So Close to Europe

Two older, women volunteers, who had completed their service, were touring the Balkans and came through Korca. They stayed with another volunteer in town, but we got together for dinner at one of the best places in town, Vasili’s. It was a cold, rainy night and the downstairs dining room has a fireplace. We sat nearby and enjoyed the specialty dishes; lemon soup, grilled vegetables and an egg dish they call kanaloni, but is more like an Albanian version of huevos rancheros. Of course, the conversation was mostly about the Peace Corps.

First, we played “my country is poorer than your country”. One woman served in Romania. There is no way Romania is poorer than Albania. I was there last summer. It has good roads and a functional rail system. The electrical and water systems are reliable and the factories actually make things like cars and diesel fuel and people have real jobs. It’s a member of the European Union, for pity sake, and Romanians don’t need visas to travel or work throughout Europe. There may be areas of poverty, but the fact that there are places in Romania where poor people predominate doesn’t mean the country is poor any more than poverty in Mississippi makes the US part of the third world. The other volunteer had worked in Moldova. This is the country that makes Albania the second poorest country in Europe. She described infrastructure and villages that she said were typical. Albania seemed pretty advanced in contrast.

I don’t know if all PC volunteers do this when they meet. It would not surprise me. I am not sure it is very useful. How does one compare Togo to Paraguay or Cambodia to Tonga or Kazakhstan? Which is a better indicator of poverty; a thatch hut, a tin roof or a communist bloc apartment? Are you worse off if you are exposed to mosquitoes in the rainy season, or frostbite in the winter? Some volunteers complain that they expected to be in a more rural setting, while others that the lack of an internet connection makes them less effective. Maybe like the kids in Albania seem to think things are better in any country but their home, PC volunteers think things are easier in any country but the one they are serving in, or at least trying to. “The challenges are always greater on my side of the border”. My own experience has been that the most difficult impediment to my effectiveness is me.

We also talked about some concerns particular to older volunteers (not of much interest to the younger volunteers, who sat there politely, probably bored to death). One noted that Eastern Europe is a preferred assignment for our age group since it provides ready access to advanced medical care even if the in-country care is a bit substandard. I suppose this is a reality for older volunteers. Two in the Albania group before mine had to be sent home for health reasons, however in my group all of the medical terminations have been among the youngsters. One of the visitors, who had a lot of work experience in project management, complained she had been assigned to a remote, rural village where her skills were not of much use. She had taken it upon herself to travel around her country and help other volunteers with their projects.

Volunteers drawing on their individual expertise and helping their cohort is not at all unusual in my experience in Albania, and not just among the older volunteers. Many young volunteers are much better with technology and the internet and some have advanced degrees in engineering, environmental science, teaching and architecture. I think it would be great to get more direction and support from the PC administration, but maybe that is part of the intentional design of the Peace Corps program. It would have been helpful had this been stated explicitly in the orientation meetings or pre-service training, but maybe I am just slow on the uptake. It has been evident to me for a long time that if I need advice or support, it is better to turn to other volunteers. I have tried to contribute my share when I can.

The volunteer from Moldova said that she had heard that the PC was looking at how they use their more experienced volunteers. There is a special response program in the Peace Corps where older volunteers, who have previously completed the usual service, participate in short term projects in countries that have specific needs for their expertise. She said the PC was considering changing the requirement for previous service for older volunteers for this program. One idea that I have had would be some sort of pre-service grant application so that volunteers with special expertise might bring more resources for projects they might have particular qualifications for, rather than trying to develop this only after they get to their site which is not always successful and has an inevitable time lag. It takes a long time to get into the Peace Corps and this might be a useful activity. Lining up help from your contacts at home would be a lot easier while you are still there rather than from thousands of miles away. Also, it takes time to find your footing in your service site and the grant application process takes time. Time has to be available to complete a project. Complications and delays are likely to occur. Not everyone wants to or even can extend for a third year of service. There is really only a short window to pursue such support even within the 2 year term at a site. There is an Idaho association of returned PC volunteers, as there are in many states and some of the larger metropolitan areas, and most countries have “friends groups” of volunteers, their friends and families to stay involved with their country of service. I look forward to discussions about these topics and other activities within these groups.

The women planned to visit Butrint and then head up along the “Albanian Riviera”, to Vlora, and then to Shkoder, into Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and into Hungary and the Czech Republic. That is a route I hope to travel after I finish my service, so I gave them my e-mail address and asked them to update me on their progress, and, especially, to give any advice they might have from their tour.

With an American passport, it is so easy to travel around this region and there is so much to see. In mid-October, I went with several of the volunteers to Istanbul for the marathon. 16 of the 27 in my cohort traveled to Istanbul for the event. One volunteer met his mother there and toured around a bit with her and some of her friends. Then after taking his LSAT exam, he ran the marathon on the next day. He is also interested in the Foreign Service. This kid is a high achiever.

I went along mainly to provide therapy to the survivors. Personally, I don’t see a point to jogging along a scenic route with a few thousand people, who, except for the super-fit few, seem to cramp up or throw up along the way and suffer a lot of pain in the aftermath. Then again, there are those who are not interested in flying a small plane to some remote mountain airstrip, hiking along a wild Idaho river, catching and releasing a dozen or so trout, huddling around a campfire and then waiting for the frost to burn off in the morning before launching for home. It takes all kinds to make a world. I knew that even before I joined the Peace Corps.

