Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Three Lessons from Thane


Look beyond the garbage is the first lesson from Albania and for much of the third world. The detritus of the first world has landed like a tsunami on the third word. When there is no system to adequately handle solid waste, litter piles up everywhere, on river banks and along the road sides. Plastic bags are blown upon fences, trees and hedges. The locals know it and they don’t like it either. Many remember before and people here prefer clean, let me assure you. The home of my host family is spotless and everything is put away after use. It is a matter of pride and about the worst thing one can do in Albania is to reflect poorly on your family. Peace Corps volunteers have to watch their dress and deportment and we have been advised that we are in the Peace Corps 24/7. I suppose I should be concerned about how my actions and appearance represent America, but, in reality my principle concern is for my host family in Thane where I will live for the 10 weeks of pre-service training.

After four days in Elbasan, we boarded a furgon (an Albanian mini-bus, a main means of cheap transport around the country) and the 33 members of PC Albania, group 12, split up into the small groups we will work in for the majority of our training. Thane is a village of about 1200 people, just outside of Cerrik which is a reasonably sized town for the area (Cerrik is about the size of Emmett, Idaho, for those of you familiar with that place). It is 16 km (ten miles) from Elbasan, but that is at least a 45 minute furgon ride.

Classes are 5 1/2 days a week, about 8 hours a day. They are mostly held in the local K-9 school in Thane, about a 10 minute walk from where I live with my host family. 4 days are for language and the rest for training in Peace Corps policy and procedures and techniques for our service area. Mine is Health Education. Others in Albania are Teaching English and Community Development. I also work about 2-3 hours a day on homework. There is a great deal to read in the Peace Corps library and, of course, there is always language to work on. I have a game I made up with the family called Tjeter (pronounced “teyeter”- means “other”), where we try to name as many things in a category that we can. For example, we named animals around Thane in one session. Elephant was not accepted, but scorpion was ok. The youngsters seem to especially enjoy it, but everyone around plays. I have given the regulars some of my Idaho Potato Commission pins that I brought along, so now there are a group of kids running around Thane sporting plastic spud pins that say “IDAHO”.

My host family consists of a father, a builder, his wife who is a housewife, his mother, who is a pensioner and has diabetes, thyroid problems and high blood pressure, and two teenage boys, ages 13 and 17. They all could not be nicer. I think they may be even nicer to me than my real family, although that is not meant as a criticism, of either family, just a cultural observation. In fact, everyone I have met here is just incredibly friendly, tolerant of my ignorance and mistakes and generous to a degree that is downright embarrassing. People here almost come to blows over who gets to treat for coffee or meals, and this is in a place where coffee costs maybe the equivalent of 50 cents and a good meal, maybe 2 dollars. Another thing is that in Albania there is great respect given to both age and being male, a very good deal for me. Some of the other volunteers seem resentful. Tough luck, children.

Towns here are compact, since travel tends to be by foot, bus or furgon. There are lots of cars, but not everybody has one. My host family does not. The residents walk to the bar, café, school, clinic and to the fields which surround the village. The fields are well tended, although I am not clear on the ownership. Most homes in Thane have large gardens with apricot, peach, apple, pear, and orange trees and grape vines, and chickens and turkeys wandering around, and a cow in a shed. Many have a horse or a donkey. Horse carts are still a common means of transportation, even in cities, and donkeys are used to carry fodder down from the meadows in the hills around town. My host family also has rabbits. The elder son tends the cow and the younger the rabbits. Much of the food is home grown. Surplus is picked up by vans that come around each morning and presumably taken to Elbasan. We have fresh milk, butter and yogurt every day. Bread is baked fresh at home almost daily. It is spread thick with homemade grape preserves (one has to watch out for the seeds which are often left in). Chicken or turkey is the common meat (one also has to watch out for bone shards since the animals are almost always butchered with an axe). I had to make a point that I was too old to eat so much when they put huge portions in front of me and kept trying to feed me more. They also sit me closest to the wood stove which heats the kitchen, the only heated room in the house, and feed me first, although I have been able to get the father of the house back in his usual seat of respect, a gesture which he seems to appreciate.

Elbasan, Cerrik, Thane and other towns are set in the wide valley of the Shkumbin River. There are snow capped mountains on either side. It is really quite beautiful especially when one applies lesson one. The spring weather has been variable, between sleet and warm, often on the same day, much like McCall. If they had central heating it would be downright pleasant.

