes in at 66% of the population.
Maybe I cannot fully understand the situation in the Southwestern United States, but I do understand illegal immigration and the push/pull factors that drive the system: Albania is a perfect example. I asked my host sister how many Albanians she knew that had “illegally left Albania for work in Greece or Italy,” and she told me: “A zillion.” Like Mexican immigrants, Albanians leave to do the grunt work their European Union counterparts refuse to do. Like Mexicans, Albanians have a less elaborate system of “coyotes,” professional guides that escort would-be illegal immigrants over the border for hefty sums. Like Mexicans, Albanians leave mostly for financial reasons. Any complete immigration policy must address these human and economic factors. Living here has allowed me to see how people deal with poverty, broken and corrupt public systems, and an overall lack of hope. Most Americans have no idea what any of these things mean.
I agree with President Obama when he says that our immigration system is “broken.” Firstly, the system is infinitely more complicated than most people are aware of. I feel that the media does not adequately inform the public when it comes to the complexity of the issue.
Probably the largest complaint against illegal immigration is that undocumented workers enter the United States, take American jobs, don’t pay taxes and use social services that they don’t pay for. It’s hard for me to explain how wrong those statements are. In a nutshell: most workers take jobs Americans would refuse to do, they frequently pay taxes in some form, and are less likely to use social services due to fears of deportation. For those claiming they are a burden on the system, consider the costs of rounding up an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants and then deporting them. Wouldn’t it be better to give them amnesty and turn them into taxpayers, since an appeal to human rights isn’t enough by itself? Economically speaking, illegal immigrants contribute to the economy by buying goods and services in their communities. Even if they send money home they still pay bank fees. I think anti-illegal immigrant groups conveniently pick and choose statistics. If Americans want to pick fruit in the sun, let them. If you want to deport illegal immigrants, consider how many people would want to pay $20 for a couple oranges picked by Americans. Illegal immigrants fill an important need in the American economy and should be appreciated for the back breaking and often unpleasant work that they do. It is simply reality: the US benefits greatly from this arrangement and anti-illegal immigrant groups need to stop acting like this is just a taker in this Mexico/US relationship.
What would a new solution to immigration look like? First and foremost, it’s a human rights issue. We are talking about human beings whose only crime is trying to improve their lives by any means possible. They are without any legal standing, meaning that crimes against them often go unreported. Think about how this effects people brought to the US against their will: trafficking victims. Are they supposed to be punished? People, illegal and legal, deserve protection in the eyes of the law. Status shouldn’t be a prerequisite for having rights. We can agree that illegal immigrants have broken a law by entering without the proper papers, but there needs to be a solution based on amnesty. Why should people who have spent ten years here as otherwise model citizens be punished? Some people think that amnesty will increase the number of border crossings, but I think it’s just more fear tactics. A person who can’t feed their family isn’t going to be more likely to chance it just because they may get amnesty. We are talking about people who live day-to-day, something that it’s taken me a long time to understand living in a developing country. People in poverty aren’t thinking about the future, they aren’t thinking about school or the newest shiny gadget like most of us in developed countries do. They are thinking about survival and usually no more than a week in advance. They aren’t going to be reading up on amnesty status before packing a backpack and going into the desert.
A finally, no political discussion can be complete without somehow coming to the topic of terrorism. Given that most of the debate centers around the US/Mexico border, it’s very unlikely that the type of terrorists we are told to be afraid of are crossing this border. I know this is probably scary and amazing, but no border is safe. Ever. The way I see it, we have two options: to be paralyzed with the fear of an imminent attack from people who aren’t white just like us and to regard anyone of foreign extract with suspicion, or to accept the realities of life in 2010, doing what we can to avoid and prevent attacks but otherwise having the courage to live our lives and still feel more love than fear for our fellow inhabitants of earth. I overwhelmingly chose the latter.
“There should be no such thing as an illegal person on this planet.” – Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, advocate for border reforms and more human treatment of the undocumented.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
In Praise of “Kos”
“Kos” is “yogurt” in Albanian. Like other countries in this part of the world, yogurt isn’t necessarily something fruity. In the Albanian kitchen, it’s usually served to complement rice or in combination with a lighter dinner, perhaps composed of bread, cheese and tomato. Americans use it as a substitute for sour cream or as a catch-all for any dairy product we may be missing. Really, its uses are limitless. I’ve discovered a previously unknown capacity to eat it whenever, wherever and for any reason, especially since it’s always around.
My host mom makes our yogurt, which was something that used to surprise and amaze all PCVs when we first moved here. Kate had a discussion with my counterpart about making yogurt during counterpart conference last year. As my counterpart was describing the process (heat the milk, add some old yogurt), we jokingly and continuously kept asking her, “Yes, but how do you get the first kos? Where does the first yogurt come from?” The real answer is “buy some from the store,” but Kate and I were trying to imagine the very first yogurt. How did they make it if there was no previous yogurt to add to the mix?
My host mom uses “farmer milk,” which I’ve addressed in previous posts. It’s strained to get out any pieces of anything and then boiled. Afterwards, about 2 tablespoons of previous yogurt are added and the yogurt container is covered with a bunch of plastic bags and paper towels to keep the heat in while the cultures grow. It’s really very simple.
Albanians will tell you to eat yogurt because it’s good for you and it will make you skinny. I don’t know about that, but it’s definitely delicious. What’s even better than regular dairy is sheep’s milk, which also comes from the village farmers. It’s incredibly rich and has a more solid consistency… and definitely an acquired taste.
Having laughed about the differences in animal sounds before (Albanian roosters have the European “kikerik,” and dogs “hahm,”) we had another laugh about kos dele, or sheep’s yogurt. My host dad pushed the yogurt container towards me and said, “Eat some, it’s kos beh beh behhh.” I replied, “Oh, it’s kos lope (dairy yogurt)?” He just shook his head.
My host mom makes our yogurt, which was something that used to surprise and amaze all PCVs when we first moved here. Kate had a discussion with my counterpart about making yogurt during counterpart conference last year. As my counterpart was describing the process (heat the milk, add some old yogurt), we jokingly and continuously kept asking her, “Yes, but how do you get the first kos? Where does the first yogurt come from?” The real answer is “buy some from the store,” but Kate and I were trying to imagine the very first yogurt. How did they make it if there was no previous yogurt to add to the mix?
My host mom uses “farmer milk,” which I’ve addressed in previous posts. It’s strained to get out any pieces of anything and then boiled. Afterwards, about 2 tablespoons of previous yogurt are added and the yogurt container is covered with a bunch of plastic bags and paper towels to keep the heat in while the cultures grow. It’s really very simple.
Albanians will tell you to eat yogurt because it’s good for you and it will make you skinny. I don’t know about that, but it’s definitely delicious. What’s even better than regular dairy is sheep’s milk, which also comes from the village farmers. It’s incredibly rich and has a more solid consistency… and definitely an acquired taste.
Having laughed about the differences in animal sounds before (Albanian roosters have the European “kikerik,” and dogs “hahm,”) we had another laugh about kos dele, or sheep’s yogurt. My host dad pushed the yogurt container towards me and said, “Eat some, it’s kos beh beh behhh.” I replied, “Oh, it’s kos lope (dairy yogurt)?” He just shook his head.
“Hajde, pijme një Kafe”
Thankfully, Albania is a country with a coffee culture. Being invited to drink a coffee is usually a way of opening up communication lines. Coffee is usually informal, meaning that Albanians haven’t grasped the concept of doing business over a cup of coffee. I’m fairly certain “business lunch” isn’t in the Albanian vocabulary either. Instead, coffee can be a one to two hour opportunity to just sit around, talk, and relationship build. It’s another hangover from the Ottoman Empire.
For the most part, Albanians drink “express.” These are powerful little cups of coffee tasting burnt to varying degrees. When you go to a café in Tirana, you’ll be disappointed with the selection. No lattes or cappuccinos really, just express and macchiato.
Coffee is usually brewed in the espresso manner (high pressure), but there’s also kafe turke and kafe filter. Kafe turke (Turkish coffee) is made in a small steel pot and the coffee and sugar are poured in along with the water and heated until it inevitably boils out all over your stove. I like this every once in a while, but a lot of people complain that it’s too gritty since the fine grounds are in the bottom of your cup. Kafe filter, or filtered coffee, is uncommon. I’ve only ever seen it in the one American restaurant, which is a testimony that tall, filtered coffee is mostly a foreign concept.
The only problem with the coffee culture that preaches, “Go strong or go home,” is the number it’s done on our taste buds. I’ve had this discussion recently with other PCVs, and we’ve all reached the same conclusion: drinking “kafe filter,” when available, tastes like drinking nothing. This is a problem when it comes to thinking about going home, since I complained to my parents years ago about their weak coffee. I made a beautiful cup of Jacobs Kronung from a big pack of coffee that cost more than I spend on groceries in a week… and it tasted like nothing. I thought maybe I made it wrong. But in the end, it was my taste buds that were wrong.