Istanbul is a beautiful and fascinating city that honors and displays its deep and varied roots. The people seem very friendly, the food was fantastic, and the museums and monuments are incredible. We walked for hours up and down the cobbled streets of the old city (at least those of my friends who could still walk), touring immense Ottoman mosques or Byzantine churches or endless bazaars or serene parks and tea gardens with vistas of the Bosporus that divides the city and Europe from Asia. I was impressed. Definitely a place I would like to visit again.

Most of the group flew back to Albania, but a few of us took the train to the ancient city of Thessaloniki in Greece where there is a bus back to Korca. The train travelled along the Aegean coast and pulled into the city in the late morning. We then walked around the bustling city of more than a million. We toured its museums and monuments, which ranged from the stone-age to the twentieth century, but emphasized the Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine eras. The modern archeology and Byzantine museums are nicely laid out and, although the collections are relatively modest, they compare well to the museums of Athens or Istanbul.

In the evening, we boarded a crowded Alba-Trans bus bound for Korca. We departed from a store front across the street from the train station. A Chinese lady, who spoke Albanian, hawked mechanical toys to the men. I assume these were presents for their kids back home as they returned from work in Greece. The trip along a Greek highway took less than three hours to the Albanian border. There, the bus driver had heated words with passengers whose papers were not in order, since that delayed our crossing by more than an hour and looked bad for the driver, who apparently was ultimately responsible to the authorities, as the bus company is not supposed to let on board passengers without valid passports and visas. There was also a problem with the paperwork for some of the cargo. Strangely, once we got through the Greek station, the Albanian side went quickly, although I did notice one man walking up and down the aisle with a large wad of Albanian money, exchanging bills with some of the passengers. Whether or not this was a factor that facilitated our passage, I can’t say.

As we drove along the road from the border towards Korca, a man in the back of the bus began to sing an Albanian folk song, but was soon drowned out by a Hollywood, action movie shown on DVD in the front of the bus. The film was a violent epic set in LA. It was about a personal vendetta between a police officer skilled in martial arts and a Chinese hit man, and had all the usual explosions, machine guns, sword fights, car crashes, etc. I didn’t need to be awakened when we drove into Korca late at night.

All the politicians here talk about easing visa requirements for Albanians to travel outside of the country. This seems inevitable to me and a good thing, but Isufi pointed out something I hadn’t considered. Workers abroad are more likely to have their families join them than to send remittances back home. For poor countries that rely on these funds for a significant part of their economy (about 25% in Albania) that would be catastrophic. Also, currently the unemployment rates in Greece and Turkey are high and they are not welcoming foreign workers, so things are not likely to change at the border crossings anytime soon, and Albania will remain an underdeveloped enclave for awhile longer.

Saturday night there was a classical flute duet concert at the Kultural Palace. There is also a banner across the street announcing the “Korca Prize”. I think this is a painting competition that the mayor told me about when we met at a photography exhibit a few weeks ago. He said that artists were being invited to Korca from around Albania. They would paint scenes of the city, with a prize to be awarded to the best, but that each artist would leave one painting to enhance the collection of the city art gallery (the “Guri Madhe” in the Kultural Palace). There is a lot of activity, fixing cobblestone streets in the older parts of town and repairing sidewalks along the boulevards. Many older buildings are being restored and there is new construction throughout the city. There are plans to restore the bazaar. Korca is another city with deep and varied roots. It is working towards being a beautiful and fascinating European city, well worth visiting again.

Ties That Bind and Fray

NPR had a story about how the internet was changing the Peace Corps experience. Instead of volunteers being dropped off in the jungle with sporadic communication with the outside world for the duration of their two years of service, daily communication with home is now possible with e-mail or even video with Skype. Country directors complained that if any volunteer was unhappy they would hear about it from the parents, or worse, from their congressional representative’s office. Google even has a free service (until the end of the year) through g-mail which allows phone calls to any number in the US. I have used this several times to call friends and family (especially appreciated to use for calls to elderly relatives that don’t have computers). I even have made it available to my neighbors to call relatives in the US using my laptop and a DSL I have through my landlords’ phone and a wire strung out his window and into mine.

My landlords, who live upstairs from me, came over last Sunday and were able to talk with a niece who lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. This city has a large population of Albanians and is a center of Albanian culture (there are also large numbers of Albanian immigrants living in Milwalkee, Detroit, New York and Chicago). Many of my Korca friends have family living there. I plan to visit there on my way home next June since it is not far from the home of some of my family. It will be a nice days outing from Rhode Island and I will be able to introduce them to some Albanians and sample byrek or lakror or some other Albanian specialty.

They talked for almost an hour and couldn’t believe it was free. The niece lives with her husband and children. If I understood everything she is a bookkeeper and he is in construction. They were both crying by the time they finished as they went through a long list of relatives to exchange information on how each was doing either in Albania or America. I expect that in the next week or so I will have a line by my door of other neighbors in my building.

Families here seem so very close and sentimental. It is one of the real contrasts to the US. However, I went to a meeting on trafficking last weekend and the presentation was hard for me to reconcile with my experiences with Albanians. It was held at the home of a nun who works in Korca. She is from Ireland and has a graduate degree from Fordham University in New York. She is on committees for the EU and the UN and spent three weeks this summer in New York City attending hearings about women’s rights in Europe, Asia and South America. Several PC volunteers from the Gender Development Committee came from around Albania to attend. Four stayed at my home. I had no other plans so I went along with them to the meeting.

There were the three nuns who live in the house (the Irish nun and one from Sri Lanka and one from Lebanon), an Albanian who had a public health degree from London and worked a European NGO, and a woman attorney from Korca who works in family law who presented. It seems that most girls are trafficked by relatives who promise them jobs abroad or are courted by young Albanian men who promise marriage, only to force them into prostitution when they arrive in other European countries such as the Belgium or Italy.

