As the bad news continues to pour out of Haiti, I’m compelled to write as my thoughts drift to the people that are suffering so much now and the toll that disasters take.
Many of you probably don’t know, but over the last two weeks there was serious flooding here north of Tirana. The problem was caused by heavy rains and ineptitude at a large hydroelectric dam. Engineers didn’t release the side gates to regulate the water level, and by the time they did it, there was a significant fear that the built up pressure would be so great that the entire dam would collapse. Luckily that didn’t happen, but it did leave large parts of the Lezha and Shkoder regions covered in a meter of water. Had the dam gone completely, it would have flooded Tirana as well. The four volunteers living in those regions were evacuated following Peace Corps safety procedures and spent a week in Tirana before returning home. Aid came from a few other countries, but the cleanup process will take some time and money. What could have been a huge disaster has become only a small one.
Haiti, on the other hand, has consumed every newspaper (or should I say “internet news site,” since who reads newspapers?) this week. We thought we had seen the worst of it with the tsunami, or Katrina, or the earthquake in China, and then this. The accounts are unbelievable. I read that one man who worked for the United Nations said he had been thrown around the room during the earthquake. Something about that stuck into my mind. I thought about the kind of force that would be required to knock someone from their feet like that.
It’s hard to even look at the statistics and logistics of the disaster. The 50,000 estimated dead may end up at 200,000. One and a half million people are homeless. Thirty some aftershocks at 4.5. Aid can’t even be properly distributed because of the bad roads. Disease will soon set in amongst all the bodies. Where do aid workers and locals even start?
This article talks about what I imagine is the hardest part: the bodies. Unfortunately, there is no way to even process the bodies. They are placed in mass graves, without being identified, and are even burned in some cities. In all of the chaos, how will people ever get the closure of being able to identify their loved ones? What about having a burial ceremony? And what about the loneliness of bodies that aren’t ever going to be claimed, because there is no one to claim them? After the disaster has been cleaned up and the building process begins but people’s family members don’t return home, are they just supposed to assume that their relatives died? A friend and I were discussing these points and she mentioned the people killed during September 11th, which is a similar situation in terms of bodies.
Besides the spread of disease, the biggest problem is social unrest. The longer it takes to get proper aid, the more unstable the situation will get. Already there are reports of men armed with machetes roaming the street and the federal government has relocated its headquarters to the airport. Figure in an estimated 6,000 inmates that have been given spontaneous freedom with the collapse of jails. How will the government be able to enforce order and law in such a devastated area?
Monday, January 18, 2010
A Normal Day
I go to school every day but have written surprisingly little information about what it is like.
School is a bit different over here. First off, we have lessons from 8:30 – 1:30. There is no break for lunch but students have fifteen or twenty minutes to run out to the line of snack carts that reminds me of what I used to call “Tin Can Alley” on Drexel’s campus.
With few clocks throughout the building and no centralized bell, a student runs up and down the four flights of stairs ringing and actual bell when it’s time for teachers to rotate classes. There are about five minutes for teachers to stop off in the teacher’s room and pick up the class registers (a sacred book with the class roster and student grades for all subjects) before going to class. When they enter the classroom, wearing white smocks that look like lab coats, the students stand up. Students in my school also wear uniforms during the warmer months. When a student is called to answer a question, they may also choose to stand up to give the answer.
My favorite thing that students do is wiping the desks. When I go in for a lesson I usually sit in the back at an empty desk (if there is one, since sometimes three students have to share a single desk). But before I can sit down, students order me to stand while they clean the desk because it is “dirty,” or rather, dusty. At the mere sight of me getting ready to set my books down, an army of students rushes to the desk, tells me forcefully “NO NO” and, armed with tissues from individual packets, cleans the desk for me.
Albanian students are masters of rote learning, which means that their critical thinking and reading skills need a lot of improvement. Ask a student what they have read about Bill Clinton, a popular figure here largely because of Kosovo, and they can give you an entire string of information, perfectly memorized. Ask a student why Clinton is popular here and they have difficulty answering. Trying to break students of the memorization habit is something I will be working on for the rest of my time here. Memorization certainly has its place, but there are far more important skills to work on (like converting information students read to other areas).