Some people hold out when it comes to high-powered espresso by splurging for French presses. Others buy Nescafe instant coffee, the gold standard in countries where drip coffee isn’t popular. I’ve seen a particularly wonderful rigged creation in Pogradec: the bottom of a French press combined with a coffee filter that rides in the top and into which hot water is poured. One thing is for certain: our close of service conference in February should have a standalone session entitled, “Reverse culture shock: American coffee.”
For the most part, Albanians drink “express.” These are powerful little cups of coffee tasting burnt to varying degrees. When you go to a café in Tirana, you’ll be disappointed with the selection. No lattes or cappuccinos really, just express and macchiato.
Coffee is usually brewed in the espresso manner (high pressure), but there’s also kafe turke and kafe filter. Kafe turke (Turkish coffee) is made in a small steel pot and the coffee and sugar are poured in along with the water and heated until it inevitably boils out all over your stove. I like this every once in a while, but a lot of people complain that it’s too gritty since the fine grounds are in the bottom of your cup. Kafe filter, or filtered coffee, is uncommon. I’ve only ever seen it in the one American restaurant, which is a testimony that tall, filtered coffee is mostly a foreign concept.
The only problem with the coffee culture that preaches, “Go strong or go home,” is the number it’s done on our taste buds. I’ve had this discussion recently with other PCVs, and we’ve all reached the same conclusion: drinking “kafe filter,” when available, tastes like drinking nothing. This is a problem when it comes to thinking about going home, since I complained to my parents years ago about their weak coffee. I made a beautiful cup of Jacobs Kronung from a big pack of coffee that cost more than I spend on groceries in a week… and it tasted like nothing. I thought maybe I made it wrong. But in the end, it was my taste buds that were wrong.
Some people hold out when it comes to high-powered espresso by splurging for French presses. Others buy Nescafe instant coffee, the gold standard in countries where drip coffee isn’t popular. I’ve seen a particularly wonderful rigged creation in Pogradec: the bottom of a French press combined with a coffee filter that rides in the top and into which hot water is poured. One thing is for certain: our close of service conference in February should have a standalone session entitled, “Reverse culture shock: American coffee.”
Shumë urime për mua
August has been busy. In the beginning of the month, the editorial group of Hajde Hajde, the Peace Corps Albania newsletter, met to put the Summer 2010 issue together. I’m very proud with what we’ve created. After the weekend-long meeting, it was off to Tirana for the conference I’ve spent the last two months planning. It was nice to see people getting something out of it as well as to be recognized for the work it took. Now that all these things are over, I can actually breathe a little bit and enjoy the rest of the summer. And then there’s the birthday celebration in Berat again this year.
Birthdays normally aren’t a huge deal for me. Yeah it’s nice to get together and have a party, is it that important that another year has gone by? I look at my birthday like I look at New Year’s: it’s a time to reflect on the past year and think about the changes that need to be made for the next. Well over the halfway point, I’ve made a list of things I’ve learned this year and what I want for my “new year.”
1. The best decision I’ve made all year was living in a host family. They have been good to me, they’ve taught me so much, and they’ve been my light in the dark.
2. What constitutes a good relationship and how to maintain them. This year has been full of interpersonal inconsistencies, ups-and-downs, distrust and irresponsible or unreliable people. Some of this is situational due to the stress and inconsistencies of life here. It has lead me to reassess my life here and the people in it, hopefully learn from my own mistakes, and make sure that my second year here is a bit more positive on the interpersonal front.
3. Responsibility. Peace Corps doesn’t hold your hand. For the most part, you’re by yourself. No real performance reviews and limited visits from Peace Corps employees to my site. It is up to you to make the most of your service since a lot of it is just on an honor system. This leads to lots of volunteers milking the lack of any oversight for all it’s worth.
4. Emotionally complicated people and poor communicators. I’ve learned a lot about dealing with these types of people, enough to know that maybe I shouldn’t take any of these things personally. People handle their emotions and how to express them very differently. I need to be more patient with people that are different from me and definitely more empathetic.
5. Rediscovering the magic of reading (and reconfirming what my professors always told me: “Sofie, you need to be with an intellectual.”) Physically, I’ve been in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Egypt. Mentally and emotionally, I’ve been to: Africa; India; Barcelona; the Libyan Desert with Saint-Exupery; Uzbekistan; Chicago’s Wrigley Field; Italy; the Devil’s Highway; 1950s Iowa; and the former Yugoslavia. Not bad considering the flight to Egypt was $650 but all the other “travel” I’ve done was free.
6. Exercise. For the last couple months, I’ve done 30+ minutes of cardio and other exercise 5+ times a week. It’s especially helpful in dealing with stress, but sometimes it’s just a nice way to clear my head. I’ll probably end up with a gym membership (gasp!) starting in the fall to help with winter doldrums.
7. Simplifying my life. I think we’re all guilty of overcomplicating things, especially when it’s really unnecessary. Reassessing my life and relationships here combined with removing myself from negative, unnecessary situations has already gone a long way.
8. Not giving into the temptation of comparison. Everyone’s situation is unique. We aren’t in a competition to see who can do the most. We aren’t here to critique others who don’t do as much. We are just here and we’re responsible for our actions, and that’s enough to keep us busy for a while.
9. Looking at an international future. It’s time to start that job search again, and it seems like every article I read in The Economist is telling me more bad news about the American labor market. As much as I wish I could find a good job in the US, I’m not so sure it’s possible. In many ways I think the US is just done. Not that anywhere is perfect, but looking at numbers, cost of living, educational opportunities, etc., Germany still looks like a pretty great place. On paper it looks better than the US, without a doubt.
10. Not being able to please everyone. This is something I’ve always known, but never really had to learn like I’ve learned it here, especially in dealing with difficult people. Sometimes you just need to take a step back.
Birthdays normally aren’t a huge deal for me. Yeah it’s nice to get together and have a party, is it that important that another year has gone by? I look at my birthday like I look at New Year’s: it’s a time to reflect on the past year and think about the changes that need to be made for the next. Well over the halfway point, I’ve made a list of things I’ve learned this year and what I want for my “new year.”
1. The best decision I’ve made all year was living in a host family. They have been good to me, they’ve taught me so much, and they’ve been my light in the dark.
2. What constitutes a good relationship and how to maintain them. This year has been full of interpersonal inconsistencies, ups-and-downs, distrust and irresponsible or unreliable people. Some of this is situational due to the stress and inconsistencies of life here. It has lead me to reassess my life here and the people in it, hopefully learn from my own mistakes, and make sure that my second year here is a bit more positive on the interpersonal front.
3. Responsibility. Peace Corps doesn’t hold your hand. For the most part, you’re by yourself. No real performance reviews and limited visits from Peace Corps employees to my site. It is up to you to make the most of your service since a lot of it is just on an honor system. This leads to lots of volunteers milking the lack of any oversight for all it’s worth.
4. Emotionally complicated people and poor communicators. I’ve learned a lot about dealing with these types of people, enough to know that maybe I shouldn’t take any of these things personally. People handle their emotions and how to express them very differently. I need to be more patient with people that are different from me and definitely more empathetic.
5. Rediscovering the magic of reading (and reconfirming what my professors always told me: “Sofie, you need to be with an intellectual.”) Physically, I’ve been in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Egypt. Mentally and emotionally, I’ve been to: Africa; India; Barcelona; the Libyan Desert with Saint-Exupery; Uzbekistan; Chicago’s Wrigley Field; Italy; the Devil’s Highway; 1950s Iowa; and the former Yugoslavia. Not bad considering the flight to Egypt was $650 but all the other “travel” I’ve done was free.
6. Exercise. For the last couple months, I’ve done 30+ minutes of cardio and other exercise 5+ times a week. It’s especially helpful in dealing with stress, but sometimes it’s just a nice way to clear my head. I’ll probably end up with a gym membership (gasp!) starting in the fall to help with winter doldrums.
7. Simplifying my life. I think we’re all guilty of overcomplicating things, especially when it’s really unnecessary. Reassessing my life and relationships here combined with removing myself from negative, unnecessary situations has already gone a long way.
8. Not giving into the temptation of comparison. Everyone’s situation is unique. We aren’t in a competition to see who can do the most. We aren’t here to critique others who don’t do as much. We are just here and we’re responsible for our actions, and that’s enough to keep us busy for a while.
9. Looking at an international future. It’s time to start that job search again, and it seems like every article I read in The Economist is telling me more bad news about the American labor market. As much as I wish I could find a good job in the US, I’m not so sure it’s possible. In many ways I think the US is just done. Not that anywhere is perfect, but looking at numbers, cost of living, educational opportunities, etc., Germany still looks like a pretty great place. On paper it looks better than the US, without a doubt.
10. Not being able to please everyone. This is something I’ve always known, but never really had to learn like I’ve learned it here, especially in dealing with difficult people. Sometimes you just need to take a step back.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Qeni po ben shumë zhurmë
Repeat after me: “chain-i poe behn shoom zhorm.” They are your Albanian words of the day. And they’re exactly what I told my neighbor when her dog spent the last day torturing me mentally. As patiently and considerately as I could, I stood in front of her in her store and told her ”The dog is making a lot of noise.”