I know a family with five daughters that live in Thane. I met them during pre-service training. The father watched them carefully and at night he locked the gate in the wall around the house and garden. I had thought he was overly protective due to tradition, but now I see it from a different perspective.

One volunteer in my cohort who is very active in the GAD committee gave me a copy of a picture book, “Two Small Girls, A True Story” (“Dy Vajzet e Vogla”), that illustrated what happened to a young girl from the city and another from a village. It is supposed to be used for education, although I am not sure what age would be most appropriate. I plan to show it and a video disk that goes with it to the nurses in the Health Education Unit at the Directorate of Public Health where I work and see what they think. November includes a “World Day Against Violence Against Women” and is also international “Anti-child Abuse” month, so maybe we can put together a presentation as part of that and go around to some of the schools in the region.

Maybe an Albanian Mafiosi would stoop so low, but the idea that a relative would sell a girl into prostitution seems very un-Albanian to me. I would have thought they would vigorously defend their families (first offense, shoot out their knees; second offense, aim higher). I was walking in a village the other day when I came upon an older man who recognized me from my visit to my landlord when he was in the hospital after his heart attack last winter. You would think I was his long lost cousin. Of course, I was invited into his home, and talked with him and his wife as they served homemade walnut raki (I had to decline since I don’t drink alcohol, but I was forgiven this rudeness and provided a glass of wonderful spring water to go with the sweets that were served). The house was a beautifully crafted, stone cottage. It had a large American made woodstove, apparently brought back by his father who lived in America for 30 years early in the 20th century. He must have made enough money to furnish his home in style, with overstuffed couches, thick hand-made carpets (an Albanian craft that rivals Persia), wood paneling and fine paintings of mountain scenes. It was like a Victorian parlor, more like a restored North-end craftsman home in Boise than a house in a village in Albania.

I was surprised it had made it through the war and communism, but I guess bad mountain roads make it hard for visitors, whether they are tourists, conquerors or despots. Would they also deter predatory relatives? I hope so. What self-respecting Mafiosi would want to have to walk his unsuspecting victim out along a rutted mountain track, back to his shiny new Mercedes left parked on a roadside in the valley below? He might get sheep or cattle droppings on his expensive leather shoes. Even the totally corrupt must have their standards, or how could they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.

Harvest Time

The volunteers in Permet had a potluck dinner last Sunday. One of them is a vegetarian, so the menu was multiple vegetable dishes; hummus, focaccia bread, crostini with yoghurt sauce and roasted pepper topping, orange/carrot salad, bean salad, fresh feta cheese, homemade tomato pickles, and lemon pound cake and jello with fresh peaches for dessert. Those that drank alcohol had dark Korca beer, the rest homemade lemonade or spring water. I was fortunate to be visiting.

It is harvest time in Albania and the markets are full of fresh fruits and vegetables brought in by the villagers from the fields they work in the fertile river valleys of the countryside. It is mostly organically grown by default, since villagers tending their small family plots by hand, can’t afford commercial fertilizer or pesticides (although some, small entrepreneurs are starting to use the “bio” label on their products to indicate that it is organically grown). The challenge of planning a dinner is selecting from the cornucopia in the bazaar. In smaller cities, like Permet, the volunteers get to know the people in the bazaar personally. Shopping takes a long time as each vendor has to be greeted with hugs and air kisses and the traditional exchanges regarding how one is doing and how is the family, supplemented by information about how good today’s fruits or vegetables are or if the cheese is salty, and this requires sampling and then further discussion.

Early in the morning, we went for a hike to a mountain village about an hour and a half upriver from Permet. We passed fields, grape vines and fig orchards. People were working and as we passed they chatted with us and offered generous samples of whatever they were harvesting. The grape bunches were dense with small, tasty berries. The fresh figs were ripe and bursting. When someone saw us picking fruit off of a tree along the road, we were cautioned not to eat from the tree over the septic tank and to walk a bit further down the trail. The blackberries were a bit past their peak, but we were able to gather fennel seeds from the drying plants on the roadside. Shepherds were out with flocks of cows, sheep or goats. They waved as we passed. We are reluctant to approach them too closely as their dogs can be riled if we get between them and their charges. People were fishing in the rapids of the Vjosa River that flows through the valley, north from the Greek border. Part of the trail back from the village was a path along a stream that was fast and full from the Mali Dhembi (toothed mountains) that rise steeply from the west side of the valley. It had a spring alongside, pouring from the trunk of a large shade tree.

It was warming up when we got back to town, so we stopped for a drink. Our friends who run the restaurant allowed us to treat, for a change. We were celebrating their success in the latest step in their plan to move to Milwaukee. They recently had passed visa interviews and from talking to others, they expect to get their visas soon. They have relatives in Wisconsin and good job prospects for the whole family. We like their restaurant. The food is excellent, traditional faire, and there is a big screen TV. When we are there, they put on BBC news for us, although their teenage son favors American action movies. They are practicing their English in anticipation of their emigration, so we talk Albanian to them and they speak English to us.

On the bus drive to and from Permet, big bags of produce were loaded into the cargo hold at frequent village stops along the route. Closer to Korca there were stands, usually tended by the children of the rural families, selling potatoes, onions or apples (the products for which the Korca region is known in Albania). Most villagers, and, indeed, gardeners in town, grow everything. The grapes and figs and plums in Korca aren’t as good as those from Permet. Tomatoes and watermelons and corn are better near Elbasan or Fier, but mono-culture is unknown here. This is mostly for their families, but they sell any excess and there are some commercial operations. Prices are very low for local produce. In the market, plums are about 15 cents a pound, apples about 20 cents, and grapes 30 to 50 cents. Whole milk from the farm is about 30 cents a half gallon, although you do have to heat it to just below boiling and then let it cool as a method of home pasteurization.

