Sick Days

I should have had my flu shot sooner. I had an email from the Peace Corps Medical Officer letting me know the vaccine was available in Tirana, but had not found time to make the long trip to the capital. Back home, I always got my shots as soon they were available, but never felt any real urgency. Herd immunity, the protection we get from the fact that so many around us are already immunized, can generally be counted on in the developed world. Here the opposite is true. Once a readily infectious, airborne virus makes an appearance, it spreads rapidly. It seems counterproductive for a health education volunteer to be a vector, however unintentional. Even though I probably could have dragged myself to work, I stayed in my apartment.

An invitation to dinner at the home of the country director for the Peace Corps was forthcoming on Monday. I decided that if I felt well enough, I would take the bus on Wednesday. It was supposed to be at least 10 degrees warmer in Tirana and his home has much better heating than mine, not to mention a traditional Thanksgiving menu. If I stayed here, it would likely be soup, pasta, salad and maybe roast chicken, as a special treat. This is the typical dinner menu here. Nothing wrong with it, really, it just gets a bit boring. I tried boiling some potatoes for variety the other day but ended up falling asleep and being awaked by the smell of burning spuds. The fact that I have not yet done anything to limit the air leaks around the windows in my kitchen (because of the slow gas leak from my stove) helped a lot to clear out the smoke. I suppose I could blame the episode with the potatoes on limitations caused by the flu, but even at my best I am not a great cook.

Palo, my landlord and upstairs neighbor, brought me some rose hips from the garden of his family home in the mountain village of Dardhe. These are high in vitamin C and are recommended to be crushed and used to make tea as a remedy for colds and flu. Another neighbor brought some salep, which is brewed with milk and sugar and topped with cinnamon. This is another folk remedy, but I don’t care for the taste even though many of the volunteers are quite fond of the concoction. Whenever I have the least little sniffle, friends, neighbors, coworkers and even strangers on the street will offer medical advice. While I was walking home the other day, someone came up to me and handed me a pack of menthol cough drops.

I did manage to get to Tirana. I went straight to the Peace Corps medical office in the basement of the staff building. The medical officer, a nurse practitioner, gave me my flu shot, checked me over, and gave me a course of broad spectrum antibiotics to start if my cough seemed to be turning into pneumonia. Since drugs like these almost always cause major GI side effects, I don’t plan on using them unless I really need to. In a country with interminably long bus rides and Turkish toilets, I would almost prefer to have pneumonia.

I felt somewhat better on Thanksgiving Day and headed over the American compound where the traditional Peace Corps vs. Embassy Staff touch football game is played. Since my weight bearing joints have been nice enough to continue functioning over my lifetime without major surgery, I try to be considerate of them and now abstain from contact sports, but I went to cheer the team on.

The field is a rather steep hillside, covered with grass, but after all the rain it was pretty slick with mud. Before the game I tried to subvert one of the opponent team members, a recent college graduate from Portland. He is unemployed so was visiting his sister who works as a political officer in the Foreign Service. I told him that as an unemployed, recent college graduate it was more appropriate for him to be with the Peace Corps. This might seem to be an unsporting activity, but, remember, the Embassy team includes the Marines assigned there. I figured we needed any edge we could get.

I sat with a group on the side lines. We tried to think of appropriate Peace Corps cheers; like “DON’T FIGHT, TEAM!” and “I.R.B., I.R.B.!” (I.R.B. is an abbreviation for “Intentional Relationship Building”, a favored Peace Corps technique. I have suggested changing this to “Buttering-Up Local Leaders” which I think would be more descriptive of the technique and provide an easier to remember acronym).

As it turned out, the Peace Corps team dominated the field. The large group of new volunteers apparently includes several with experience in college sports. There were only four Marines on the Embassy team and the others seemed more academically inclined. The Peace Corps team was ahead when the game had to be called due to hail and lightning. For all of our sakes, I hope the Marines were not dispirited.

At dinner, I asked the Peace Corps director if he had done any recruiting of new volunteers with the game in mind or if he had a friendly bet with the Head of Mission at the Embassy. He smiled as he denied both. There were 16 at the table; 10 volunteers, the Country Director’s family (three of his children go to school in the US and were with family in Colorado) and a few local friends, Albanian and a Serbian. There was a huge turkey, a ham, and a fine assortment of appetizers, side dishes and desserts. After dinner we got to watch the Macy’s Parade in NYC and the Detroit vs. New England game on the big screen TV in the upstairs family room. We sat on the big couches around the room and their two dogs sat with us. It was a typical American holiday scene and a nice respite from the routine of Peace Corps service around the country. I am sure the other volunteers appreciated it as much as I did.

I was feeling better, but my cough persisted and my energy level was not up to par. I took it easy over the long weekend. It continued to rain, so it was not hard to hole up indoors. The long bus ride south was crowded with students going home from Tirana for the long holiday weekend (not Thanksgiving, of course, but Albanian Independence Day on November 28 and Liberation Day on November 29). The heating system did not work right and the bus was superheated. The road was muddy and flooded in spots and there were detours around sections that had washed out or were blocked by mud or rock slides. I plan to be back at work on Tuesday.

