A Small Problem

This past weekend I took a bus to Permet for the Balkan Music Festival. I decided to go there rather than to the big beach party in Durres that most of my younger Peace Corps cohorts were attending. Permet is about 38 air miles from Korca which would be about 20 minutes in a Cessna even allowing for climb and descent over the mountains, but the winding, narrow, mostly paved road that rises and descends from the steep valleys and craggy, pine covered, hills takes about 5 hours by bus. There were frequent stops to serve the small villages along the route, to allow traffic to pass (including backing up a few times to accommodate the semi trucks that also use the road), for herds of sheep or goats across the road and once at a roadside spring to allow a young girl and the old lady next to her to clean up after the girl lost her lunch in the hot, crowded, airless interior.

We passed through Erseka, a tidy city with wide streets set in a spectacular alpine valley with several visible cascades from snowmelt on the Southern mountains that separate Albania and Greece. There was also Leskovik which appears to have been a fortress city built on a saddle high above two valleys. It had more varieties of trees than I have seen in one place. They appeared to have been planted, judging by their maturity, during the long communist rule after WW II, but I have not been able to find out much about this. One large tree in the town center had a spring pouring from a tap set into its trunk.

Permet is about 20 miles from the Greek border. It is set in the narrow canyon of the Vjosa River. It has been a settlement since Illyrian times but was largely destroyed during WW II and rebuilt by the communists with typical drab, block architecture and heroic monuments to the people’s struggle against the fascists.

The festival which featured lots of clarinets, accordions, lutes and tambourines and dancing in native costumes was held on the plaza in front of one of the monuments. Performances were held in the morning and late evening to avoid the heat of the day. It was well worth the trip. Flags draped across the main street included NATO and the Stars and Stripes alongside the Albanian national and Permet regional banners. A food tasting event was held on the plaza in front of the city hall. When one of the Peace Corps volunteers I was visiting tried to ask for directions to the table serving white wine, we were introduced to the mayor, given plates of bread, cheese, olives, meatballs and shish kabobs and bottles of local Merlot along with glasses of the red wine. This being Albania, we accepted all this gracefully and were thankful we were not also given instruments and costumes and hauled onto the stage.

The apartments of the volunteers in Permet make my place in Korca look deluxe. I regret my previous complaints. My landlords, who live above me, are incredibly nice and quickly attend to any problems. My neighbors are friendly, and even if it is noisy and lacks privacy, the place has a nice community feel to it. There is a small store in a garage on the dirt road in front of my window. The owner is usually sitting in front on the curb playing backgammon or working on his motor bike. Whenever he sees me he asks me to coffee.

I think I have mentioned the coffee culture in Albania. I like coffee and I especially like the sociability of sitting around with friends at a coffee shop chewing the fat over a prolonged cup of the stuff. I have fond memories of the “Geezer Group” in McCall before I’d head up for skiing or at Dawson-Taylor in Boise on 8th street which seemed to attract pilots and offered the closest thing to hangar flying in the city. Albanians take this to a new level. It seems at times that every conversation or interaction here is punctuated with a coffee. You meet someone and it is either over coffee or you then go for coffee. You should have a very good reason to refuse as it is almost an insult. I find the most common reason I have to turn down an invitation is that I already have an invitation for coffee and I am running late.

For example, I recently had to contact my landlord because I was getting a shock from holding the shower head or touching the faucet while taking a shower. This produced a tingling sensation and twitching in the arm. I think this is unlikely to be fatal or it would have been already. I can avoid it by using a hand towel and I did think about another use for duct tape, which I brought with me, or trying to find electrical tape in the Pazar. He does not speak English and my Shqip is still not very functional. I knocked on his door and left word with his wife that I needed to talk with him.

Next afternoon he knocked on my door. I invited him in. Every conversation in Albania begins with an inquiry about how you are doing.

“Good”, I say.

“Good?” he inquires.

“Yes, good, and you?”

“Good”. “Your family?”

Of course, I haven’t been home in more than three months and the internet connection is down and, anyway, no one back home seems very communicative, so how the heck would I know. “Good, I say, and your family?”

“Good.” He smiles. I see we have gotten through the mandatory, first section of any Albanian interaction. Frankly, I don’t know how people are able to get on a bus here and maintain any kind of schedule. He lets me know his wife told him I needed to see him. I tell him about the electrical massage feature of my bathroom plumbing. Apparently this is a phenomenon throughout the building, but he is sympathetic, knowing that I am a wimpy American. He promises to fix it. He waits.

I remember my manners. “Coffee?”

He smiles. We go to the kitchen where I prepare a couple of cups of Turkish coffee. We continue our conversation about the gastric virtues of Turkish coffee vs. espresso, early morning walks up the mountain, relative merits of Korca vs. the other cities in Albania, which are nice, but can’t compare with Korca. This is a sentiment I share, but I suspect every other city in the country feels the same. Back home, we have had similar conversations on the relative merits of McCall vs. Sun Valley, but in Idaho the distances are much greater.