My neighbors have had loads of firewood delivered and are chopping it into pieces to fit into their wood stoves. The Albanian axe is distinctive, and its shape looks almost medieval. The blade is much larger and thicker than an American axe. It makes quick work of splitting small logs. Most homes in Korca are heated with wood, which seems strange in a city of more than 50,000. My landlord, who had a heart attack last year, is not up to splitting cordwood, so he hired a farmer from a nearby village to do it for him. The farmer towed a table saw with his tractor and ran it off of the drive train. He went through the pile of wood quickly while my landlords, Palo and Moza, and most of the other residents in my apartment building sat around and watched. They drank coffee or raki and commented or joked about the work. Most seemed to think that Palo and Moza's sons should be splitting and stacking the wood for them, but they both work and are busy. Also, Palo is a retired mechanic and loves machinery of any sort. The tractor driven table saw obviously delighted him.

Many Korcans make peta in the fall. This is an egg and flour dough that is rolled out like a tortilla, dried in the sun and then broken up to use as pasta. Fresh peta, boiled and served with butter, is a delicacy, although a bit bland for my taste. Several friends have invited my over to sample their own special product. It all pretty much tastes the same to me. Since few of them cover the peta while it is drying, it may have markings from or even dead insects or bits of leaves or dirt in it. I have really tried not to be too prissy about hygiene differences between Albanian and American culture, but I am glad the peta spends time in boiling water before it is consumed. Anyway, I have eaten much worse on camping trips in the Idaho backcountry.

Cooler autumn weather has made mid-day hikes in the mountains pleasant. This is good because it is dark in the morning when I have to set out on my constitutional if I want to get back in time for work. Yesterday, as I started up my usual trail to the cross, I surprised a pack of dogs sleeping in the field. They growled ominously and I could not see how many there were. I picked up some rocks and tried to walk a little further out to pass around them without provoking an attack. It may be better when the time changes in October or they will move closer to town as it gets colder. Maybe I can find time later in the day for my walk. I have tried to get either of the other volunteers in Korca interested in the traditional hike up the hill, but neither is a morning person (are there any in the current generation of young adults?). Perhaps they will take me up on my invitation if it is for a more civilized hour.

Konstruksion

Dr. Isufi decided to build a new clinic building. He built his old building on his parent’s property, in front of their home, in central Korca, near the city hall. It was small and seemed more slapped together than planned. He met with an architect and planned a modern, three story office building with plenty of room for his practice and room for his son to open his own dental practice, as well. The building would still fit on the property, in front of his house, although there would be no room for a garden or for off street parking for his son’s car. In late July, he moved as much of his gym equipment as he could into a storefront across the street and a few exam tables into another, smaller one down the block, and the demolition of his old building began.

A crew of men with picks, shovels and sledge hammers did this work by hand. They dug out the foundation and rerouted the plumbing. Footings for the steel reinforced concrete posts were constructed and a cement truck pulled up one day and filled up the forms and foundation. This took about a month. His mother, son, dog, other family and visitors have had to pick through the site to get access to the house in the rear of the lot.

Clinic continues in the temporary venue. It is not easy since the storefront is up six steep steps and most of the patients use canes, crutches, walkers or even wheelchairs. They are helped into the clinic by family members or even other patients. There are three tables in the back where, Shpresa (which means “hope”), his medical assistant, administers modality treatments and directs patients about. There is no changing room. There is a closet sized toilet which provides the only private space, and a boom box to provide background music. Isufi sees a few patients here and, when he needs more privacy, he walks about 50 feet down the block to a small storefront, behind a low iron fence where more equipment is stored and a few exam tables, a cabinet and an x-ray view box allow for his clinical evaluation and treatment.

In mid-August the work crew did not show for a few days, as the contractor has another project nearby and put the men to work there. Isufi was not happy and had to threaten to find another contractor to get the project going again. By mid-September the concrete floors and ceilings for the first two stories were completed and the masonry work for the walls was progressing quickly. Isufi and his son hope to move in by the end of October, although this seems a bit optimistic to me. The third floor will be left to the future to be completed as money allows.

This is typical in Albania. The country is filled with partially completed structures. It is largely a cash economy and only the biggest projects are financed. Almost all homes and smaller commercial buildings are built, like Isufi’s office, as the owner can afford construction. They may be partly occupied, giving the impression that squatters have taken over. This has some advantages, however. There was no mortgage crisis here and, in fact, like many developing countries in the world, the Albanian economy, although it slowed substantially, never went through the recent recession experienced in the US.

What is unusual in Isufi’s project is that he has financed this with savings from his work in Albania. He has not relied on remittances from his or family members work abroad. Many houses, including the one I lived in with my host family during pre-service training, are built with money earned by migratory work in Greece, Italy, or elsewhere in Europe or North America. In some cities, especially on the coast, like Saranda, Vlora or Durres, construction may be financed by laundered money from crime or corruption. These are often large projects that are mostly empty as there is no incentive in such a situation to meet a real estate demand or to sell in a low market to partially recover an investment. Sometimes work on these big projects halts when the contractors are forced to take payment in unsellable condos and are then unable to pay their workers.