As for the schools themselves, they do not have many amenities. I haven’t seen any heated classrooms and usually wear my coat every day, all day. The steps are treacherous because they are crumbling. I’m waiting for the day when I bite it and always make a point to be extra cautious. My school does have the internet, a computer lab, and two libraries (one for Albanian books and another foreign language library that I’m working on). These are resources that not every school has and are a good starting point for our students. By writing to an American organization called Darien Book Aid, I was able to add about 25 new books to our little English library and I hope to expand it in the future. There isn’t an overwhelming appreciation of libraries here, but it provides our students with authentic materials as opposed to inaccurate and outdated text books and is often the only source of English materials that they have.
The textbooks are another thing. Never in my life have I really paid any particular attention to the role of a textbook, not even as we (my parents and I) regularly shelled out $80 a book during university. A good text is everything; it’s the source of your lessons, information and discussions. There are two distinct types of books here: ones produced for the international market by English publishers and books produced by Albanians, for Albanians. There is a marked difference in price and quality between the two books. It’s safe to say that on almost every page of an Albanian text book, you can find a simple mistake that would have been noticed had it been spell checked. There are also other factual errors and omissions. I have been teaching a lesson on Hamlet this whole week. According to the Albanian-produced text, Hamlet was a “king” of Denmark (if that were true, then there really wouldn’t be much of a plot). After an elaborate and confusing summary of the play’s plot, it makes no mention of Hamlet’s death. On the bright side, the lesson did teach me the Albanian words for revenge and indecision as we talked about the play’s themes. It’s disappointing to see so many errors in an educational book, especially considering that many of them could be easily corrected if anyone bothered to edit anything.
Looking back on my public education, I’d say that discipline also played a big part. Kids continue to get surlier and surlier, but even when I was in school you could have a certain fear about the repercussions of your actions. Mouthing off would get you sent to the principal’s office, and the possibility of detention was very real for any number of offenses. Not to mention that I could also count on getting it at home for any indiscretions. We don’t have a distinguishable, clearly defined discipline system here. Sometimes kids will get kicked out of the lesson, but I haven’t seen anyone being sent to the principal’s. As a result, class is often chaotic, with students talking at regular volume over fellow students and teachers. That is, when they aren’t busy with their phones or causing other forms of general disruption. It is a difficult environment to teach in, combined with the sub-par textbooks, and I really have to tip my cap to the teachers that I’ve seen in action. They are people who somehow overcome the normal wear and tear on one’s nerves and do the best they can—because they believe in what they do. It definitely shows in their work and I look forward to our future working collaborations.
At the beginning of this entry, I wrote that school ends at 1:30. Thanks to a new initiative from the Ministry of Education, lessons in my school will now finish at 2:15 with the addition of a seventh instructional hour. It’s kind of a mixed bag, where a few teachers every day will run supplementary courses. Out of a staff of almost thirty, five or so teachers will teach an extra lesson each day a week. During this time, I will hopefully work with gifted students four times a week. My other colleagues in the English department have done the best they can with these students—and I’m lucky enough to reap the rewards of their previous work by stepping in as a native speaker to teach them. The students don’t know it yet, but I have got so many things lined up for them and I have some high hopes about what we can all achieve in working together.
School is a bit different over here. First off, we have lessons from 8:30 – 1:30. There is no break for lunch but students have fifteen or twenty minutes to run out to the line of snack carts that reminds me of what I used to call “Tin Can Alley” on Drexel’s campus.
With few clocks throughout the building and no centralized bell, a student runs up and down the four flights of stairs ringing and actual bell when it’s time for teachers to rotate classes. There are about five minutes for teachers to stop off in the teacher’s room and pick up the class registers (a sacred book with the class roster and student grades for all subjects) before going to class. When they enter the classroom, wearing white smocks that look like lab coats, the students stand up. Students in my school also wear uniforms during the warmer months. When a student is called to answer a question, they may also choose to stand up to give the answer.