First off, although Golem is a small village with an inflated population, it’s the noisiest place I’ve ever lived. This includes Center City, Philadelphia and its occasional drunk people outside my window or sirens signaling the latest person to get shot. Peace Corps has it listed at 12,000 which is nowhere near accurate for the hillside village, but probably is the figure counting the municipal territory that stretches for several miles. There are the peripheral sounds running constantly in the background: loud vehicles, prayer calls five times a day from the mosque on top of the hill, yelling people, my host family’s gate being slammed several times because people don’t know how to close it, roosters at all hours of the day, etc. Eventually they don’t stand out so much. But then there are our neighbors across the street.
The building across the street from me is probably one of the tallest in Golem. It’s five stories high and very new. On the bottom floor, a couple in their 50s runs a grocery store that’s the best one here in terms of selection but not in price. Basically since I’ve moved here, they have been building another building just like it on the other side, leading us to call them “The Twin Towers of Golem.” They’ve made a huge mess making them, spilling concrete on the road, digging a giant pool in a field to mix concrete and sprawling countless boards all over the place. I jokingly refer to the 8’X12’ hole for cement mixing as “The Community Pool of Golem.” It’s a way of dealing with the displeasure of the whole thing. The noise is unbearable. The trucks come every morning and for much of the last year, all you could hear were power tools, hammering, etc. I didn’t think it would ever end. Then we entered the “iron age” and it got even worse: every morning, the trucks would show up at 6 or so and drop large iron construction poles. They would literally drop them off of a truck. You can’t imagine the sound of it, iron pole on top of iron pole scaring you awake. It makes an MRI machine look like a good napping locale. The daily iron ritual was a favorite for all the visitors I’ve had this summer.
All of this we’ve taken in stride, at least until the dog. I first heard it yesterday in the fields but couldn’t see it. When I kept hearing it from the same place, I knew it was tied. It wasn’t until much later in the day, and literally several hours of non-stop, high-pitched barking, that I realized it was coming from in front of the grocery store. I asked the woman who owns the store if it was her dog and she customarily shook her head. “My son bought it for his children,” she said. That would have been sweet if the dog weren’t so annoying. To be fair, I sympathize with the dog. The leash was about a meter long, and all day it had to sit and watch its people from 30 feet away while they never went over to interact with it or acknowledge it. That would make anyone go crazy. But I feel like I’ve already put up long enough with all the noise from them and letting the dog thing go wouldn’t be right.
I told my host mom how noisy it had been, and she told me to go say something. We spent a few minutes last night concocting schemes. My host brother was a little too adamant that we poison it. I suggested just letting it go in the middle of the night, my brain clearly wracked from the passive torture it received. Alkys came up with the best idea: take it for ransom. All of these seemed like good ideas.
And here’s where I get the cultural upperhand: it comes from the concept of “turp,” or “shame.” I’ve written before how “shame” is present in Albanian in a number of sayings and expressions. It plays a big part of the culture here, i.e. doing things that are shameful. It’s not much better when people accuse each other of having “no shame.” Shame is a big motivator. Unfortunately, it’s also why any Albanian pleas of decency about the noise pollution would fall on deaf ears: it would be shameful for an Albanian to complain to another Albanian about it, really. Or rather, the Albanian receiving the request to tone it down would look at the other shamefully for making such a request. It’s different for me for a lot of things, and this is one of them. The tables turn. I’m allowed to say it specifically because I’m an outsider. Yes, maybe the store owner won’t be pleased with me and will be annoyed, but my request is at least something the culture binds them to consider. We ended last night’s conversation by me saying if they didn’t fix it by tomorrow, I’d go talk to them.
After a terrible night of sleep because of a wedding and its loud music, I was woken up at 7 by piercing dog barks. That was enough. I put my clothes on, went across the street, reciting the speech I had in mind (which would have been a doozy). Serg told me to calm down when she saw me out of my room and a crazy look in my eye. I went across the street, said good morning, and then asked if I could “make a question.” The store owner said yes, and I said, “Can you make something with the dog? All day it makes like this. Hahm, hahm, hahm (Albanian dogs don’t bark, they “hahm.”) I can’t endure it anymore. Just now, I woke up because of dog. Please, please make something. Put it downstairs or upstairs, but please make something.” Sure enough, twenty minutes later and there was no more hahm, hahm, hahm. My sister came into my room to thank me by saying, “I was just wondering… did the dog stop, or did I go deaf?”
First off, although Golem is a small village with an inflated population, it’s the noisiest place I’ve ever lived. This includes Center City, Philadelphia and its occasional drunk people outside my window or sirens signaling the latest person to get shot. Peace Corps has it listed at 12,000 which is nowhere near accurate for the hillside village, but probably is the figure counting the municipal territory that stretches for several miles. There are the peripheral sounds running constantly in the background: loud vehicles, prayer calls five times a day from the mosque on top of the hill, yelling people, my host family’s gate being slammed several times because people don’t know how to close it, roosters at all hours of the day, etc. Eventually they don’t stand out so much. But then there are our neighbors across the street.
The building across the street from me is probably one of the tallest in Golem. It’s five stories high and very new. On the bottom floor, a couple in their 50s runs a grocery store that’s the best one here in terms of selection but not in price. Basically since I’ve moved here, they have been building another building just like it on the other side, leading us to call them “The Twin Towers of Golem.” They’ve made a huge mess making them, spilling concrete on the road, digging a giant pool in a field to mix concrete and sprawling countless boards all over the place. I jokingly refer to the 8’X12’ hole for cement mixing as “The Community Pool of Golem.” It’s a way of dealing with the displeasure of the whole thing. The noise is unbearable. The trucks come every morning and for much of the last year, all you could hear were power tools, hammering, etc. I didn’t think it would ever end. Then we entered the “iron age” and it got even worse: every morning, the trucks would show up at 6 or so and drop large iron construction poles. They would literally drop them off of a truck. You can’t imagine the sound of it, iron pole on top of iron pole scaring you awake. It makes an MRI machine look like a good napping locale. The daily iron ritual was a favorite for all the visitors I’ve had this summer.
All of this we’ve taken in stride, at least until the dog. I first heard it yesterday in the fields but couldn’t see it. When I kept hearing it from the same place, I knew it was tied. It wasn’t until much later in the day, and literally several hours of non-stop, high-pitched barking, that I realized it was coming from in front of the grocery store. I asked the woman who owns the store if it was her dog and she customarily shook her head. “My son bought it for his children,” she said. That would have been sweet if the dog weren’t so annoying. To be fair, I sympathize with the dog. The leash was about a meter long, and all day it had to sit and watch its people from 30 feet away while they never went over to interact with it or acknowledge it. That would make anyone go crazy. But I feel like I’ve already put up long enough with all the noise from them and letting the dog thing go wouldn’t be right.
I told my host mom how noisy it had been, and she told me to go say something. We spent a few minutes last night concocting schemes. My host brother was a little too adamant that we poison it. I suggested just letting it go in the middle of the night, my brain clearly wracked from the passive torture it received. Alkys came up with the best idea: take it for ransom. All of these seemed like good ideas.
And here’s where I get the cultural upperhand: it comes from the concept of “turp,” or “shame.” I’ve written before how “shame” is present in Albanian in a number of sayings and expressions. It plays a big part of the culture here, i.e. doing things that are shameful. It’s not much better when people accuse each other of having “no shame.” Shame is a big motivator. Unfortunately, it’s also why any Albanian pleas of decency about the noise pollution would fall on deaf ears: it would be shameful for an Albanian to complain to another Albanian about it, really. Or rather, the Albanian receiving the request to tone it down would look at the other shamefully for making such a request. It’s different for me for a lot of things, and this is one of them. The tables turn. I’m allowed to say it specifically because I’m an outsider. Yes, maybe the store owner won’t be pleased with me and will be annoyed, but my request is at least something the culture binds them to consider. We ended last night’s conversation by me saying if they didn’t fix it by tomorrow, I’d go talk to them.
After a terrible night of sleep because of a wedding and its loud music, I was woken up at 7 by piercing dog barks. That was enough. I put my clothes on, went across the street, reciting the speech I had in mind (which would have been a doozy). Serg told me to calm down when she saw me out of my room and a crazy look in my eye. I went across the street, said good morning, and then asked if I could “make a question.” The store owner said yes, and I said, “Can you make something with the dog? All day it makes like this. Hahm, hahm, hahm (Albanian dogs don’t bark, they “hahm.”) I can’t endure it anymore. Just now, I woke up because of dog. Please, please make something. Put it downstairs or upstairs, but please make something.” Sure enough, twenty minutes later and there was no more hahm, hahm, hahm. My sister came into my room to thank me by saying, “I was just wondering… did the dog stop, or did I go deaf?”
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
It’s a Mental Game
This past week I read The Ponds of Kalambayi. It’s the memoir of Peace Corps volunteer Mike Tidwell, who served in a village in Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the late 80s. It seems that so many Peace Corps volunteers are either writers or readers; many are both. I enjoy reading stories from other volunteers and comparing and contrasting experiences.
