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.

Freedom of Travel

It is the time of year that one thinks, however briefly between the barbeque and the fireworks, of the good fortune to be born an American. What activity better epitomizes “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” than the freedom of travel? I can pull out my magic passport and go to Greece or Romania at a whim, while my Albanian friends are limited to their own country and Macedonia, unless they smuggle themselves to Greece or Italy for work. When I tell them it will soon change with the easing of visa requirements as they move towards membership in the European Union, they are skeptical.

I have traveled a lot in the past two weeks. I had a meeting in Permet to plan summer health education activities. Summer is often a down time for work at the district health departments where most of us have our primary assignments. The meeting was well organized and productive. It was just before the Festival of Wines, so I got to see a bit of that as well. It was a bigger event this year, but not well advertised, so they appreciated the eight Peace Corps volunteers that came for the meeting. The music and dancing were great with local groups and others from as far away as Kosovo. I don’t drink, but the other volunteers told me that the quality of the local wines has noticeably improved in just the past year.

After the meeting, I joined other volunteers in Saranda for a weekend in Corfu. A 45 minute hydrofoil ride to Corfu town brings one back to the first world organization and functionality of the EU. I have heard and read about the problems of the Greek economy, but it was certainly not evident in Corfu. Dozens of ferries and cruise ships lined the port. The warren of narrow, cobbled streets of the old center of town was a delight to wander. It is clean and well maintained. There were hundreds of stores and restaurants, historic buildings and museums from Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Italian, Austo-Hungarian, and English eras. The beaches are immaculate. The waters were clear, deep blue and signs indicated they all met the high EU environmental standards. The island was crowded with tourists and it wasn’t even high season yet.

Monday morning we got in line at the terminal for the trip back to Saranda. There were several bus loads from the cruise ships for a day excursion to Butrint, the world heritage archeology site south of Saranda. After they passed through customs, they boarded their own ferry for the short ride up the narrow channel. In Saranda, a fleet of modern tour buses awaited them by the dock. I have heard they are warned by their guides to be wary of Albanians. As far as I can tell this is mostly for effect. It probably increases the tips the guides receive for protecting their charges. From what? As far as I know, the main risk is that an Albania might chat with them briefly and then insist on treating them to coffee. I suppose this could be hazardous if you were not sleeping well on the boat or you were LDS.

From Saranda, I traveled back to Permet and then on to Tirana for another meeting (the Peace Corps is a US government organization, after all). This was the annual warden conference. I got an earful on the problems of volunteers in southern Kyrgyzstan escaping from the recent outbreak of ethnic violence, and also had the opportunity to meet some from the new group of volunteers. They are all bright, and eager and capable, and … so young! I feel like I am slipping further into geezertude with every encounter.

On Friday, Lorenz, my fellow teacher from Preka, picked me up in his old Mercedes and we drove to visit a Maltese priest friend of his that lives in Mamurras, north of Tirana. Lorenz loves to travel and had invited me to go along. This was an opportunity for me to see new parts of Albania and I eagerly accepted, even though it would keep me away from Korca for a few more days. He kindly changed his plans a bit to give a ride to a couple of the wardens from Shkoder, a historic and cultural center in northern Albania.

Lorenz is a member of a Catholic lay society so the trip to the north was especially meaningful for him since north Albania is predominantly Catholic (as the south is Orthodox and the center Muslim). We visited the large cathedral in the center of Shkoder. The communists used it as a gymnasium for sports and as a meeting hall for rallies. Even on a Friday afternoon there were many sitting in prayer. One woman came up to us and offered to show us around. On one side were photos of 47 priests, monks, nuns and a few lay Catholics who were killed by the communist regime because of their faith. They were all beatified a few years ago by the Pope. After that we walked through an old part of town, past some beautiful Italianate buildings to the Franciscan church and monastery. We were given a tour by one of the monks. The church had been used as a movie theater. Its frescoes had been painted over. Its altars and sculptures either destroyed or put in a communist museum set up to ridicule religion. The bones from a shrine to a martyr had even been dug up and cast into the Drina River that flows through the city. The frescoes are now being slowly restored. The pieces that survived only because they were on display have been returned to their rightful places in the church. A few bones from the spine and the hand of the martyr washed up from the river and a new shrine was built. Finally, we walked over to a convent where there had been a special prison just for clergy. There were two floors of isolation cells. There were manacles on the wall which were used to try to get the priests to give up information to the security police that the priests had received in the confessional. Some were tied to a tree near the church and left to die in public. What amazed both Lorenz and me was that this did not occur hundreds of years ago during the inquisition, but during our lifetimes. Neither of us remembers hearing a word about it.