None of this is relevant to Isufi’s new clinic. He wants to move in as soon as possible. His son wants to open his own practice rather than work for another dentist. He plans to marry next year as soon as his practice becomes established. Dental problems are very prevalent in Albania and he will certainly not lack patients.

Interestingly, Isufi’s building is behind the new Polyclinic building. This is mostly finished, but unoccupied. I have been told that this is because the grant that allowed the building to be constructed did not provide for furnishings. In any event, there are not many medical specialists in Korca. This may change since Albania is reorganizing its health care into regional centers with hospitals in smaller cities being turned into family practice clinics with concomitant development of specialty facilities in places like Korca. I don’t know whether Isufi’s building will be competing with the Polyclinic building or, if it is, it will be at an advantage or disadvantage.

Speaking of clinics, I recently traveled to Tirana to see the Peace Corps Medical Officer for follow-up on my mid-service medical evaluation, a dental exam and vision testing. As an older volunteer, I worry that they will find something and ship me out because it is less of a hassle to get rid of me than to try to treat some malady and keep me in the country. I saw this happen to a volunteer who had an episode of atrial fibrillation. I don’t know all the details of his case, but I did talk with him. I also know that such a case would not preclude him from returning to flight status after a few months, so it seems a bit strange to me that he could be fit to be a pilot but not a Peace Corps volunteer in Albania. Lucky for me, I am pretty healthy. I probably will pay for some extra cleanings (the PC only pays for one dental cleaning a year- not a good idea for an older person interested in keeping their teeth), but, otherwise, have few concerns. My eye glass prescription didn’t even change, although my lenses are pretty scratched up and could use replacement. This, apparently, has to be special ordered through Washington and is probably not worth the hassle.

Then, again, it is hard not to wonder how much real change working for two years makes in a place like Albania, or, probably for most places where there are PC volunteers. It is easy to get discouraged. I wonder how much protest I would put up. I am fortunate in that I get lots of positive feedback from my counterparts (although I am not so gullible to believe much of it) and I have a good support network here and at home. I heard that one of the older volunteers in the new group recently left. My group had a Program and Training Officer who took some special interest in the older volunteers. She hosted a brunch at her home in Tirana over 4th of July weekend my first year. She has since transferred to Africa and her replacement hasn’t arrived yet. 4th of July celebrations were a bit strange this year, anyway, with the party in Tirana not open to all volunteers and not observed until the following weekend. I don’t know how much support that volunteer had from her site mate or her service cohort or counterparts or if it would have made any difference. Six months into service is reputed to be a time of increased departures.

On Sunday afternoon, I hosted a small group of volunteers at my apartment for dinner. We made an eggplant stroganoff (made with yoghurt sauce instead of sour cream) served over noodles, salad, bread, and chocolate pound cake ala mode for dessert. The group included volunteers from my group, one from the new group and one from the prior group who opted to extend for a third year and move to Korca to work on a tourism project. We enjoyed our meal then joined the Sunday evening walkers for a pleasant stroll and a stop for coffee, then back home to watch a movie on my computer. I popped corn which we ate with salt and curry powder on it (don’t wince- you should try it) during the show. It was good to get together. It makes you feel a part of something, and calms the sense of isolation that is inevitable with a long service abroad.

I will be home for a visit in four months and have less than four months to go when I get back. Things are picking up at work as people have returned from August vacations. School has started. I have some new projects for this year. The weather has cooled a bit and I am enjoying my weekend hikes in the mountains again. I have short vacations planned in Turkey, Greece and Macedonia. I expect the time will pass quickly.

Mid Service Conference

A week before mid-service conference I visited a new volunteer in my region in the small, mountain city of Leskovik. She is a young English teacher in grammar to high schools that have students traveling or boarding from small villages throughout the area. Leskovik is situated in a high saddle, overlooking valleys to the east and west, only a few miles from the Greek border. It was a major military base during the communist regime, but now more than half the population consists of the students. We hiked up into the steep, rocky hills to the south of the town. These are riddled with bunkers that are connected by a warren of tunnels. They are now used mostly for storage or for stables. It is hard to imagine the work that went into their construction. She told me that the father of her host family from pre-service training served as an officer here and, although he had privileges as an officer and misses the full employment under communism, he has no desire to go back to the old system.

Now Leskovik has little employment besides the school and hospital. Under a new reorganization plan, hospitals in smaller towns will be closed and made into clinics with minimal staffing. This will be hard for people living in places like Leskovik which will be a 4 hour bus ride from a hospital in either Korca or Gjirokaster. People living in rural areas, which have a higher percentage of older residents, will be especially hard hit by the new policy.

We strolled down the wide main street in central Leskovik which has straight rows of mature shade trees on either side, a remnant of the previous military influence in the city, I guess. We each had a glass of very sweet iced cocoa at a table amid a profusion of petunias on the deck of a coffee bar before I joined 13 other passengers in 9 passenger furgon for the trip back to Korca. Luckily the man sitting on my lap had bathed recently and the lady next to me was agreeable to opening the window.

A week later, I was on a bus to Tirana for Mid-Service Conference. Most of my cohort attended. There were a number of presentations about planning for post service. Former volunteers who are now working in Tirana talked about how they obtained employment with the State Department, the Peace Corps, the UN and a couple of NGO’s. One of the perks of PC service is that after completion of service, former volunteers can apply for awhile for US Federal jobs without going through the full competitive process.