My favorite thing that students do is wiping the desks. When I go in for a lesson I usually sit in the back at an empty desk (if there is one, since sometimes three students have to share a single desk). But before I can sit down, students order me to stand while they clean the desk because it is “dirty,” or rather, dusty. At the mere sight of me getting ready to set my books down, an army of students rushes to the desk, tells me forcefully “NO NO” and, armed with tissues from individual packets, cleans the desk for me.
Albanian students are masters of rote learning, which means that their critical thinking and reading skills need a lot of improvement. Ask a student what they have read about Bill Clinton, a popular figure here largely because of Kosovo, and they can give you an entire string of information, perfectly memorized. Ask a student why Clinton is popular here and they have difficulty answering. Trying to break students of the memorization habit is something I will be working on for the rest of my time here. Memorization certainly has its place, but there are far more important skills to work on (like converting information students read to other areas).
As for the schools themselves, they do not have many amenities. I haven’t seen any heated classrooms and usually wear my coat every day, all day. The steps are treacherous because they are crumbling. I’m waiting for the day when I bite it and always make a point to be extra cautious. My school does have the internet, a computer lab, and two libraries (one for Albanian books and another foreign language library that I’m working on). These are resources that not every school has and are a good starting point for our students. By writing to an American organization called Darien Book Aid, I was able to add about 25 new books to our little English library and I hope to expand it in the future. There isn’t an overwhelming appreciation of libraries here, but it provides our students with authentic materials as opposed to inaccurate and outdated text books and is often the only source of English materials that they have.
The textbooks are another thing. Never in my life have I really paid any particular attention to the role of a textbook, not even as we (my parents and I) regularly shelled out $80 a book during university. A good text is everything; it’s the source of your lessons, information and discussions. There are two distinct types of books here: ones produced for the international market by English publishers and books produced by Albanians, for Albanians. There is a marked difference in price and quality between the two books. It’s safe to say that on almost every page of an Albanian text book, you can find a simple mistake that would have been noticed had it been spell checked. There are also other factual errors and omissions. I have been teaching a lesson on Hamlet this whole week. According to the Albanian-produced text, Hamlet was a “king” of Denmark (if that were true, then there really wouldn’t be much of a plot). After an elaborate and confusing summary of the play’s plot, it makes no mention of Hamlet’s death. On the bright side, the lesson did teach me the Albanian words for revenge and indecision as we talked about the play’s themes. It’s disappointing to see so many errors in an educational book, especially considering that many of them could be easily corrected if anyone bothered to edit anything.
Looking back on my public education, I’d say that discipline also played a big part. Kids continue to get surlier and surlier, but even when I was in school you could have a certain fear about the repercussions of your actions. Mouthing off would get you sent to the principal’s office, and the possibility of detention was very real for any number of offenses. Not to mention that I could also count on getting it at home for any indiscretions. We don’t have a distinguishable, clearly defined discipline system here. Sometimes kids will get kicked out of the lesson, but I haven’t seen anyone being sent to the principal’s. As a result, class is often chaotic, with students talking at regular volume over fellow students and teachers. That is, when they aren’t busy with their phones or causing other forms of general disruption. It is a difficult environment to teach in, combined with the sub-par textbooks, and I really have to tip my cap to the teachers that I’ve seen in action. They are people who somehow overcome the normal wear and tear on one’s nerves and do the best they can—because they believe in what they do. It definitely shows in their work and I look forward to our future working collaborations.
At the beginning of this entry, I wrote that school ends at 1:30. Thanks to a new initiative from the Ministry of Education, lessons in my school will now finish at 2:15 with the addition of a seventh instructional hour. It’s kind of a mixed bag, where a few teachers every day will run supplementary courses. Out of a staff of almost thirty, five or so teachers will teach an extra lesson each day a week. During this time, I will hopefully work with gifted students four times a week. My other colleagues in the English department have done the best they can with these students—and I’m lucky enough to reap the rewards of their previous work by stepping in as a native speaker to teach them. The students don’t know it yet, but I have got so many things lined up for them and I have some high hopes about what we can all achieve in working together.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
New Years
We arrived back in Albania in the middle of a warm spell. On New Year's Day, the temperatures were up to 70 degrees. In Bulgaria, my friend Nik told us that we had arrived during a warm spell as well and that the week before it had been in the minuses.