Albanian Indian Summer

The cold, rain and fog gave way to sunny warm autumn days with the smell of wood smoke filling the air during the nights and lingering into the morning. The inversion in the valley made me shed my jacket during my morning walk up the mountain to the east of town and the crystal air on top provided stunning views of the ranges that surround the valley and border Macedonia to the northeast and Greece in most other directions except west, where beyond several mountains and river valleys lies the Adriatic. I walked past herds of sheep and goats grazing on the public land. Occasionally a rider on a mule or donkey with a wooden saddle, ridden sidesaddle (astraddle would not be a more comfortable ride) went by. There were lots of people out walking. On weekends, some carried picnic bags, soccer or volleyballs, and guitars as they walked with their families for a day’s outing.

On Saturday night I went with my neighbor’s family to see Skenderbeu, Korca’s professional soccer team, play Dinamo, the league leader from Tirana. Korca’s stadium has recently been remodeled. There are individual reserved plastic seats instead of the stone benches and there are four large arrays of night lights. Now night games are preferred, even though it would be a lot more comfortable in the warm daytime than the cold nights. People marvel at the lighting that lets them watch their favorites after sunset. No wonder, as my friend Lawrence from Malta, who has taught in Korca for 12 years, told me that when he first drove into Albania from Greece there were literally no lights anywhere. He stayed at the border until daybreak as he was afraid to drive in the pitch darkness. It was the first game at home and there was a dedication ceremony with singing and dancing and fireworks before the game. There were many more women and girls than I have seen attending a soccer match. Korca won before a very enthusiastic home crowd. We stopped for coffee and hot chocolate on the way home and met another volunteer who was with his friends at the game.

My neighbor’s daughter has applied for the YES program which sends high school kids from around the world to attend a year in the US. She has made it past the first three rounds of tests and interviews. The other volunteer and I contributed to her transportation to Tirana for these as it is a strain for her family. There are hundreds of kids applying for only a few slots. If she gets to go it will be quite an adventure for her as she had never even been to Tirana before she went for the first test. It will be very hard for her parents to have her gone for so long as they are a very close family and she is an only child. However, they are very anxious for her to have the best in life, especially for her education, so they are very supportive of her application.

She has been tutored in English by Peace Corps volunteers since she was nine and is quite fluent in English. We are currently reading Huckleberry Finn as part of our lessons. With all the dialect it is pretty hard going for her, it requires a lot of reading of context for meaning rather than just vocabulary, and she is doing very well. If she spends a year in the US she will be essentially bilingual.

If she is selected (that is probably unlikely as I have heard that the selection process is rigged, not an uncommon occurrence in Albania, and hers is a humble family without the necessary connections), I wonder what the net effect will be. Will she be enchanted by the US or meet someone there so that she will eventually become part of the Albanian diaspora? Will she learn something that she can bring home to the benefit of herself, her family and her community? This is the wager of exchange programs, be they the YES program for high school kids or the Peace Corps.

I listened on-line to a recent City Club of Boise meeting where the speaker was the Pakastani ambassador to the US (by the way, as a young man he had come to the US on an exchange program). He pointed out the irony that the world was smaller than ever, there is a 24 hour news cycle and, yet, most of what we know about the world is filtered through the special interests in New York or Washington, DC, and is wrong. He is trying to be the first ambassador to visit all 50 states. Idaho is a good place to learn something different from what he would in New York or Washington. Maybe the Federal government should have a program like we have in Idaho with “Capital for a Day” held in our varied towns and cities.

Tuesday is Bajram, a holiday in Albania. It is a Muslim holy day which commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at God’s command. For Muslims, he is called Ibrahim and the son in question is Ishmael. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Abraham is willing to sacrifice Isaac. I can imagine the two boys fighting about which one gets to be sacrificed, arguing to the point that the beleaguered father considers maybe sacrificing them both. After all, he was pretty old by that time and probably not greatly tolerant of jabbering and squabbling children. How was he going to explain this to their mothers? He probably wished they had had girls who are by nature more compliant with issues involving sacrifice. In any event, as the story goes, the boy or boys are spared, the goat is sacrificed, and, by a fortunate coincidence, is delicious when roasted and served as a main dish (I am grateful that a rutabaga was not the first alternate). Albanians, fervently believing that no excuse for a feast should be wasted, have a big meal to celebrate regardless of their religious affiliation. It seems that the way to cultural harmony is through the stomach.

Next week is our own, secular, American Thanksgiving; Americans demonstrating our cultural advancement by adding football to the feast schedule- Thanksgving, New Years and Superbowl Sunday- (a fact that I think argues for the superiority of American Football over Soccer). I am still not sure if I am hosting a group of volunteers at my apartment for a big pot luck or if the American ex-pat community in Tirana will come through with enough invitations to accommodate all the PC volunteers from around the country. There are a lot more this year than last so I think there is less enthusiasm for the endeavor. Last year I was invited to eat with the US Ambassador at his residence. I think there must be a special source for diplomatic turkeys as it was about the tastiest bird I have ever eaten. Ambassador Withers retired this past summer and his replacement has not yet been confirmed. I suggested that since the residence was free, we could provide the cook and butler with some useful recurrency training by hosting a large group of volunteers for dinner. I think the dining room could easily accommodate 30. Like many of my best ideas, it was ignored.

Whatever happens, I am certain I will not be hungry the next couple of weeks. I will try to be mindful of the many blessings I have as an Idahoan, an American and a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Albania. I will think of the many family and friends whose distance or death keeps us apart on this holiday. I will remember gratefully the many who have been willing to make personal sacrifices on my behalf.