Tidwell worked as a fishing extension agent. During his two year service, he taught Zairians fishing culture. After a rigorous training in the US, he moved to a village close to Mbuji-Mayi in the country’s south central region. Tidwell’s main work involves visiting the men of nearby villages on his motorcycle, scouting out potential areas to dig ponds, instructing them on the digging (often taking 50,000 shovelfuls to get the right size), teaching them how to add the proper compost to the pond and also how to feed the fish. Along the way, he learns about generosity in the form of selfless, community-centric villagers; and the greed of Westerners who exploit the village farmers by forcing them to grow cotton, only for them to buy at low prices, and the exploitative diamond trade in Mbuji-Mayi. While Tidwell was there, a normal Zairian made $170 a year – or the amount of 2 ½ months of Tidwell’s living allowance.
It takes Tidwell along time to convince people. Many villagers think that he will take the harvest of fish. He is, after all, a white foreigner in an Africa that’s always been pillaged by his kind. But he gains the farmers’ trust and eventually ends up running a successful project, no thanks to the corrupt government officials that want a piece of the action. The main point of the project is to give malnourished people a chance at daily protein. Tidwell preaches an ideology of limiting family size as well – something villagers can’t understand. Many village men would rather take the trouble of digging two ponds, if only because that means they can have more children. What Tidwell understands in time after many frustrating discussions is that intentionally limiting family size is of little use when nature does it by itself. He attended over 200 funerals in two years, many of them caused by accidents or otherwise curable diseases.
The part that resonated with me the most comes in the later chapters of the book. In a tiff with the US government, the Zairian government refused to grant any additional visas for new volunteers. Tidwell’s Peace Corps director writes him a letter, begging him to extend for a third year so that a volunteer may remain in the valley and continue the work. Otherwise, it may be years until someone else came to take his space. Tidwell considers it briefly – until he acknowledges his own limits.
Alcoholism is a dark cloud amongst volunteers. The reasons that cause it are almost limitless. If stress is situational, part of me thinks alcoholism could be situational at times, too. Firstly, gender roles and societal expectations come into play in many of the countries volunteers are sent to. In most cases, it’s rude for a male volunteer to refuse a drink. In other cases, drinking is a social event that builds friendships, connects people, and paves the way for future working relationships. “In the beginning I drank to be sociable. I drank for entertainment – to relieve the monotony of village life. But now I was drinking seven days a week… Not by any stretch of the imagination could this be called normal consumption, (p. 254)” Tidwell said.
Alcoholism is also a side effect of depression, or at least serves as a coping mechanism when volunteers feel alone, homesick or frustrated with their work. Tidwell described workless days as such: “These weren’t good days for me. With no work to do, nothing on which to train my mind, I grew restless and depressed. Time seemed to slow down, then stop altogether… By one o’clock, a book tossed aside, I’d feel that tug, that need to do something… (p. 251)” The same reasons caused Tidwell to start drinking far more than he should have, and it was with the knowledge that he was slowly becoming an alcoholic that he decided to decline a third year. All of this supports the often underestimated mental and emotional toll that Peace Corps service takes.
Tidwell worked as a fishing extension agent. During his two year service, he taught Zairians fishing culture. After a rigorous training in the US, he moved to a village close to Mbuji-Mayi in the country’s south central region. Tidwell’s main work involves visiting the men of nearby villages on his motorcycle, scouting out potential areas to dig ponds, instructing them on the digging (often taking 50,000 shovelfuls to get the right size), teaching them how to add the proper compost to the pond and also how to feed the fish. Along the way, he learns about generosity in the form of selfless, community-centric villagers; and the greed of Westerners who exploit the village farmers by forcing them to grow cotton, only for them to buy at low prices, and the exploitative diamond trade in Mbuji-Mayi. While Tidwell was there, a normal Zairian made $170 a year – or the amount of 2 ½ months of Tidwell’s living allowance.
It takes Tidwell along time to convince people. Many villagers think that he will take the harvest of fish. He is, after all, a white foreigner in an Africa that’s always been pillaged by his kind. But he gains the farmers’ trust and eventually ends up running a successful project, no thanks to the corrupt government officials that want a piece of the action. The main point of the project is to give malnourished people a chance at daily protein. Tidwell preaches an ideology of limiting family size as well – something villagers can’t understand. Many village men would rather take the trouble of digging two ponds, if only because that means they can have more children. What Tidwell understands in time after many frustrating discussions is that intentionally limiting family size is of little use when nature does it by itself. He attended over 200 funerals in two years, many of them caused by accidents or otherwise curable diseases.
The part that resonated with me the most comes in the later chapters of the book. In a tiff with the US government, the Zairian government refused to grant any additional visas for new volunteers. Tidwell’s Peace Corps director writes him a letter, begging him to extend for a third year so that a volunteer may remain in the valley and continue the work. Otherwise, it may be years until someone else came to take his space. Tidwell considers it briefly – until he acknowledges his own limits.
Alcoholism is a dark cloud amongst volunteers. The reasons that cause it are almost limitless. If stress is situational, part of me thinks alcoholism could be situational at times, too. Firstly, gender roles and societal expectations come into play in many of the countries volunteers are sent to. In most cases, it’s rude for a male volunteer to refuse a drink. In other cases, drinking is a social event that builds friendships, connects people, and paves the way for future working relationships. “In the beginning I drank to be sociable. I drank for entertainment – to relieve the monotony of village life. But now I was drinking seven days a week… Not by any stretch of the imagination could this be called normal consumption, (p. 254)” Tidwell said.
Alcoholism is also a side effect of depression, or at least serves as a coping mechanism when volunteers feel alone, homesick or frustrated with their work. Tidwell described workless days as such: “These weren’t good days for me. With no work to do, nothing on which to train my mind, I grew restless and depressed. Time seemed to slow down, then stop altogether… By one o’clock, a book tossed aside, I’d feel that tug, that need to do something… (p. 251)” The same reasons caused Tidwell to start drinking far more than he should have, and it was with the knowledge that he was slowly becoming an alcoholic that he decided to decline a third year. All of this supports the often underestimated mental and emotional toll that Peace Corps service takes.
S’keni interes fare!
One thing that I’ve learned is the relationship between students, teachers and parents. I noticed this mostly when I worked at the K-5 program before I came here, but I can confidently and without a doubt say that good parents are active in their children’s education. Unfortunately in Albania, the only time we see parents at the school is if they are begging the director not to expel their children. One of the English teachers told me that one of the parents of a flagrantly poor student told our director: “Keep him here in school; otherwise I don’t know what to do with him.” It seems like every day here I observe or hear something more unbelievable than the previous day’s events, although I’m sure many American parents have found themselves in the same position. But why and how does it get that far?
My host mom and I had a big discussion over coffee yesterday morning. What I really wanted to do was sneak into the kitchen, make some toast, and go upstairs to do some work before my lesson. What really happened is the usual: my host mom asked if I was going to drink coffee, and I said yes. That indirectly implies that she would like some too and that we’d drink it together. In fact, the very question of whether I’m making coffee implies that she would gladly drink some with me. It’s one of the things I love about Albania. I’ve had great conversations with my host mom over grainy kafe turke grounds. After a discussion about some of my volunteer friends, it turned to education in general and our school in particular.
My host mom began with her usual complaint: “Alkys (my 15-year-old host brother) is in the house all day long and doesn’t learn English, even though he has you and Sergi (my host sister). What can I do?” I shrugged my shoulders, not wanting to say what I thought. “How about you deny him internet and television until he improves his grades?,” I thought. Recently, Alkys brought home a four in English that was kind of a joke in my house. A four in the Albanian system translates to an “F” in America. Sometimes being in another family and seeing how another culture raises children, I’m reminded of my own upbringing. I told my host mom that I never brought home such a low grade because it wasn’t possible. My parents didn’t leave any guesswork when it came to the consequences of unjustifiably poor performances. The closest I got was a D interim notice in 10th grade math; that alone cost me the ability to go out and work at an age where all my peers were getting jobs.
It’s a small part of my common lament: this is a largely consequence free society. Bring home an F? No problem! Speed on the highway? No problem! Didn’t get into the university you wanted? No problem! Most things are just brushed aside or paid for, and everything continues in this way. Maybe part of Alkys English deficiency comes from hours online or in front of the TV and a staggering lack of even the slightest reprimand when it comes to grades and behavior. I watch this, and I can kind of understand it, but I certainly can’t justify any of it.
My host mom’s defense was that he isn’t interested in learning. It’s something you hear frequently from teachers as well. And why should any student learn, if they can copy off their brightest peers and not face a reprimand from the director or their teachers? Where is there any incentive? In a country where people buy university enrollments and even degrees, where is the incentive? Where are the consequences? My host mom can certainly argue that she can’t do anything if my host brother doesn’t want to learn, but she has no one to blame if he’s not encouraged to do so. And as for the lack of interest, what can I as a teacher do to you if your own parents don’t care? How can I inspire you if they don’t? What good is my interest in you as a person and as a student if your own parents don’t even have it? Obviously I’m not trying to replace anyone’s parents, but teachers would probably function best if there were support and interest in their students’ home lives, which they sorely lack. One of my counterpart’s trademark lines when yelling at students is “s’keni interes fare,” meaning “you have no interest at all.” Granted, Albanian teachers often don’t do much to encourage interest. Rote learning still reigns supreme, and it leaves little room for conversation or other stimulation aside from the teacher lecturing over the students for 45 minutes. But it’s hard even when I’ve taught general lessons and tried to stimulate them, so it’s not the teachers’ fault entirely. I don’t think the answers will come any easier in year two.