Overall, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip through Macedonia and Bulgaria. There were other problems, however, but nothing that we couldn't handle. I’m going to post individual entries for each day of our trip along with photos. My friend Kristine and I went, and you can read more about our trip from her perspective over at her blog.
I didn’t buy anything of significance for myself on the trip except a nice fountain pen and a ton of spices at a "real" supermarket. For my family, I bought peanut butter, soap, coffee and chocolates. They really enjoyed their gifts and I was the first out of the three volunteers that have stayed with them to bring something back. Again, courtesy and consideration are things that my parents have taught me and that I’m glad to have learned. I didn’t have much money to spend but my host sister told me that wasn’t at all the point… it was just the thought.
I got back to my site just in time for New Years, lucky for me. My host dad personally selected meat from an animal slaughter that he witnessed. Our New Year's Eve dinner started with a traditional mixed plate of egg, tomato, cucumber, salami and salce kosi, a yogurt sauce with a very strong garlic taste. After that, we had a beef roulade filled with diced carrots and potatoes. Then beef steak, but not the kind Americans are used to. This steak is thin, pan-fried, seasoned with pepper, oregano, garlic and salt and with little marbling. So it's a little chewier but still very good. We had a turkey stuffed with vegetables and walnuts that my host mom killed. My dad served me a huge piece of breast meat and I was content. To finish, the famed baklava.
We sat around watching special editions of television shows. Tired from my travels, I went to bed around 11:00 but asked them to wake me up in an hour. Even if they hadn't come to get me, there's no possible way I could have slept through all the insanity that was about to come. Watching from my balcony, I was overwhelmed by an amount of fireworks that I had never, ever seen before in my life. Maybe that's because everything would have been illegal back home. A full moon wasn’t the only thing that lit up the sky as literally hundreds of fireworks went off in every direction. Pretty ones, incredibly loud ones... a whole cornucopia. And when it was all over, the smoke enveloped our little village and just laid there.
The next two days were spent visiting and receiving guests, as well as continuing to stuff ourselves with food. What a nice welcoming back home after my trip.
Overall, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip through Macedonia and Bulgaria. There were other problems, however, but nothing that we couldn't handle. I’m going to post individual entries for each day of our trip along with photos. My friend Kristine and I went, and you can read more about our trip from her perspective over at her blog.
I didn’t buy anything of significance for myself on the trip except a nice fountain pen and a ton of spices at a "real" supermarket. For my family, I bought peanut butter, soap, coffee and chocolates. They really enjoyed their gifts and I was the first out of the three volunteers that have stayed with them to bring something back. Again, courtesy and consideration are things that my parents have taught me and that I’m glad to have learned. I didn’t have much money to spend but my host sister told me that wasn’t at all the point… it was just the thought.
I got back to my site just in time for New Years, lucky for me. My host dad personally selected meat from an animal slaughter that he witnessed. Our New Year's Eve dinner started with a traditional mixed plate of egg, tomato, cucumber, salami and salce kosi, a yogurt sauce with a very strong garlic taste. After that, we had a beef roulade filled with diced carrots and potatoes. Then beef steak, but not the kind Americans are used to. This steak is thin, pan-fried, seasoned with pepper, oregano, garlic and salt and with little marbling. So it's a little chewier but still very good. We had a turkey stuffed with vegetables and walnuts that my host mom killed. My dad served me a huge piece of breast meat and I was content. To finish, the famed baklava.
We sat around watching special editions of television shows. Tired from my travels, I went to bed around 11:00 but asked them to wake me up in an hour. Even if they hadn't come to get me, there's no possible way I could have slept through all the insanity that was about to come. Watching from my balcony, I was overwhelmed by an amount of fireworks that I had never, ever seen before in my life. Maybe that's because everything would have been illegal back home. A full moon wasn’t the only thing that lit up the sky as literally hundreds of fireworks went off in every direction. Pretty ones, incredibly loud ones... a whole cornucopia. And when it was all over, the smoke enveloped our little village and just laid there.
The next two days were spent visiting and receiving guests, as well as continuing to stuff ourselves with food. What a nice welcoming back home after my trip.
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