As it is, it is freezing in the morning and warm in the afternoon, tuning cold again as the sun goes down. Central heating is a great rarity in Albania and so is insulation. The house is very cold at night. I am glad I brought my old down sleeping bag, and, although I have years of experience from Idaho with layering, I find that I am really a rank amateur at the technique. I am sure I will be a pro by the time I return home. Either that or I may lose a toe or finger to frostbite. It does make me wonder what winter will be like.

Lesson two come about here: everything has consequences. That maybe a corollary of lesson one, since the trash situation makes one very mindful about using every Kleenex and paper towel. I never take a plastic bag when it is offered at a store or fast food place because I can look anywhere and see where it is likely to wind up. I drink water from my water filter or from the tap (see lesson three) since there are lots of plastic bottles scattered about. I carefully return the bags of sugar which they give me for my coffee, since I don’t use it, it is expensive and I don’t want to just pass it into the waste stream. I also have to be careful about accepting the constant generosity of people I have supposedly come to help. It will only be acceptable if I can return all the favors. Being a “mooch” would not only bother my own conscience, it would reflect poorly on my host family.

I don’t really want to dispel any myths about the Peace Corps, but I have to admit that my host family’s home is a long way from a mud hut. It is a substantial house of about 2000 square feet, and not unusual for Thane. It is masonry with a red tile roof (every building here seems to be made of blocks and concrete covered with plaster- and many buildings are under ongoing construction since about a quarter of the work force works out of the country, remitting funds. Construction here is on a pay as you go basis). There is a solar hot water heater as electricity is very expensive. Warm showers are just when the sun shines. The rooms are large. There are 4 bedrooms and two baths, complete with bidets. I share the upstairs bathroom with the boys. The parents and grandma are on the ground floor. There is a balcony around 3/4ths of the upstairs. I have my own room with a door that opens to a wonderful vista. When it warms up in the afternoon, I pull a kitchen chair onto the balcony and sit on the leeward side of the house. It is a great place to read and do homework. The floors are covered in beautiful marble tile, which I think is native from the Albanian mountains. There are not many pictures or photos on the walls. Bare light bulbs hang from wires from the ceilings. Obviously, there is electricity, but power outages are frequent and I am glad I brought a good flashlight. Even my cell phone has a built in flashlight (everyone seems to have a cell phone, although land lines are relatively rare- and, I am learning to text message since that is much less expensive than voice calls here).

People here are very stylish and not at all casual in their dress (whenever I am outside of class I am wearing a tie a lot more than I ever did in Idaho). About 70% of the population is Moslem with its tradition of modest dress, especially for women, but it tends to be quite secular and not at all segregated among the minority Christians (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), Roma (gypsies), Jews and others. For example, my host family is nominally Moslem and reads the Koran at home, but has a Christmas tree in the hall.

My host family has a large extended family in town and lots of friends, although I am not clear on who’s who as yet. We often spend the evening sitting on couches in the kitchen where we take meals and coffee and watch TV.

This brings us to lesson three: be aware of how you are seen by others. Again, this may be a corollary of lesson two with my concern about reflecting poorly on my hosts, but my point here is a bit different. Albanian television seems really foreign. The morning news consists of a reporter reading the news, but instead of standing in front of video illustrations of the news, there is an ongoing MTV video in the background. These are, of course, mostly from the US and in English. The violence, sexual content, crime, gangs, materialism and foul language are startling, especially since it often out of context with the program. Movies on TV seem to always cover the same themes. The most popular TV program in Albania is “Big Brother-Albania”. I have never seen this program in the US (my host family was taken aback by the fact that I don’t have a TV in my home in Idaho). There is lots of sexual innuendo, the women are scantily clad and there are lots of tattoos and weird hairdos that one hardly ever sees among the general population. Everyone watches this stuff, kids to grandma. I have not figured out my family’s take on this. I hope they realize this is just “entertainment” and does not represent real American lives and values. They all seem to have a very positive attitude towards America and Americans. Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama are almost universally popular among Albanians. Maybe they are able to see beyond our garbage, as well.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Enroute to Elbasan


After 5 going away parties and not having to buy dinner or lunch (and many breakfasts, too), for more than a month, I left Idaho for two weeks of travel to visit friends and relatives around the country. On March 16 I reported for Peace Corps Albania staging at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia. I consider it another benefit of my Peace Corps service that it made me take time to visit some important people that I may not have seen in years, but because of age or health I wanted to see before I was physically unable to visit on short notice for the next 27 months. Talking at length with my 93 year old uncle in Annapolis or my 89 year old aunt in Florida made me appreciate the first person contact with my parents and those who have known me since I was born. There was also the chance to see other good friends and family one more time before I left. It was a good trip even though a good part of it was spent at bedside in a hospital.