The topic of funding for the school came up. It’s a bit of a sore spot for me right now after seeing how things went with the Austrians. I was going to make technology the focal point of my second year, but after spending 2 weeks in the computer lab and seeing how the students have destroyed the computers, I’m lost. I don’t understand how we have materials we don’t use and yet the desire for more things continues. Sometimes I feel like it’s all for show. I asked my director what the school needed, and he said a sound/PA system. But what purpose would that really serve? My host mom rattles off lists of materials and things we could use, but I lack the Albanian to make it clear that most grants won’t just give you “stuff.” You have to come up with a plan, a budget, a person who will maintain it, etc. And you have to hope that your students won’t ruin it in the process, which seems to be a big if. On top of that, grant writing is a huge undertaking that I refuse to do by myself. So even if I could think of something that would really be useful for the school, I’m not sure about my chances of having a consistent grant writing partner. Maybe this answer will come to me in the second year. In the meantime, there’s just this general feeling of hopelessness and the feeling that things won’t change that nags at me. Or the Albanian belief, which I know to be incorrect, that money can fix everything.
My host mom and I had a big discussion over coffee yesterday morning. What I really wanted to do was sneak into the kitchen, make some toast, and go upstairs to do some work before my lesson. What really happened is the usual: my host mom asked if I was going to drink coffee, and I said yes. That indirectly implies that she would like some too and that we’d drink it together. In fact, the very question of whether I’m making coffee implies that she would gladly drink some with me. It’s one of the things I love about Albania. I’ve had great conversations with my host mom over grainy kafe turke grounds. After a discussion about some of my volunteer friends, it turned to education in general and our school in particular.
My host mom began with her usual complaint: “Alkys (my 15-year-old host brother) is in the house all day long and doesn’t learn English, even though he has you and Sergi (my host sister). What can I do?” I shrugged my shoulders, not wanting to say what I thought. “How about you deny him internet and television until he improves his grades?,” I thought. Recently, Alkys brought home a four in English that was kind of a joke in my house. A four in the Albanian system translates to an “F” in America. Sometimes being in another family and seeing how another culture raises children, I’m reminded of my own upbringing. I told my host mom that I never brought home such a low grade because it wasn’t possible. My parents didn’t leave any guesswork when it came to the consequences of unjustifiably poor performances. The closest I got was a D interim notice in 10th grade math; that alone cost me the ability to go out and work at an age where all my peers were getting jobs.
It’s a small part of my common lament: this is a largely consequence free society. Bring home an F? No problem! Speed on the highway? No problem! Didn’t get into the university you wanted? No problem! Most things are just brushed aside or paid for, and everything continues in this way. Maybe part of Alkys English deficiency comes from hours online or in front of the TV and a staggering lack of even the slightest reprimand when it comes to grades and behavior. I watch this, and I can kind of understand it, but I certainly can’t justify any of it.
My host mom’s defense was that he isn’t interested in learning. It’s something you hear frequently from teachers as well. And why should any student learn, if they can copy off their brightest peers and not face a reprimand from the director or their teachers? Where is there any incentive? In a country where people buy university enrollments and even degrees, where is the incentive? Where are the consequences? My host mom can certainly argue that she can’t do anything if my host brother doesn’t want to learn, but she has no one to blame if he’s not encouraged to do so. And as for the lack of interest, what can I as a teacher do to you if your own parents don’t care? How can I inspire you if they don’t? What good is my interest in you as a person and as a student if your own parents don’t even have it? Obviously I’m not trying to replace anyone’s parents, but teachers would probably function best if there were support and interest in their students’ home lives, which they sorely lack. One of my counterpart’s trademark lines when yelling at students is “s’keni interes fare,” meaning “you have no interest at all.” Granted, Albanian teachers often don’t do much to encourage interest. Rote learning still reigns supreme, and it leaves little room for conversation or other stimulation aside from the teacher lecturing over the students for 45 minutes. But it’s hard even when I’ve taught general lessons and tried to stimulate them, so it’s not the teachers’ fault entirely. I don’t think the answers will come any easier in year two.
The topic of funding for the school came up. It’s a bit of a sore spot for me right now after seeing how things went with the Austrians. I was going to make technology the focal point of my second year, but after spending 2 weeks in the computer lab and seeing how the students have destroyed the computers, I’m lost. I don’t understand how we have materials we don’t use and yet the desire for more things continues. Sometimes I feel like it’s all for show. I asked my director what the school needed, and he said a sound/PA system. But what purpose would that really serve? My host mom rattles off lists of materials and things we could use, but I lack the Albanian to make it clear that most grants won’t just give you “stuff.” You have to come up with a plan, a budget, a person who will maintain it, etc. And you have to hope that your students won’t ruin it in the process, which seems to be a big if. On top of that, grant writing is a huge undertaking that I refuse to do by myself. So even if I could think of something that would really be useful for the school, I’m not sure about my chances of having a consistent grant writing partner. Maybe this answer will come to me in the second year. In the meantime, there’s just this general feeling of hopelessness and the feeling that things won’t change that nags at me. Or the Albanian belief, which I know to be incorrect, that money can fix everything.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The End of Yugoslavia
Kosovo’s been in the news lately because the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) upheld the legality of Kosovo’s 2008 secession. The last nail in the Yugoslav coffin and far too intricate to explain in detail here, the Kosovo Wars of the late 1990s ended with NATO air strikes in Serbia and Serbian President Milosevic’s indictment as a war criminal. The Kosovo province is regarded as the historical home of Serbs, even though the population after the mid-1900s was around 80% Albanian. Kosovar Albanians wanted independence based on nationality whereas the Serbs couldn’t stand to lose their historical center. The Kosovo conflict is just another bloody chapter in a Balkan history filled with them. The Serbian side going into the ICJ’s announcement was that if the court upheld the independence, “no border in the world would be safe.”
A brief look into their own history would be enough to prove that no border at any time or place is ever safe.
Over the past week, I’ve spent several hours reading Mischa Glenny’s The Balkans. The main thesis of Glenny’s book is that the Balkans isn’t some backward place doomed to tear itself apart repeatedly; but that the great powers have done a lot to contribute to the tension over the last century. It’s a convincing argument. I’ve also watched the BBC documentary entitled “The Death of Yugoslavia,” a six-hour series chronicling Yugoslavia from the late 1980s up to the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. In the process, I basically needed a flow chart, several maps and a few timelines to keep everything straight. Any discussion of the former Yugoslavia requires a solid knowledge of at least: the previous history of the area; borders and historical borders; and ethnicities and nationalities. We’re talking about Croats, Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Albanians, and that’s not even figuring with Montenegrins and Macedonians. I wasn’t lying about the flowchart. The study of this area soaked in blood is both fascinating, heartbreaking, aggravating and at times, surreal. Although I’m definitely a novice on the subject, a few things have jumped out over the past couple days.
First, the amount of ethnicities, religions and nationalities that once lived together in relative peace was pretty impressive. Hundreds of year old Muslim, Croat and Serb histories were written in places like Sarajevo, Vukovar and Knin, respectively. More impressive is just how quickly everything went. Slovenia left Yugoslavia relatively easily and early on. But all the other secessions would prove to be bloody and with extreme amounts of civilian casualties.
In the book and the documentary, what is most apparent is Serbia’s astounding sense of entitlement and inability to play by any set of rules. Serbian domination of Yugoslavia began when Milosevic came to power and undoubtedly caused the end of the very Yugoslavia that it wanted to maintain. Serbian atrocities in the war were by far the worst, highlighted by the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia. Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered 8,000 Bosniak males killed in an act of genocide that was the worst mass-killing since World War Two. That Serbia couldn’t control the Bosnian Serb forces is also shameful, as is the unwillingness of both of them to accept ceasefires. It took years in Serbia after the war to round up their war criminals that were to be put on trial by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). In retrospect, it’s very easy to single out the Serbs both for the number and flagrancy of their crimes. But they found willing co-conspirators in Croatia and relative ineptitude with the UN and western powers, considering that Srebrenica was supposed to be a “safe haven” under UN protection. In a rare moment when discussing US foreign policy, I felt proud when the US encouraged bombing missions to force Bosnian Serbs to uphold agreements as well as forming plans for attacks if more safe zones were attacked. It’s shameful that the UN and the West ignored two decimations of declared safe zones before it reached this point.
I was far too young to understand any of this when it was happening. I remembered seeing reports on television and hearing about some country called Yugoslavia, but I didn’t really know anything else about it. At the ages of 7-11, I was lucky to not have to experience terms like “ethnic cleansing” first hand. I didn’t have to live in constant fear, even while in a “safe zone.” The city museum of Sarajevo has an entire exhibit on life in the city during the war. I remember it perfectly: one room has a mock apartment, complete with blue UN plastic over the windows since most of them had been blown out. People had lived without electricity, without gas and without regular food and water supplies for so long that they had to get creative. The museum details how people ate pigeons, attempted to avoid snipers while going out for supplies, and features a number of heaters fashioned from coffee cans. Sarajevo today is very much a city on the mend. One look at the tattered and stripped trees over the city’s hillside, and it doesn’t take much to imagine the artillery flying down from those heights.