Not everything was relevant to me. There were sessions on resume writing and discussions on alcohol abuse. Still, it was good to see everyone and, despite the oppressive heat, we took advantage of our time in the capital. We went out for Chinese food (there are a few ethnic restaurants in Tirana) twice. I bought some decaffeinated coffee for my landlord who has a heart arrhythmia complicating his recovery from his heart attack. This is not available in Korca as far as I know. I bought some black licorice for myself (also not in stores outside of the capital). I had my mid-service physical exam with the Peace Corps Medical Officer at the clinic at the staff office and met with a professor from the University where I will be teaching in the fall. He was about the only one in the department not on August vacation.

I asked him about how he had dealt with the anarchy in 1997. He responded slowly. He said that he had found jobs for himself and his wife, who is a veterinarian, in Canada and had obtained visas, but his mother had reminded him that he would be leaving his home country permanently. After talking it over with his wife, they reluctantly decided to stay. This was a rare exception to the brain drain that occurred in the chaos that followed the fall of communism and the Ponzi scheme a decade later. I was invited to dinner at their apartment. His wife is also an artist, and her work, decoupage with dried grass stems instead of paper, was striking. When I told one of the other volunteers about it, she observed that such a technique would be useful during times of communist privation for non-approved artists.

Several of my cohort traveled to Korca on Thursday for the Beer Festival. Some stayed with me, others with other volunteers assigned to Korca or nearby towns. We walked across town to the park near the University where the festival was held. There were dozens of booths serving light or dark Korca beer on tap, grilled chicken skewers or sausage like, kernace, a Korca tradition. A large dish of kernace, two chicken kabobs, and a fresh baked roll was about $4. Beer was about 50 cents a glass. An Albanian rock band blared away on the stage. What they lacked in quality they made up for in volume. I could barely stand it long enough to finish my share of the kernace and chicken, but most of the group stayed until long after midnight. I was glad I had a spare key to give to that group and woke to find them snoring away on the couches in my apartment.

I let them sleep in and, when they woke up, served French toast, coffee and cut up watermelon and figs for breakfast. We used some of my valuable supply of maple syrup I had brought back from Singapore. Later we walked around Korca. Some left to visit other volunteers in the south of Albania, still others arrived. I headed back to the festival to join them after the heat of the day subsided to eat more chicken and kernace. I hoped the band would be more tolerable but brought my earplugs along, just in case.

There is more traffic that I remember seeing before in Korca. It can be a long wait to safely cross the street. Cars do not typically give way to pedestrians. They have closed off some of the streets near the Beer Festival and supposedly only pedestrians are allowed on them. Somehow, cars still get on them and don’t necessarily slow down for the throngs of pedestrians that fill them. I am amazed they are not littered with bodies.

There are also more tourists in town than I have seen before. It used to be that a young person walking with a backpack was very likely a Peace Corps volunteer, but just today I have met backpackers touring through Albania from Slovakia, France, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and the US. There are tour buses parked in front of most of the bigger hotels in town. I hope it gives the economy a boost. The bazaar was more crowded than usual and there are lots of vendors along the streets near the festival.

I had received a phone call when I was in Tirana. A friend of mine from Tirana was in Korca, visiting his relatives. He is a retired engineer with a long time interest in Aviation. He wants very much to get young Albanians interested in airplanes. I wanted to show him the collection of books, charts, models and magazines we had at the American library in Korca and asked him to call me on his next visit. Luckily he was staying through the weekend.

When I got back home, I tried to call. I don’t know if it was because the system was overloaded by all the tourists or if it was due to my general lack of ability with cell phones, but I had the hardest time connecting with him. Calls or texts would not go through, or, if I was lucky enough to connect, I couldn’t hear him talking on the other end or he couldn’t hear me. Late Saturday night we finally connected. Not wanting to risk not meeting, I walked over to the park near his sister’s house and we talked about flying as we drank rosehips tea (called “zinzeef” here) at a table in the café in the park.

He was able to stay in Korca through Monday, so we arranged to meet at the library Monday morning. I hoped it would not be closed for August vacation like so much of the country or that the librarian would not have gone home early as the heat of the day made an oven of the second floor library. He wants to have teens build glider models and have regional competitions for them. There are places in the foothills around Korca that would be good places to fly them. We talked about possible grant sources for remote controls and construction materials, but he wants to keep it very simple. The bigger problem is sustaining interest among the teens and in the community. There is no tradition of after school activities. As soon as classes end, the schools close up, and the faculty and students head home. Korca is unusual in that the library has meeting rooms, but these cater to adults rather than children.

He told me the story of an old friend of his that died recently. He grew up in a small village on the Adriatic. One day a fighter plane, probably Italian, flew low along the coast before banking sharply to the left and heading out to sea. That image stayed with him his whole, long life. He fought with the partisans during WWII. Because of his heroism and loyal service, after the war he was rewarded with an air cadet training slot in Yugoslavia. Then Albania broke with Tito and the cadet was transferred to the USSR for advanced training. The Russians wanted to send the squadron to fight in the Korean War, but the Albanian communist government brought them home. When the government broke off relations with the Soviets, the friend’s time in the former allies brought him under suspicion and he was never allowed to fly again. Not that it made much of a difference as the paranoid regime felt airplanes in general were a threat and used those given to them by the Chinese as targets for artillery practice.

Interestingly, he also told me about a couple of German missionaries in the north who had built a kit plane with a Rotax engine and were flying it off an old military air strip. They had no registration or licenses. I wondered how they were able to get away with it, but maybe it is so unusual that the locals don’t think to complain and the authorities don’t even bother to deal with what in the US would be a violation of numerous regulations. I remember seeing a very small high wing plane built by Kitfox in Caldwell, Idaho, that had a pull cord starter coming through the dashboard. Wouldn’t that be fun to fly off the grass strip outside of Korca!