When he comes back an hour or so later, we repeat the whole process, just in case, we are no longer good or have had late word of some family catastrophe, or have not yet had our daily quota of caffeine. I should mention that I have not seen decaffeinated coffee in Albania.

He went around the apartment with a circuit tester, checking sockets and taps and light fixtures. I was amazed at how many were “hot”. He then went outside and pounded in a new ground next to the building. It seemed to fix the problem for a couple of days. Then a New Zealand couple bicycling through Albania spent the night with me (I was very well treated while trekking in New Zealand decades ago and have a resolution to be nice to Kiwis whenever I have the opportunity) and complained of being shocked in the shower. I need to go to the store for some more coffee before I tell my landlord.

Carnival in Korca

There is a national election in Albania at the end of the month. Among the many rules for Peace Corps volunteers is a prohibition from even the appearance of involvement on politics. A cohort of mine, who works in city hall, was asked by the mayor to be a guest at a dinner speech in their town to be given by one of the national candidates. She was thrilled and even bought a new dress for the occasion. Peace Corps said no. Sometimes being in the Peace Corps is worse than traveling with your parents.

This particular rule, though, is probably for the best. There seems to be a real contest this time, and a relationship with any Western entity plays well in Albania. Everyone is so proud of being admitted into NATO and looks forward to a future in the European Union. A free and fair election will be an important step towards that. So even if I did understand enough Albanian language, culture and history to have an opinion, I would not ever want to do anything that might jeopardize that in any way. So we may grouse about it, but I think most volunteers agree with the policy.

One thing I can report without any bias is that every candidate is for change. One hears that word here even more than it was repeated in the recent US election. In spite of the old joke that “when a politician talks about change he is referring to what will be left in your pocket when he gets done with your wallet”, Albania is changing, palpably and rapidly, and, no doubt, will continue to do so no matter who wins the election.

Korca as a fairly progressive and cultured city is at the forefront of this change, and, of course the case I know best. They are busy repairing the streets and cleaning up parks. The main street I live off of is torn up. Traffic races at the usual breakneck pace, undeterred by the fact that all the traffic now uses only half the road previously available. I almost got hit by a bus that was going the wrong direction on a one way street to get around an area being repaved. There is a cross on a hill overlooking the city. A large number of Korcans get their morning constitutional hiking to the top. There is a natural spring on top. Korcans, like many Albanians. are great connoisseurs of spring water and they bring empty bottles to fill for the daily drinking water, even though the tap water here is safe to drink. They are paving the road to a hotel near the summit. This change may change the nature of the morning “Folks March” to the cross as cars are already roaring up the part that has already been paved.

This weekend was Carnival in Korca. There was a parade on Saturday night through the center of town. It began at about 7:30 PM and ended with fireworks around 10. There were traditional bands (lots of clarinets, guitars and accordions), singers (Korca is famous for serenades and ballades can be heard from beer gardens and locals almost every evening in the pleasant summer weather), dancers in traditional costumes from the region and some from as far away as northern Albania and Macedonia, and clowns on stilts, and acrobats, and lots of masks and Santa Claus and Elvis were there, too. I watched with some other Peace Corps volunteers and some people from the Directorate of Public Health and their families from the steps of the cathedral in the center of town. Apparently, such parades were a long tradition in Korca, but were banned under the communists and were only recently revived. It was a grand event, very well attended by the locals and there were even some foreign tourists.

Such events do a lot for local pride and identity, probably not unlike the Winter Carnival back home in McCall. Hopefully it helps boost the local economy as well (probably hoped for in McCall, as well) since there are towns in the region where there are almost no able bodied, working age males, since they are all away in Greece or elsewhere laboring. Even poor jobs are hard to come by here, as in most of Albania. There are lots of great local products; fruits and vegetables of all variety, a tangy white cheese from Korca that I am particularly fond of and is only available in late Spring, yogurt and olive oil and at least three local breweries. The most famous of these is Birra Korca reputed to be the best in Albania and “birra e zeze” (the dark beer) can hold its own against any in Europe. There is a beer festival in Korca in August, also a recently established event. I may have a dozen or more Peace Corps volunteers from around the country camped out at my apartment for that weekend.

Maybe someday, Birra Korca will be available in the US and Albanians will work in great numbers at the factory and in service and other jobs that spin off from production. For now, the brain drain and emigration continue. An Albanian nurse, trained in therapy by the local NGO that serves disabled children and burn victims in Korca and outlying villages, “won the lottery” and was granted a work visa in the annual drawing run by the US embassy. She has emigrated, no doubt to work in a nursing home someplace in the US. She will make a low wage by US standards, but almost unimaginable in Albania. I will help train new staff at the NGO, but I hope my real purpose is not to live in Albania for 2 years and train Albanians to work in America.

Meanwhile, I enjoy my morning walks up to the cross and enjoyed my friends and the events of the past weekend. I have classes starting over the next couple of weeks in exercise physiology and English and aviation and even a computer class. At least I know that anyone who learns computer skills from me would be very unlikely to find any related employment in the first world.