Dita e Veres

March first was “Dita e Veres” or “Summer’s Day”. This is celebrated by Orthodox in Albania as the first day of spring. Bonfires are lit. People eat “kulace” (special sweet bread with raisins) and generally have a good time. This should not be confused with “Dita e Veres” which is celebrated by the Muslims on the fourteenth of March. This also involves a special treat, “ballokume” (a cookie made with corn meal). Apparently, this year, only the fourteenth is recognized by the government of Albania as the official “Dita e Veres”. This seems to have ticked off some of my Orthodox friends who passed around pieces of kulace in a conspiratorial manner. No doubt I will get ballokume from my Muslim friends next week. I will have to eat several of each to fairly judge the battle of the bakeries. I asked my Catholic friends if they wanted to enter the competition, but they only replied something about daffodils and the vernal equinox.

I don’t really understand why the first day of spring is called summer’s day. I will add that to my list of cultural confusions. The sun did come out and the temperature neared 60 for a day. My laundry finally dried and I aired out my long johns in the warm breeze. The next day clouds blew back in, it started to rain again and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. It will be interesting to see what the weather does in two weeks.

Speaking of cultural confusion, the Peace Corps, Albania, office in Tirana asked me to write an introduction to Albanian culture for the new group of volunteers. I am not sure why they picked me as I can think of many in my group who would surely do it better. However, I figure that saying no when asked to do something is not really in the spirit of being a volunteer.

I wrote a long treatise on Albanian history and how it affected Albanian culture. Maybe my age leads me to take the long view. If any of my friends have a burning interest in the topic, let me know and I’ll pass it along.

In addition to Summer’s Day, early March has International Women’s Day on the 8th. This is celebrated as Mother’s Day in much of the world, including Albania. The traditional gift is a sprig of yellow flowers and green leaves from the mimosa tree. I think they are a bit allergenic, since several volunteers, including me, have noticed a flare in hay fever symptoms.

March 8th this year, by coincidence, is also the centennial of the issuance of the first pilot’s certificate to a woman. In France in 1910, Raymonde de Laroche was taught to fly by Voisin and became only the 36th licensed pilot in the world. Pilots in the US are being asked to give rides to young girls who are interested in flying as an appropriate way to commemorate this event. I only wish I had a plane here so I could participate. I am forbidden by Peace Corps regulations to operate a motorized vehicle within the country of service. However, according to Webster, vehicles are only found on land and in space. Aircraft are not vehicles. I could argue that I don't need special permission, but it is a moot point, in any event, since I don’t have access to an airplane, I would have to clear the trash, cows and sheep off the airstrip outside of Korca, and I am now more than a year since my last flight as PIC, so I am not current.

I am limited, like the others in the Aviation Interest Club of Korca, to making balsa wood and paper airplanes to fly in the large lobby of the library and playing with Flight Simulator on the computer. The girls in the group made a poster for the centennial of the woman pilot and put it up on the wall outside the American Library. The sign is in shqip and maybe it will bring in some additional members. As far as I have been able to find out, there has never been an Albanian woman pilot. One of the girls in the group is eager to be the first. Maybe she will. It seems only right, since the name of the country (Shqiperia), the language (Shqip) and the people (Shqiptare) derive from the word for eagle (shqiponje). Albanians are the “people of the eagle”, so should be good pilots.

I am looking forward to the arrival of the new group of volunteers. It will mark my first year in Albania and seems a milestone. A year in Albania sounds like a sentence, yet it has not been. I feel like I have been of some use and there are still things in development. That I am not entirely sure what will happen or exactly what I will do over the next 15 months actually makes things more interesting. I have been asked by the program staff to give a couple of classes in Elbasan during pre-service training. This is more likely because it is pretty easy and inexpensive for me to get to Elbasan than for any other reason. I wish the new volunteers good luck.