Christmas Time is Coming

Korca is especially beautiful for Christmas and Easter, and I encourage the volunteers in my region, that have no other place to go, to gather together in Korca. We have had them strewn about the couches and floors of my apartment and have managed to produce amazing dinners on my little stove. It gives us a sense of community and brightens what can be a depressing time when we are far away from home and family. I confess an ulterior motive. I have heard that a room is raised 2 degrees for each occupant, so 12 or more volunteers for dinner raises the inside temperature to the low 60’s. It is a real treat to shed one’s long johns and coat inside the house, at least for a while.

It has not been above freezing for more than a week. This is not a particularly low temperature back home in Idaho, but I think the centigrade scale which translates it as “below zero” makes it seem colder. Whatever, my down sleeping bag has definitely become my most valued possession. Maybe if my apartment had central heating and insulated walls, and windows and door frames that didn’t whistle in the wind I would have a different perspective. I do have two layers of plastic sheeting on the windows, a blanket over the door and a stocking filled with sand blocking the draft that blows through the large crack underneath. That helps, but you definitely would not consider it cozy.

It has already snowed a few times in Korca, and there is a lovely, white Christmas patina covering the city. There is a 50ft tree in the center of the square by the main hotels and the theater. It was lit along with lights in front of the Cathedral and on the trees that line to road between the Cathedral square and that by the main hotels, the national bank and the main post office where the tree stands. The ceremony was at 6 pm on a dark and very cold night. There were speeches by dignitaries, the lights were switched on and fireworks were set off (this was part of the show, and not due to a short circuit). There was a brightly lit stage set up to the east of the Cathedral steps. A young woman in a Santa hat danced and lip synched Korcan songs. Typical in Albania, the amplifier was full blast, just below feedback, mostly. Around the stage were booths displaying regional products for sale. This included foods like fruit, wine, and sausage, and handicrafts like woven carpets, handbags, knitted scarves and shawls, needle point and lace. The quality was excellent and I think the prices were reasonable. I might have purchased a few things, but I couldn’t hear the vendors over the din from the stage. There was also hot wine for sale for about a dollar a cup. I don’t drink, but I considered buying a cup to hold and warm up my hands. There were braziers scattered around, but they were not very effective in the winter night.

I met one of the other Peace Corps volunteers. He works at the city hall and had a project at the market with student volunteers who were dressed in carnival costumes and passed out leaflets urging people to buy local products. This is a national program and he is heading to Tirana to attend a meeting on this and similar projects around the country. He said it was the mayor’s idea to combine the market with the opening ceremony of the end of year festivities. The costumed volunteers were enthusiastic and each one wanted to give everyone in the crowd a copy of the leaflet. This created a lot of trash, but trash is under the purview of health education volunteers like me, so was not a big concern for the community development volunteer that was part of this endeavor.

There is a lot happening in the city. I have heard the mayor wants Korca to be known as a “city of events”. I think that in principle this is a good idea, although it is not much of a slogan in English or Albanian. After the opening ceremonies and the market, movies will be shown in the Cultural Palace. For some reason they are Spanish language films. I am not sure why, but I would guess it is because they were a gift of the Spanish embassy or were free for some other reason. Saturday night is the Miss Korca competition at the Cajupi Theater. Sunday and Monday there are instrumental trios at noon in the Cultural Palace. On Monday, the Cajupi Theater hosts a “Festival Concert” that is touring around Albania and there will be an exhibition of a national artist contest for “figurative art”. There is a “doll theater” on the 26th and 27th and a children’s concert at the library on the 29th and 30th. There is a photographic exhibition on biodiversity at a loft in a downtown, restored, 19th century building. There is an original play called “Happy New Year” that premiers at the Cajupi Theater on the 29th. Santa (called “Babagjushi” or “father-grandfather”) parades through the town center on the 30th. At noon on New Year’s Eve there is another children’s presentation called “chirping on a wire”, presumably about singing birds, also at the Cultural Palace. All of these are free. The week after New Year’s will have more activities, leading up to the Orthodox tradition on January 6th when a priest from the Cathedral throws a cross in a fountain in front of the church and there is a race to retrieve it to win the monetary prize and the good luck it brings. I hope they can keep the water from freezing.

There will be the annual party for the disabled group at Dr. Isufi’s clinic. His new building is not quite ready to be occupied, so it will be held in the temporary space across the street, which is unheated. I think this is planned for lunch time on the 22nd. In the morning of the 23rd the high school is having its Christmas recital. That afternoon, the faculty will have a Christmas party at a local restaurant and I have been invited.

You might be interested to know that under the communists Albania was an atheist state, and there was an active anti-religion campaign. When communism fell the people really didn't know how to celebrate Christmas. It was dark and quiet. Now the city is lit and beautiful. Kids at school twitch and chatter in their seats, unable to contain the building excitement. My teacher friends at Preca (the Maltese Catholic run high school which is one of the places that I teach) smile as they try to keep the kids on track, remembering what it was like not so many years ago.