I wonder if a chance to go for a ride in an airplane would motivate young Albanians to aviation or other technical careers, the way it had so many young Americans in the past. I don’t think playing computer games has the same pull that looking down on your home from a small airplane, but, of course, I am prejudiced. As I walked home from our meeting, late at night through the still crowded streets, a few horse drawn carts clopped by. My first thought was that Albania had a long way to go in its development, but then it occurred to me that when the Wright brothers were experimenting with the design of their airplane, Dayton had lots of horse drawn carriages in the streets and probably less electrification than even rural Albania, and no television or internet or passenger jet contrails streaking the sky overhead. The bigger problem here is to get the young people to look down at their land and see their future in it, rather than to the horizon and the countries beyond the border.

Love in the Time of Peace Corps

“Kau Ngaue Ofa” is what the Peace Corps is called in the Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga (where there have been volunteers since 1967 and still are, working in education and economic development). The translation is: “They work for love”. I learned this from a book I found at the staff office in Tirana. They have several shelves in the lounge for a book exchange among the volunteers. I drop books off and look for new ones to read whenever I visit. The plot involves volunteers serving in 1976. There are beautiful young people, sex, drugs, alcohol, a love triangle, a gruesome murder and cover up in a tropical setting. I am fairly certain it is not an official history.

Unlike my friends in the Preca Society, Peace Corps volunteers are not required to take a vow of chastity. With an average age of 27 (skewed upwards a bit by the 10% oldster volunteers like me) and a term of service of over two years, it is not surprising that there are many pairings among the volunteers and with others.

I don’t know the statistic for the survival of marriages among Peace Corps volunteers. Whatever they are, it would be hard to be worse than for the rest of Americans. I did know a few couples that had served together in the Peace Corps early in their marriage and it did seem that they had a special bond between them. Even if that is true, it is hard to know whether that is due to the personality type of a volunteer or to their shared experience. I did read in Scientific American that emotional bonds are strengthened by doing new things together, feeling vulnerable, sharing frightening situations or stressful physical activities. The Peace Corps provides ample opportunity for all of those.

Most of the relationships are with people outside of the Peace Corps. Volunteers are not allowed to have dependents, but extended visits from girl or boyfriends do occur. This can lead to early termination, but not usually initiated by the Peace Corps. One girl in our group left to be with her boyfriend who was actually serving in another country. She took a job teaching there, outside of the Peace Corps. Separations are hard enough before entering the Peace Corps and I am sure it doesn’t get easier with repetition. Not many relationships survive a 27 month separation. Maybe that is something that Peace Corps service has in common with the military.

Some find paramours outside of the PC, but not among nationals. This can be difficult since volunteers rarely serve in the capital and most of the ex-pat community lives there. Two female volunteers I know took up with foreign soccer players playing on Albanian league teams in their towns. They seemed like good guys, but it was funny because of the double language barrier. I suppose they could learn Shqip together, but at a young age, that probably doesn’t matter.

The majority in relationships are with Albanian nationals. I have heard that this is the best way to learn a new language and I do notice that those among the volunteers with Albanian boyfriends or girlfriends do seem to have superior language skills. I imagine their Albanian partners have likewise improved their English.

Cultural problems of these liaisons can be substantial. Tradition does not allow much dating between the sexes. It is only in the larger cities that one sees groups of women or girls in some of the coffee shops, or, gasp, boys and girls out together. Women volunteers complain that they cannot go out at night without ruining their reputations and a bad reputation can make it very hard to accomplish anything as a volunteer. Having coffee can imply a significant relationship between a man and woman, especially if they are alone. Even exchanging telephone numbers has much more social implications than in the US. There is a strong double standard. We were told in pre-service training that traditionally dating is expected to lead to an engagement and engagement is expected to lead to marriage. All this is changing, of course. In Tirana and bigger regional cities these traditions no longer apply. Groups and even individual women do go out at night. My high school students date and many are sexually active. But what is true in a larger, regional center like Korca, is not the case in smaller cities or towns and villages. It can be difficult for the young volunteers to navigate. Dating in the modern age is difficult enough. Sometimes the social difficulties engendered by these entanglements require that the volunteers involved are transferred to new sites because of resentment in the community or even threats on physical safety.

I wonder at the Albanians, trading their traditional culture for the modern minefield. Some of my friends from back home are so burnt out by the experience that they have searched on line for Russian mail-order brides (are they now “e-mail-order brides”?), or have considered moving to the Philippines for a less expensive lifestyle and, maybe, hopefully, fewer difficulties in their relationships. It seems a faint hope, since few of them seem to have succeeded in their quests. I might suggest Albania to them, but one of the goals of the PC is “gender development”. By the time they get here, it is likely to be up to European standards of cost (both financial and emotional) and gender roles.

Still, I am told that an American passport is a powerful aphrodisiac. Remember Albanians call obtaining a visa to live and work in the US “winning the lottery”. I suppose some regard dating an American of whatever age, appearance or sexual persuasion akin to buying a ticket. Even I have been offered introductions, which is surprising since I am of an age that Albanians regard as only fit to spend the day drinking coffee or raki and sitting in a park playing dominos.

Lucky for me and unexpected, the Peace Corps placed a lovely, retired social worker from Oklahoma in my service group and in a city that is reachable by a single, although long, bus ride. We seem to have more in common than just our PC service and have hit it off pretty well. I might suspect that some Peace Corps bureaucrat dabbles in match making, but my experience to date makes me seriously doubt they have that degree of subtlety. Maybe I will have to reconsider.

