Meet and Greet

The 3 hour furgon ride to Elbasan is routine by now. I know enough to sneak up on the furgon stand, find one that has at least a few passengers inside, and make sure I know they are about ready to leave before I get on. Otherwise we could sit for an hour or more waiting to fill up the van. Also, one should get the price set before getting on, although I haven’t been too taken when I forget to do this, no more than about 50 cents more than the usual price. I don’t begrudge the drivers that. Driving a furgon is a hard way to make a living.

The road over the mountain between Lake Ohrid and the Shkumbin River valley is being straightened and widened. It is a mess now, but will be great when they finish. The trip between Korca and Pogradec used to take an hour and a half and now is only 45 minutes. They celebrated the opening of that section of the road with a bicycle road race last summer. The road over the mountain might take another half hour off the trip. I don’t know when they plan to finish the work. Not that it matters, since some road projects that are ongoing have signs posting completion dates four or five years back. One of the satirical TV shows has great fun showing big ribbon cutting ceremonies, signs with pictures of modern highways, “Soon to be Completed!”, and footage of large potholes and detours as construction drags on for years barely keeping up with deterioration. The first autostrada (a four lane, divided highway to European standards) opened between Durres and Kukes was opened to great fanfare last year. They were way over budget and only opened 2 of the four lanes for most of it, but it cut the 8 hour trip to 2 hours. It was incredible. People made special trips just to drive the road. Then one of the main tunnels collapsed. They hope to reopen it soon. It must have been engineered by the same group that did the Big Dig project in Boston.

I gave two classes to the 15 volunteers in the health education section. The sessions went ok. I hope the information I gave was useful. No one fell asleep, even though it was just after lunch. This was likely more a tribute to their politeness and attentiveness than to my riveting presentation. I talked mainly about how my volunteer activities developed over time and how I approached things. I tried to emphasize that they have to work it out for themselves, be positive, flexible, patient and creative. I also got to hear another health education volunteer about her activities in Berat, another historic and scenic small city in southern Albania. She is a dynamo and I was very impressed. I am inert by comparison.

The total in Group 13, the new group, is 50; two-thirds larger than my cohort. On Saturday, many of the volunteers from Groups 11 and 12 joined them for the “Meet and Greet” session, first at the Peace Corps training room and then at the park. The new group was fresh faced and enthusiastic, and young! There is one volunteer in the group from Georgia in her 60’s, but I didn’t see her there. There was a couple in their 40’s and the rest were the usual Peace Corps age, newly out of college, in their early 20’s. In Group 12 there are four of us over 50 years old. Meeting the new group made me feel even older than I usually do.

I unrolled my sleeping bag on the couch of a volunteer from Group 12 who is sited in Elbasan. There were 7 of us in her house for the weekend. It saved money for the Peace Corps which is trying to do the pre service training for the new group on the same budget it had for previous groups. The others talked long into the night. I remember doing that when I was their age, but I don’t fit into such conversations and, anyway, I wanted to get to sleep so that I could get up at dawn, head to Thane, visit my host family there and get back for the afternoon activities in town.

The Salufi family is doing well. The grandmother is now fully recovered from her surgical complications and seems quite well. They have 5 cows now, and the mother is traveling to Elbasan every other day to sell her dairy products at the bazaar. She makes a lot more doing this than selling her milk to the dairy van that picks up from the villages every morning. It keeps her very busy. The father continues to do construction work in the area. The older boy, Aldi, is in a Turkish college in Cerrik, a larger town that is about a mile down the road from Thane. He is learning English, Turkish and Arabic, computers and trigonometry. His English is now pretty functional and it was a treat to converse with him. The younger boy, Diku, goes to the same school on Saturdays and will go full time next year. It is a private school and a big expense for the family, but seems to provide a good education. The family wants the best it can provide for their children. The school in Cerrik seems like an Islamic version of Preka, which, of course, is sponsored by a Catholic society. I don’t know about corruption issues, but they don’t allow slackers in this family. The girl cousins are also doing well. Their parents are back from working in Greece. Their mom is helping with the cows. Both families are hosting volunteers in the new group and are very happy with the volunteers that were placed with them.

One of the reasons I came in the morning was to try to avoid a huge dinner, so, of course, they put on a huge lunch. I felt badly that I had to leave abruptly to get back to Elbasan. I was given large jars of pickled peppers and fig jam to carry home, but unfortunately the glass fig jam jar rolled on onto the floor of the furgon and exploded. The other passengers were not upset and helpfully gave me Kleenex and barf bags to clean up the mess. Luckily most of it was over me.

I washed up at the office and walked over to the meeting room across the street. The volunteers were divided among eight tables it was run like a speed dating session. Every few minutes the prior volunteers would rotate to the next table of new volunteers. There was barely time for introductions. I apologized to each group for not hosting anyone in Korca during the volunteer visit over Easter. By the time we got to the park, it was running a bit late if I wanted to catch a furgon back to Korca. I said hi briefly then headed across the street where some of the furgons leaving Elbasan for Korca ran. Luckily, after about 15 minutes one came along and I was on my way home.

I had promised Isuf and Maca that I would go to the ski area the next day and help with the clean up now that the season has ended. There was a fair amount to do, but the weather was not great. It alternated between hail, rain, snow and occasional sun. We cleaned up the inside of the day lodge but didn’t bring the rope tows inside as they were wet and muddy. We did clear a large area of ground with pick and shovel for a garden by the door of the equipment room we had built last summer. I expressed doubts about how well it would do at that altitude and with a northeast exposure, but Isuf assured me it would be great.

The following week was busy. I had a day of make-up classes in addition to my regular schedule at Preka. I have started co-teaching a couple of classes at the public nursing school. The classes are huge and crowded and in shqip. Sometimes I get flustered and my already limited language ability disappears entirely. Sometimes I am not exactly sure what I am saying which is not the best situation for instruction. After my class with Isuf, he insists we go out to eat kernacka (a local delicacy about halfway between a meatball and a sausage) at a nearby beer garden. With the warming spring weather we can often sit outside, which is pleasant, and I can slip some of my over generous portion to cats or dogs that hang around the tables. After that class I have English tutorials with two students at their homes. Their families routinely try to feed me as well. I have found I can mitigate this a bit by protesting that I have to save room for the obligate feeding at my next stop. No matter what I say I have learned I don’t have to plan meals for that day and most of the next.

Thursday afternoon as I was walking to the aviation club at the library, there was automatic weapons fire on the street. The police quickly closed off the area to traffic, but pedestrians seemed more curious than afraid. When I passed by, there were two cars with the left front tires flat, perhaps shot out, shell casings on the pavement, and the driver’s door of the front car open with a police motorcycle parked beside it. I didn’t see any signs of bloodshed. The cars had Italian license plates and it was assumed by my friends that it was related to organized crime. I am not sure if they have apprehended the shooters.

On Friday, I got a text message from one of the new volunteers that he was coming to Korca as his service site. I suspect that he is in community development rather than teaching English as a foreign language, although this is difficult to judge from the grammar of a text message. His is one of the young, enthusiastic “newbies”, but I can’t put a face with his name from the meeting last weekend. I look forward to introducing him to my city.