In my reading, I kept wondering what all if it was for and how something like this could happen. Wasn’t World War Two enough of an example of what genocide is to assure that it would never be allowed to happen again? Indeed, the world wars showed us a new generation of warfare where civilians were “collateral damages,” arguably one of the most disgusting terms to enter English vocabulary in the 20th century? According to Merriam Webster, collateral damage is “injury inflicted on something other than an intended target.” The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, however, featured direct and intentional attacks and murder of civilians. In this sense, collateral damage doesn’t do these actions justice. It’s murder, plain and simple, with the intent of exterminating entire populations. And for the second time in the 20th century, it happened again while we all watched. The largest irony in all of this is Serbian complaints that their populations would be extinguished, thereby justifying their assaults and attacks. No one murdered more than the Serbs.
With the heat turned up around the Kosovo issue, one can only hope that the peace will be able to hold. It seems strange to think that as late as the 1940s, Albania could almost have been a part of Yugoslavia. The two counties cooperated in the postwar years with Albania acting as a Yugoslavian satellite until Yugoslavia’s 1948 expulsion from Cominform. Before World War Two, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had even supported giving Kosovo to the Albanians, although that was later overturned by Yugoslavia’s postwar communists, according to Albania: A Country Study. I shudder to think what kind of bloodshed would have happened during the Yugoslav wars of secession if Albania would have figured into the mix in addition to everything else. At this point, the Serbs must accept that Kosovo is lost and any attempt to change that would produce violence so great that even Bosnia would seem miniscule by comparison. The dream of a Greater Serbia and a home for all Serbs has twice been proven to be impossible. Trying for a third time would be a huge mistake.
EDIT: For more information about the trials of war criminals at The Hague, please see the ICTY website. Two of the big criminals are still at large, including Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.
A brief look into their own history would be enough to prove that no border at any time or place is ever safe.
Over the past week, I’ve spent several hours reading Mischa Glenny’s The Balkans. The main thesis of Glenny’s book is that the Balkans isn’t some backward place doomed to tear itself apart repeatedly; but that the great powers have done a lot to contribute to the tension over the last century. It’s a convincing argument. I’ve also watched the BBC documentary entitled “The Death of Yugoslavia,” a six-hour series chronicling Yugoslavia from the late 1980s up to the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. In the process, I basically needed a flow chart, several maps and a few timelines to keep everything straight. Any discussion of the former Yugoslavia requires a solid knowledge of at least: the previous history of the area; borders and historical borders; and ethnicities and nationalities. We’re talking about Croats, Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Albanians, and that’s not even figuring with Montenegrins and Macedonians. I wasn’t lying about the flowchart. The study of this area soaked in blood is both fascinating, heartbreaking, aggravating and at times, surreal. Although I’m definitely a novice on the subject, a few things have jumped out over the past couple days.
First, the amount of ethnicities, religions and nationalities that once lived together in relative peace was pretty impressive. Hundreds of year old Muslim, Croat and Serb histories were written in places like Sarajevo, Vukovar and Knin, respectively. More impressive is just how quickly everything went. Slovenia left Yugoslavia relatively easily and early on. But all the other secessions would prove to be bloody and with extreme amounts of civilian casualties.
In the book and the documentary, what is most apparent is Serbia’s astounding sense of entitlement and inability to play by any set of rules. Serbian domination of Yugoslavia began when Milosevic came to power and undoubtedly caused the end of the very Yugoslavia that it wanted to maintain. Serbian atrocities in the war were by far the worst, highlighted by the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia. Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered 8,000 Bosniak males killed in an act of genocide that was the worst mass-killing since World War Two. That Serbia couldn’t control the Bosnian Serb forces is also shameful, as is the unwillingness of both of them to accept ceasefires. It took years in Serbia after the war to round up their war criminals that were to be put on trial by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). In retrospect, it’s very easy to single out the Serbs both for the number and flagrancy of their crimes. But they found willing co-conspirators in Croatia and relative ineptitude with the UN and western powers, considering that Srebrenica was supposed to be a “safe haven” under UN protection. In a rare moment when discussing US foreign policy, I felt proud when the US encouraged bombing missions to force Bosnian Serbs to uphold agreements as well as forming plans for attacks if more safe zones were attacked. It’s shameful that the UN and the West ignored two decimations of declared safe zones before it reached this point.
I was far too young to understand any of this when it was happening. I remembered seeing reports on television and hearing about some country called Yugoslavia, but I didn’t really know anything else about it. At the ages of 7-11, I was lucky to not have to experience terms like “ethnic cleansing” first hand. I didn’t have to live in constant fear, even while in a “safe zone.” The city museum of Sarajevo has an entire exhibit on life in the city during the war. I remember it perfectly: one room has a mock apartment, complete with blue UN plastic over the windows since most of them had been blown out. People had lived without electricity, without gas and without regular food and water supplies for so long that they had to get creative. The museum details how people ate pigeons, attempted to avoid snipers while going out for supplies, and features a number of heaters fashioned from coffee cans. Sarajevo today is very much a city on the mend. One look at the tattered and stripped trees over the city’s hillside, and it doesn’t take much to imagine the artillery flying down from those heights.
In my reading, I kept wondering what all if it was for and how something like this could happen. Wasn’t World War Two enough of an example of what genocide is to assure that it would never be allowed to happen again? Indeed, the world wars showed us a new generation of warfare where civilians were “collateral damages,” arguably one of the most disgusting terms to enter English vocabulary in the 20th century? According to Merriam Webster, collateral damage is “injury inflicted on something other than an intended target.” The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, however, featured direct and intentional attacks and murder of civilians. In this sense, collateral damage doesn’t do these actions justice. It’s murder, plain and simple, with the intent of exterminating entire populations. And for the second time in the 20th century, it happened again while we all watched. The largest irony in all of this is Serbian complaints that their populations would be extinguished, thereby justifying their assaults and attacks. No one murdered more than the Serbs.
With the heat turned up around the Kosovo issue, one can only hope that the peace will be able to hold. It seems strange to think that as late as the 1940s, Albania could almost have been a part of Yugoslavia. The two counties cooperated in the postwar years with Albania acting as a Yugoslavian satellite until Yugoslavia’s 1948 expulsion from Cominform. Before World War Two, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had even supported giving Kosovo to the Albanians, although that was later overturned by Yugoslavia’s postwar communists, according to Albania: A Country Study. I shudder to think what kind of bloodshed would have happened during the Yugoslav wars of secession if Albania would have figured into the mix in addition to everything else. At this point, the Serbs must accept that Kosovo is lost and any attempt to change that would produce violence so great that even Bosnia would seem miniscule by comparison. The dream of a Greater Serbia and a home for all Serbs has twice been proven to be impossible. Trying for a third time would be a huge mistake.
EDIT: For more information about the trials of war criminals at The Hague, please see the ICTY website. Two of the big criminals are still at large, including Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.
New Eyes
The amount of adults that lose their sense of mystery and wonder when looking at the world is tragically common. We grow up and get “real jobs” with real lives and real responsibilities. Our day to day becomes a routine of necessary tasks, often with little room for creativity or variation. I’m guilty of this as much as everyone else is. But strangely, something relatively insignificant has allowed me to see my life here with a differently: bike rides.
I was lucky enough to get a bike from Peace Corps, which makes my life a lot easier. It’s also a great form of exercise, especially considering the bike only has one gear and Golem has quite a few hills of varying degrees. Having a bike has made me into an explorer of my site, a place that I’ve lived in for over a year but have seen relatively little of.
Riding a couple miles behind town, I ran into a group of boys when I was taking a water break. One of them had tried to race me a few nights before. Ever Albanian, their first questions to me were about my bike. Specifically, how much it costs. I responded by asking a kid on a bike so beat up it was amazing it had rotating wheels how much he bought his for, and we all laughed. I always have to laugh about the price questions, because money and size and numbers are topics of fair game right off the bat. Then they asked me if I was a cyclist and I had to stifle my laughter. A few nights before on that same road, I was standing there with my bike trying to decide where to go. In a very Albanian way, a man walking by did a shoulder shrug with open hands, palms up, which is a questioning gesture that asks: “What are you doing?” I explained that I was just riding around and wasn’t sure where to go. Although he tried to steer me back into the direction of the town, I took another road that plunged deeper into the valley. He smiled at me when I met him on my way back into town when I had gone the length of the other road and turned back around.
Sometimes we need to see things from another side. See them with child eyes. After spending a year here and barely going past the trash can on my way to school, I’ve been exploring Golem with my bike. It’s allowed me to experience my site in a completely different way. In the late afternoons I explore and I see things I never noticed. I take some time to clear my head. Just breathe in the cool air and watch farmers gathering grass for their animals or neighbors lost in conversation. I like looking at the houses on the sides of rolling hills. Being amazed at “grapevine house” every time I go past it (its front yard is literally covered in grape vines and so is the roof, it’s impressive). In a weird way, riding my bike behind the town reminds me of being home and being in Germany the first time. It’s funny to think that my current Albanian village dwarfs my German one by several thousand people. Fortunately, both smell like cows. I don’t know why, but I like the way animals smell. Luckily there are plenty of them on my nightly route as well. How strange it is that I’ve lived here for a year and hadn’t seen any of the hidden beauty that had been right under my nose all along. How sad it is that people waste their lives not seeing any of it at all… because they don’t look for it.