Church Tour

My home church in Idaho has a partner church in the western part of Romania. This is Transylvania which used to be part of Hungary but was ceded to Romania as part of the Treaty of Paris after WW I. Since then it has been subject to a policy under the communist and post-communist governments of encouraging settlement of ethnic Romanians in the region with the result that the original Hungarians are now a minority in their homeland. Over the preceding centuries it was a battleground for various Christian religions and political conflicts dating back to the 30 Years War. Every year my home church sends a group to visit and since I live so close, I decided to use some of my vacation to join this year’s trip.

It is an incredibly scenic area of natural and historic sites. We took the gondola to the top of a ski area. We climbed hills and walked through gorges. We visited a palace and a monastery, a castle straight out of Dracula (where I stood in the garden trying to take a photo of lightning striking the tower during a thunderstorm) and a fortress church that had withstood over 100 sieges. The architecture was the ornate, classical style of the Hapsburg Empire surrounding large cobbled squares with fountains and formal parks. We visited multiple churches of various denominations; Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox and Unitarian.

We stayed a good part of the time with families in the village of our partner church. I would estimate the area we visited to be 10 to 15 years ahead of Albania in development, with good roads, reliable water and electricity, restoration and management of tourist areas and environmental protection. Our village hosts were very hospitable and shared the tradition of overfeeding guests, which, I am beginning to suspect, is common throughout Eastern Europe. The food was very good, but much heavier than the Mediterranean fare in Albania.

We heard a lot about ethnic divisions and suspicions which are almost never heard in Albania. Following the Balkan Wars that preceded WW I, the country of Albania was carved out of a much larger area of ethnic Albanians that now includes Kosovo, and parts of Macedonia and Greece. Maybe attitudes would be similar in the Albanian ethnic enclave in northern Greece where they were forced to adopt Greek names for families and geography and forbidden from using the Albanian language. I was surprised by how there was no mention of Albania in the Orthodox museums I visited in Athens and Corfu. I wonder how southwestern Idaho would feel if a chunk of territory were carved off and given to Oregon. Of course, border tensions occurred when Japanese living in Oregon were put in internment camps during WW II, but those living east of the Snake River in Idaho were not. Some of their Idaho neighbors rose to the occasion and traded farms for the duration and the Japanese community was quickly reestablished after the war to a greater degree than in many other parts of the west. At much greater personal risk, many Muslim Albanians sheltered their Jewish neighbors and refugees from other countries during WW II, although the survivors largely immigrated from the communist regime to the new Jewish state after the war.

I wonder how the evolution of the EU will change attitudes as traditional nation states of Europe become more ethnically diverse with freedom of economic migration like we have in the US. Will resentments resolve if the only difference between being an ethnic Hungarian in Romania and an ethnic Hungarian in Hungary is in the choice of postage stamps? I suppose one should never underestimate the militancy of serious philatelists.

I enjoyed spending time with people I know from back home and the host families in the village were great. They invited me back in a few months if I needed a break from life in Albania. That was nice, but I don’t, not really, and I miss my friends back there. I think I am getting a foretaste of the dilemma that many Peace Corps volunteers face at the close of service. They have generally adjusted to the vagaries of life in the host country; housing, diet, work, transportation, language, etc. Their sense of home has become a blend of the third world, the US and their cohort of volunteers, and one has to anticipate a period of accommodation post service. Mid-service conference is coming up in August and I am sure that issue will begin to be addressed at the meeting.

The trip ended with a very long train ride across Romania, back to Bucharest. It was made longer as large parts of the track are being reconstructed and my train had to wait hours on side tracks for opposing traffic to pass. We arrived near midnight at our hotel near the airport. I slept a couple of hours and then caught an early shuttle van to the airport to arrange an earlier flight back to Tirana where I was to meet visiting friends on their way home after more than a decade of missionary service in Papua New Guinea.

They spent a couple of days touring Tirana and then we took a bus back to Korca. I showed them around my city over the weekend. To their eyes, accustomed to a primitive, South Pacific jungle island, Albania seems highly developed. They enjoyed the coffee shops, restaurants and museums. They especially enjoyed the walks after it cooled a bit and we joined the citizens of Korca out for the evening stroll. This was not something they could do safely in the cities or towns of New Guinea. One night we stopped for ice cream, and the next we sat on a balcony, overlooking the city and sipped cocoa.

On Saturday, we were invited to a lakror feast (a traditional layered pastry with cheese and a wild, leek-like herb baked in a covered pan over a wood fire). Dr. Isufi and his friends were hosting an official from the EU at the ski area near Dardhe. Local and regional officials attended as well as representative patients and family members from the recreation group that frequently uses the area. They are trying to get funding for a better lift system and other improvements. They have big plans and high hopes and their enthusiasm is such a contrast to my high school students who seem to have adopted the Greek attitude towards their country.

I hope the EU acts favorably on at least some of their requests for help with their projects. It would help in so many ways; tourism, recreational opportunities, pride in their accomplishments and recognition of their potential. A summer thunderstorm showered rain and hail over the mountain, but I think the EU representative enjoyed the food, music, dancing and talk inside the day lodge. I showed him winter pictures that were on my digital camera. Outside water and mud washed down the slopes.

The rain stopped and the EU entourage left for the long drive back to Tirana. My friends and I picked our way up to the top of the ski hill where we could see north to Macedonia and south and east to Greece. We helped minimally with the clean up and then, as the sun was setting, lighting up the lingering clouds, we made the short trip back into Korca.