Staging was part orientation and part group bonding. 2 days of travel by bus to JFK, plane to Munich and then to Tirana and then bus again for the 40 mile, but 2 hour drive to Elbasan brought the group to Pre Service Training. This is 10 weeks of orientation, program, language ad culture training.

There are 34 volunteers in my group. These are divided into health education, teaching english as a second language and community development programs. I am, obviously, in health education. Being a government program, first order of business is paper work. Then there were immunizations (I only needed typhus thanks to the travel medicine program back at St. Lukes in Boise). Now there are safety, culture and, most important, language programs. The first 4 days are at a hotel in Elbasan (a town of about 125,000 in central Albania). In case you think I am living high on the hog, I share a room with 2 other volunteers, one of whom is a world class snorer. It reminds me of my experience in the Air Force more than 40 years ago. The techniques I learned then to fall asleep next to a buzz saw, have come in handy. On Saturday, I will be assigned to a host family in Thane, a suburb of about 1200 about 10 miles outside of the city. My host family is a builder, his wife, their two teenage sons and a grandmother.

The program, so far, has been very well organized and the teaching techniques interesting. It is both fast paced and interactive. The language program is the most intense I have ever experienced. They use team teaching with two instuctors trading off in rapid fire -vocabulary, pronunciation, application and exercises. We get coffee breaks every couple of hours. They drink a lot of coffee in Albania. I feel right at home.

The group is mostly young, recently graduated people. They are extremely impressive. Most are from top notch schools and have a variety of degrees in subjects like engineering, architecture, environmental science, anthropology, political science, etc. They are a talented and literate group. I can't remember the last time I have had such interesting discussions on Russian literature or environmental design with young adults. They are also great help with dealing with computer or cell phone issues. One has been accepted to medical school at Tulane but has delayed attending for Peace Corps Service. Another is planning to apply. Both have interests in international health. In case you think they are all bleeding heart liberals, at least two are planning to apply to the FBI when they return to the US. There are two married couples. Several have had former Peace Corps or other international volunteer experience and a few are of the Peace Corps group that was evacuated from Georgia amid the violence there last year. It is a lot more impressive that these people have put their lives on hold to volunteer while their peers get a leg up in what is likely to be a very competitive work environment when they return home. It is enough to give me great confidence in the next generation of Americans.

I have heard that the idea of the Peace Corps gelled when JFK was met by 10,000 students at 2 AM at the University of Michigan during the 1960 campaign long after the media and local politicos had gone home. He asked them if they were willing to give their country two years of volunteer service and the positive response was overwhelming. That spirit appears to be alive and well.

In case you are wondering, there are 4 or 5 older volunteers in our group, depending on how you define "older". I think I am the 3rd or 4th oldest. We, as a group, are not nearly as impressive as the youngsters, but I trust they will help us along.

It is also interesting to reflect on the financial aspect of the Peace Corps. I have done other volunteer work where I had to raise my own money for the project and even had to give 20% to the sponsoring organization. Peace Corps is volunteer, but does support those in the program at a level consistent with the community in which they serve. This runs about $20,000 a year per volunteer. This is about 1/40th the cost of deploying a military service person overseas. When one adds in the veteran's benefits, more than a hundred Peace Corps volunteers can be deployed for the cost of a single soldier. Clearly they have different missions and their is no equitable comparison of their service, but it did occur to me.

Mirupafshim, for now.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Disclaimer

Any friend of mine who might be reading this blog is surely intelligent enough to have already figured this out, but the Peace Corps does request that I inform you that the contents of this web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.

This request was included in the information that was sent to me in a "Welcome CD- Peace Corps/Albania" I received in the mail a few days ago. It was very multimedia with a ton of useful information about Albania, the Peace Corps in-country staff, the Albanian language, the city of Elbasan where the 3 month pre-service training will take place, and about life for Peace Corps volunteers in Albania. It was a technical marvel to a computer troglodite like me. It also is very useful to show to friends and family and may encourage some tourism to Albania.