I was lucky enough to get a bike from Peace Corps, which makes my life a lot easier. It’s also a great form of exercise, especially considering the bike only has one gear and Golem has quite a few hills of varying degrees. Having a bike has made me into an explorer of my site, a place that I’ve lived in for over a year but have seen relatively little of.
Riding a couple miles behind town, I ran into a group of boys when I was taking a water break. One of them had tried to race me a few nights before. Ever Albanian, their first questions to me were about my bike. Specifically, how much it costs. I responded by asking a kid on a bike so beat up it was amazing it had rotating wheels how much he bought his for, and we all laughed. I always have to laugh about the price questions, because money and size and numbers are topics of fair game right off the bat. Then they asked me if I was a cyclist and I had to stifle my laughter. A few nights before on that same road, I was standing there with my bike trying to decide where to go. In a very Albanian way, a man walking by did a shoulder shrug with open hands, palms up, which is a questioning gesture that asks: “What are you doing?” I explained that I was just riding around and wasn’t sure where to go. Although he tried to steer me back into the direction of the town, I took another road that plunged deeper into the valley. He smiled at me when I met him on my way back into town when I had gone the length of the other road and turned back around.
Sometimes we need to see things from another side. See them with child eyes. After spending a year here and barely going past the trash can on my way to school, I’ve been exploring Golem with my bike. It’s allowed me to experience my site in a completely different way. In the late afternoons I explore and I see things I never noticed. I take some time to clear my head. Just breathe in the cool air and watch farmers gathering grass for their animals or neighbors lost in conversation. I like looking at the houses on the sides of rolling hills. Being amazed at “grapevine house” every time I go past it (its front yard is literally covered in grape vines and so is the roof, it’s impressive). In a weird way, riding my bike behind the town reminds me of being home and being in Germany the first time. It’s funny to think that my current Albanian village dwarfs my German one by several thousand people. Fortunately, both smell like cows. I don’t know why, but I like the way animals smell. Luckily there are plenty of them on my nightly route as well. How strange it is that I’ve lived here for a year and hadn’t seen any of the hidden beauty that had been right under my nose all along. How sad it is that people waste their lives not seeing any of it at all… because they don’t look for it.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Albanian Rail
The Economist’s correspondent also wrote about Albanian rail travel” which I appreciated just because it’s such an obscure topic here, let alone for outside readers.
I remember making my way through Bosnia in the spring of 2007 and being amazed at the mountains. I took an overnight train from Zagreb, woke up in Split and then took a minibus down the Croatian coast to Ploce. The Croatian coast is full of dramatic views because the road is literally on the side of a mountain with nothing but a couple hundred meters below you and the sea on the horizon. The minute we headed north towards Mostar in Bosnia, the mountains became more and more intense. I remember thinking that I had never seen mountains like that. When I found out I’d be spending two years in Albania, and after I looked through pictures of the country, I had a feeling the landscape would be like Bosnia. I was right. Mountains and geography are part of the reason why travel is long and grueling. Always a fan of rail travel, it was disappointing in that regard to be sent to Albania. There are only a few lines (Tirana to Saranda in the south, Tirana to Shkoder in the north, Tirana to Pogradec via Durres and Elbasan to the east). Most people who have traveled on a Deutsche Bahn ICE then taken any train in Eastern Europe will usually complain. In most countries, the rail systems are/were government owned and not maintained really well. Certainly they fall below Western European standards, often hilariously so. I used to joke that the thermostats in the cabin could have been replaced with M&Ms glued into where the button should be, after spending freezing nights or sweltering nights curled up on a far too narrow seat. I won’t even mention the bathrooms. But these are reasons that make them so alluring and endearing, especially for an American born far too late to experience what a connected rail infrastructure may have been like. Say what you want about the trains, but the lines can usually get you exactly where you need to go. And when they aren’t creeping or stopping at every tiny town, they’re pretty comfortable, too.
This article may answer a question most of us have wondered at one time or another: given that Albanians didn’t have private automobiles until the 1990s, how did they get around? Think about that for a second. As Americans where seemingly everyone has a private car, imagine not having any at all. Many Albanian families still don’t. Having a private car here is still very much of a luxury. That alone is a hard idea to wrap your head around, let alone trying to imagine what the roads would have looked like twenty years ago with all these first time drivers out there sans licenses. And we thought Albanian driving was suspect now… can’t imagine trying to cross the autostrada when people started driving. There are still a lot of problems with travel and driving here, highlighted by last weekend’s accident in the northern part of the country that killed 14. Two days ago, there was an accident at my site on the road I cross every day that killed a man. You always have to be so careful.
What I’ve read and what I’ve heard about Albanian rail is this: they are powered with late 70s engines from Czechoslovakia and furnished with a number of antiquated passenger cars from a number of Western European countries. It is important to note that usually a train is just one engine and two to three cars at most. I’ve heard they may or may not have bathrooms on them, which is a challenge since some rides could be upwards of five hours long. I heard that during the upheaval in 1997, people took to the tracks to remove spikes, part of a series of destroying things for no really good reason. People joke that the reason trains go so slow (I’ve heard upwards of 1 ½ hours from Tirana to Durres, which takes about 35 minutes by car) is that going any faster would cause a derailment. Like most jokes, I think there’s at least a half truth in there. I’ve traveled to the eastern part of the country which gets more mountainous the nearer you get to Lake Ohrid and the Macedonian border and I’ve been amazed as I saw train bridges a hundred feet tall or more as well as a number of tunnels. If the ride through to the east is pretty in a furgon, I bet it’s even more beautiful by train. A plan to go from Librazhd to Pogradec in the September is already in the works.
The most telling line is: “In theory they have 78 locomotives, but only 18 to 20 actually work, and the rest are cannibalised to keep the others going.” This is typical of many things here, not limited just to the rail system. Albania has a lack of knowhow, partly because of brain drain, and a fundamental lack of resources. It’s hard for the country to be able to fix anything by itself, even if it’s willing to. The article mentions a train linking Rinas, the airport, to Tirana. For an airport that serves over 1 million people a year, it would be great to connect the two places currently separated by a half hour bus ride. Like many other things, the project didn’t work out. The failed project
“ was a railwayman’s dream, the managers tell me, but far from being downcast their eyes are now firmly fixed on Brussels. An EU feasibility study has been completed and if the project is approved it could see up to €225m being used to fix much of the network.”
It’s another issue entirely to wonder how the funds will be manage and distributed and what the time frame would be on any eventual project. Even when funds are secured, corruption and mismanagement hinder the process. As for the EU, it seems like membership is being dangled like a carrot. I think most Albanians have high hopes for what life will be like when Albania joins the EU. But their hopes are unrealistic. Money isn’t going to rain down and life won’t change overnight, which is something both sides need to get clearer on. Albania has a long way to go until it’s ready for the EU, especially with the growing acceptance that the EU overexpanded in the first place. In my opinion, Poland is the only solid newer member out of the whole bunch. But that’s a topic for another blog. The number one thing preventing Albania from joining the EU is corruption and lawlessness as well as a strong set of laws. The EU has seemingly infinite laws that members must adapt. Based on previous experience, Albanians won’t conform to EU regulations when it comes to gathering grass to feed cows after one day instead of seven days… so I have no idea how they would adapt and enforce EU laws here. But in the meantime, cooperation can ensure the process keeps moving in a forward direction.
I remember making my way through Bosnia in the spring of 2007 and being amazed at the mountains. I took an overnight train from Zagreb, woke up in Split and then took a minibus down the Croatian coast to Ploce. The Croatian coast is full of dramatic views because the road is literally on the side of a mountain with nothing but a couple hundred meters below you and the sea on the horizon. The minute we headed north towards Mostar in Bosnia, the mountains became more and more intense. I remember thinking that I had never seen mountains like that. When I found out I’d be spending two years in Albania, and after I looked through pictures of the country, I had a feeling the landscape would be like Bosnia. I was right. Mountains and geography are part of the reason why travel is long and grueling. Always a fan of rail travel, it was disappointing in that regard to be sent to Albania. There are only a few lines (Tirana to Saranda in the south, Tirana to Shkoder in the north, Tirana to Pogradec via Durres and Elbasan to the east). Most people who have traveled on a Deutsche Bahn ICE then taken any train in Eastern Europe will usually complain. In most countries, the rail systems are/were government owned and not maintained really well. Certainly they fall below Western European standards, often hilariously so. I used to joke that the thermostats in the cabin could have been replaced with M&Ms glued into where the button should be, after spending freezing nights or sweltering nights curled up on a far too narrow seat. I won’t even mention the bathrooms. But these are reasons that make them so alluring and endearing, especially for an American born far too late to experience what a connected rail infrastructure may have been like. Say what you want about the trains, but the lines can usually get you exactly where you need to go. And when they aren’t creeping or stopping at every tiny town, they’re pretty comfortable, too.