The Association of Physical Benefits

This is the name of the group of disabled patients and their families that is organized out of Dr. Isufi’s clinic in Korca, Shoqata e Perfitimit Fizik in Albanian. Friday morning was windy, but dry and a large group headed out to the day lodge at the Bigell ski area for an outing to celebrate International Disabled Persons Day. 27 were packed into the old bus that they use on their excursions. We roared off up the mountain heading to the big party. The trip was marred by the loss of a walker, which fell out of the storage area in back. We back tracked for awhile trying to find it, but were unable to locate it. People we asked said they had seen it but didn't know where it was. It was probably scooped up by the people who pick trash looking for cans to sell for scrap. An aluminum walker must have been a real prize. Luckily we had a spare set of forearm crutches for that person. When we arrived at the area there was a group that preceded us. That, plus those that came in their own cars brought the total to over 50. The path from the road was muddy and it was a chore to get everyone to the lodge, but at least it wasn’t raining and it was actually warmer at the area than in town. With all the people and the wood stove it was quite comfortable in the lodge.

A couple other doctors from Korca, a surgeon and a psychiatrist, also attended and there were a few therapists and volunteers, but mostly it was patients and their families. The group had hired a teenage band for live music- an electric guitar and keyboard and a vocalist. One of the family members joined them for most of the time. They played non-stop after they set up, mostly traditional songs from the Korca region. There was lots of dancing and eating. One young man, with quite a bit of spasticity from his cerebral palsy, was the most frequent dancer, but almost everyone participated, with an age range from a 4 year old girl with congenital hip problems to several seniors who had suffered strokes. The food was non-stop as well; kulach (the heavy Korcan bread), salad, kernace (a meatball or sausage), salce kosi (a creamy yoghurt sauce), beef (I had seen Isufi’s mother select it on the hoof from the back of a van a few days prior), french fried potatoes, apples and petula (fry bread). There was plenty of beer and raki, as well, and lots of toasting. The party went on for more than six hours, as the wind increased outside and the clouds rolled in. By the time we left, it was raining lightly and the temperature was dropping, as the weather returned to the pattern that has prevailed the past month or so.

It has rained a lot here this fall. Shkoder, the largest city in the north, has major flooding. The main road is blocked, schools are closed, electricity is out, the water is unsafe to drink (although the water there is almost always unsafe to drink), the Peace Corps has prohibited travel to and from the city and is considering whether to evacuate the volunteers assigned there. Many other cities in valleys and low lying areas along the coast are having problems. Korca which is situated on the slopes of the Morava Mountain and not along a big river or lake shore is protected. The locals agree it is another sign of Korca’s general superiority.

There was a story on the BBC website about flooding in the Balkans. It mentioned Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, but left out any mention of Albania. This seems to me to be a pattern, and not just for the BBC. Museums about Byzantine art in Athens and Corfu and Thessaloniki make no mention of the history of Voskopoja, a historical center of Byzantine art and culture that in the early 18th century was actually larger than Athens. Stories about conflicts between Islam and the West, fail to mention Albania where Jewish refugees were aided and sheltered by Muslims, despite the risks from Nazi occupiers; a fact that all Albanians that I have met point to with pride. The street named after George W. Bush one block from the main mosque in Tirana was not mentioned during the controversy that recently swirled around the construction site near the World Trade Center in New York. I pointed this out with some e-mails to US media, but never even got an acknowledgement. Maybe I am sympathetic to this because I am from Idaho which we sometimes refer to as the “stealth state”. When Idahoans travel around the US no one seems to know where it is, often confusing it with Iowa or Ohio. There is a famous map of the Northwest which was published in the NY Times. It had Montana bordering Washington and Oregon. Maybe Albania needs a succssful sports team like Boise State, threatening to break into the big time, to put it on the map.

I neglected to mention in my last post about the car that blew up on the road near the US Embassy in Tirana the day before Thanksgiving. I got an urgent SMS about this from the PC director of security. Unfortunately it appeared while I was on a bus to Tirana. Of course, the route went right along this road. We were warned to be alert for potential delays and possible dangers. I was not sure what action I was supposed to take. Even if I got off the bus with my bags, in the rain, with the flu, I would still have had to get on another bus along the same road to get to my destination. I saw what was left of this car as we rode into the city from Elbasan. Fortunately it had been cleared by then and there were no delays beyond the usual traffic snarls of the capital.

It turned out not to be a terrorist, but just a car that blew up because it had been adapted to run on propane in addition to gasoline. This is quite common because propane costs about half per gallon compared to gasoline. I have seen similar conversions in the US. Most city buses in Boise run on natural gas. Unfortunately, the conversion had some technical problems, and it was incompetence rather than politics that resulted in the explosion. I think of this when I look at my landlord’s VW Golf which has a similar conversion and is parked outside my window.

I can look around my apartment at the leak from the drain from his kitchen sink that runs through my ceiling, or the hole in the wall of the bathroom where he installed the new water heater, or at the stove he put in with a propane tank beneath the counter. I still get occasional electrical shocks from my shower. These things just happen in Albania. When they fixed the road in front of a house in my neighborhood and it blocked the garage so they could no longer open the door, the owners just moved the garage to the other side of the house and exchanged the window from that side, presumably moving the rooms as well. It involved expanding one hole and bricking up some of the other. They took care of it in a couple of days.

The day lodge that was the venue for the festivities on International Disabled Persons Day had similar construction. The ceiling leaks in places, and part of the wood façade that covers a support beam is falling off. Pieces of tape are peeling off around the windows (I see that almost everywhere in Korca in newer buildings- maybe it is considered bad luck to remove it). The road into the mountains had lots of work done on it this summer, but there are still unpaved sections and parts of the repairs are beginning to wash away. Even so, everyone made it safely home. Everyone had a good time.