This article may answer a question most of us have wondered at one time or another: given that Albanians didn’t have private automobiles until the 1990s, how did they get around? Think about that for a second. As Americans where seemingly everyone has a private car, imagine not having any at all. Many Albanian families still don’t. Having a private car here is still very much of a luxury. That alone is a hard idea to wrap your head around, let alone trying to imagine what the roads would have looked like twenty years ago with all these first time drivers out there sans licenses. And we thought Albanian driving was suspect now… can’t imagine trying to cross the autostrada when people started driving. There are still a lot of problems with travel and driving here, highlighted by last weekend’s accident in the northern part of the country that killed 14. Two days ago, there was an accident at my site on the road I cross every day that killed a man. You always have to be so careful.
What I’ve read and what I’ve heard about Albanian rail is this: they are powered with late 70s engines from Czechoslovakia and furnished with a number of antiquated passenger cars from a number of Western European countries. It is important to note that usually a train is just one engine and two to three cars at most. I’ve heard they may or may not have bathrooms on them, which is a challenge since some rides could be upwards of five hours long. I heard that during the upheaval in 1997, people took to the tracks to remove spikes, part of a series of destroying things for no really good reason. People joke that the reason trains go so slow (I’ve heard upwards of 1 ½ hours from Tirana to Durres, which takes about 35 minutes by car) is that going any faster would cause a derailment. Like most jokes, I think there’s at least a half truth in there. I’ve traveled to the eastern part of the country which gets more mountainous the nearer you get to Lake Ohrid and the Macedonian border and I’ve been amazed as I saw train bridges a hundred feet tall or more as well as a number of tunnels. If the ride through to the east is pretty in a furgon, I bet it’s even more beautiful by train. A plan to go from Librazhd to Pogradec in the September is already in the works.
The most telling line is: “In theory they have 78 locomotives, but only 18 to 20 actually work, and the rest are cannibalised to keep the others going.” This is typical of many things here, not limited just to the rail system. Albania has a lack of knowhow, partly because of brain drain, and a fundamental lack of resources. It’s hard for the country to be able to fix anything by itself, even if it’s willing to. The article mentions a train linking Rinas, the airport, to Tirana. For an airport that serves over 1 million people a year, it would be great to connect the two places currently separated by a half hour bus ride. Like many other things, the project didn’t work out. The failed project
“ was a railwayman’s dream, the managers tell me, but far from being downcast their eyes are now firmly fixed on Brussels. An EU feasibility study has been completed and if the project is approved it could see up to €225m being used to fix much of the network.”
It’s another issue entirely to wonder how the funds will be manage and distributed and what the time frame would be on any eventual project. Even when funds are secured, corruption and mismanagement hinder the process. As for the EU, it seems like membership is being dangled like a carrot. I think most Albanians have high hopes for what life will be like when Albania joins the EU. But their hopes are unrealistic. Money isn’t going to rain down and life won’t change overnight, which is something both sides need to get clearer on. Albania has a long way to go until it’s ready for the EU, especially with the growing acceptance that the EU overexpanded in the first place. In my opinion, Poland is the only solid newer member out of the whole bunch. But that’s a topic for another blog. The number one thing preventing Albania from joining the EU is corruption and lawlessness as well as a strong set of laws. The EU has seemingly infinite laws that members must adapt. Based on previous experience, Albanians won’t conform to EU regulations when it comes to gathering grass to feed cows after one day instead of seven days… so I have no idea how they would adapt and enforce EU laws here. But in the meantime, cooperation can ensure the process keeps moving in a forward direction.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Eastern approaches
Aside from being a great news weekly that I loved to read while spending summer afternoons in the hammock, The Economist also has an extensive website. One of my favorite blogs are Johnson, a blog about linguistics. The other week, Johnson examined the German habit of “pressing thumbs” for good luck, which I enjoyed immensely. The other blog I check daily is Eastern approaches which focuses on post-communist countries. It’s loaded with lots of interesting links and stories from all over the region while throwing in a book recommendation or two for good measure. So when the author was recently traveling through Albania, I couldn’t wait to find out his thoughts.
There are three pieces focusing on Albania: part one about Tirana, society and neo-Ottomanism; part two is on Albanian rail which I’ll write about separately; and part three about the northern border with Montenegro.
The first piece is a very brief summary of the last hundred or so years, combined with what the current situation is. Lately, volunteers have been discussing Turkey’s potential EU membership as well as Albania’s, of which I support Turkey’s bid to join the EU. One reason is that it can meet the EU requirements necessary for joining. It’s also the second largest supplier of NATO troops and is stabile and moderate for the most part. Having that kind of ally in a Muslim world that the West continuously alienates is a good thing and Turkey should be rewarded for what it has done. I’m not saying it’s free from flaws or not without problems, but when you compare other countries that are now members of the EU… it doesn’t leave much room for a lot of argument. People are against it for a number of reasons, usually having to do with the failure to admit the Armenian genocide (hint: take a page out of Serbia’s book when it came to Srebrenica and just own up to it) or the fact that they are, gasp, MUSLIMS! I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but the EU and its countries aren’t exclusive members of the old, white, Christian men’s club anymore. That’s a fact that will become more apparent as white Europeans continue to not reproduce. As colonial chickens come home to roost, European nations will have to deal with this identity crisis caused by changing demographics. Ever one for trumpeting rights and inclusion, the EU needs to put its money where its mouth is and accept a country that is religiously different from its member states. What the article does is bring up the idea of neo-Ottomanism as Turkey returns to the region it once ruled. I know several Turkish schools and even a few volunteers who will stay here in Albania to take employment at them. It should be interesting to see how things continue if Turkey is indeed trying to regain power in the region. My guess is that Albania will take whatever aid and improvements it can get.
The third post is about the Montenegrin border in the north of Albania. When I went to Croatia, this is the route we took. The border is less than twenty minutes outside Shkoder, the last large town going out of Albania. It’s kind of a weird border, especially when you consider that it’s a bus route for traffic going to through the area. The roads are windy and narrow and traveling on them was a mess because of the traffic. Every time you meet another bus, someone basically has to stop. It’s like that for quite some time since both sides of the border are loaded with villages. It’s not until later that you get on a “real road.” The border article is interesting because the Shengen zone continues to expand. A large part of the nightly news involves speculating on when Albanians will be able to travel in the EU without visas, something that should take a little bit more time. It’s an issue of interest to many Albanians because many leave the country to seek employment or have relatives abroad they want to visit. However, outsiders have concerns about an Albanian exodus if given the ability to travel visa-free. Already the country is bleeding youth. You have to wonder who will be active here if anyone can leave in the near future.
There are three pieces focusing on Albania: part one about Tirana, society and neo-Ottomanism; part two is on Albanian rail which I’ll write about separately; and part three about the northern border with Montenegro.
The first piece is a very brief summary of the last hundred or so years, combined with what the current situation is. Lately, volunteers have been discussing Turkey’s potential EU membership as well as Albania’s, of which I support Turkey’s bid to join the EU. One reason is that it can meet the EU requirements necessary for joining. It’s also the second largest supplier of NATO troops and is stabile and moderate for the most part. Having that kind of ally in a Muslim world that the West continuously alienates is a good thing and Turkey should be rewarded for what it has done. I’m not saying it’s free from flaws or not without problems, but when you compare other countries that are now members of the EU… it doesn’t leave much room for a lot of argument. People are against it for a number of reasons, usually having to do with the failure to admit the Armenian genocide (hint: take a page out of Serbia’s book when it came to Srebrenica and just own up to it) or the fact that they are, gasp, MUSLIMS! I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but the EU and its countries aren’t exclusive members of the old, white, Christian men’s club anymore. That’s a fact that will become more apparent as white Europeans continue to not reproduce. As colonial chickens come home to roost, European nations will have to deal with this identity crisis caused by changing demographics. Ever one for trumpeting rights and inclusion, the EU needs to put its money where its mouth is and accept a country that is religiously different from its member states. What the article does is bring up the idea of neo-Ottomanism as Turkey returns to the region it once ruled. I know several Turkish schools and even a few volunteers who will stay here in Albania to take employment at them. It should be interesting to see how things continue if Turkey is indeed trying to regain power in the region. My guess is that Albania will take whatever aid and improvements it can get.
The third post is about the Montenegrin border in the north of Albania. When I went to Croatia, this is the route we took. The border is less than twenty minutes outside Shkoder, the last large town going out of Albania. It’s kind of a weird border, especially when you consider that it’s a bus route for traffic going to through the area. The roads are windy and narrow and traveling on them was a mess because of the traffic. Every time you meet another bus, someone basically has to stop. It’s like that for quite some time since both sides of the border are loaded with villages. It’s not until later that you get on a “real road.” The border article is interesting because the Shengen zone continues to expand. A large part of the nightly news involves speculating on when Albanians will be able to travel in the EU without visas, something that should take a little bit more time. It’s an issue of interest to many Albanians because many leave the country to seek employment or have relatives abroad they want to visit. However, outsiders have concerns about an Albanian exodus if given the ability to travel visa-free. Already the country is bleeding youth. You have to wonder who will be active here if anyone can leave in the near future.
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