Saturday we drove north a bit to within view of the Albanian Alps. This is an area of high forested peaks and winding rivers and lakes. Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed in the far northern districts of Albania. This policy is changing as the north evolves from a wild, lawless area of blood feuds to a major tourist destination. If I don’t get there during the next year, I plan to travel through on my way home after I complete my term of service. On the balcony of a coffee shop which overlooked one of the mountain lakes we struck up a conversation with a local who was building a camp ground nearby. We learned that the north is still not safe, as he insisted on buying us coffee even as we had not yet finished the cups we had ordered. I wonder how many tourists will die of caffeine overdose before this area is fully pacified.

I am not a great fan of driving, but Lorenz loves the open road, probably because there are not many opportunities for long, highway drives in tiny Malta. In the afternoon we drove along the modern, new four lane highway that goes from the Adriatic Sea, across Albania to Kukes, a city on the border with Kosovo. It is as advanced a road as anything constructed in Europe or the US. In less than two hours we were in Kukes. Before the highway the trip took 10 hours or more. The road includes a six mile tunnel straight through the mountains. Giant turbines blow air through the tunnel to avoid accumulation of carbon dioxide. Other roads like this are either under construction or are planned around the country. Someday the trip from Korca to Tirana or Saranda will take just a couple of hours. A drive from Elbasan to Tirana will be less than 45 minutes.

On Sunday, we drove to Burrel and Bulqize. It was not a highway, but the road was pretty good. It followed narrow canyons, along the hillsides and ridges above rivers and lakes and valleys and whitewashed stone farm buildings with red tiled roofs and hay stacked in the fields in conical bales. We stopped in Ulza, a tidy town with a lovely, small church which stands above a central square. The town is on a hill on the side of a reservoir above a hydroelectric dam. We attended mass and, afterwards, the man sitting behind us took us and a group of Slovakian nuns for coffee at his restaurant, which is set in a garden overlooking the lake. The setting reminded me of the patio at Shore Lodge back home in McCall, overlooking Payette Lake and the surrounding mountains. Someday, I will chat briefly with strangers in McCall and insist on taking them for coffee on that patio. It will probably get me arrested.

After a rest at Mamurras, we drove back to Korca. I felt badly because the Peace Corps does not allow me to drive in Albania. I am glad Lorenz likes to drive, but I think he could have used some relief. I have not driven a car in more than 15 months and the roads and traffic and driving in Albania can be pretty daunting as it is very hard to predict what other drivers will do, let alone pedestrians, horse carts, motor bikes, bicycles, trucks, buses, vans, tractors, sheep, goats, cattle, etc., that share most roads. Perhaps it is because of that restriction that we made it safely back to Korca. Preka is planning an outing for the teachers on Tuesday in Macedonia, but I need to do some work, so I won’t join them. I am leaving for Romania next week.

The Albanian Uncertainty Principle

I must be getting comfortable here as I am starting to revert to type. I went hiking up a canyon to the south of the mountain on Saturday morning. I went early to beat the heat of the day. It is now typical summer weather with highs in the upper 80’s in Korca and close to 100 in Tirana or Elbasan. I hiked in a narrow canyon along a stream full of snowmelt from the surrounding peaks. The trail, such as it was, crossed the creek several times. I leapt from rock to slippery rock. I lost my footing and ended up in the water.

I quickly got out of the cold water. I inventoried my parts; some bruises and scrapes but nothing broken. How many times have I done something like this in Idaho? Too many to count, sitting up after a slip or fall thinking that if I had broken something major or hit my head they would have found my body next spring. But here I didn’t even have a dog for company.

The worst part was that as I washed off the blood and pulled some gravel out of the scratches, I remembered that, while I had left my wallet in my apartment, I had dutifully carried my cell phone, as I am required by the Peace Corps to do at all times. I pulled the wet phone from my pocket, shook off the water and noticed a bubble of water under the display.

I limped home in the warming morning. By the time I got home my pants were almost dry. I took the phone apart, placed the pieces in a bowl, buried them under some dry rice (a remedy I found on line) and set it in the sun. After 48 hours, if I am lucky, I will have a phone again. Meanwhile, I was supposed to meet a fellow volunteer who was transiting through Korca. I knew what time her bus was to leave, so about the time I figured she would arrive, I walked over to where the furgons let people off. I waited about an hour and about a half hour before her departure she arrived in Korca. She asked me why I hadn’t responded to her text messages and, before she had to get on her bus, I explained over coffee my morning misadventure.

I am already used to the many uncertainties involved in living in Albania. I know to check my raisins for small pebbles, my chopped walnuts for shells or small spiders, my shoes and bed for scorpions, meat for bone shards, jam for pieces of stems, yoghurt that may have gone bad or grapes that may have residue from organophosphate insecticide. I know to plan that at any time the water or power may not be on, although this is much more of a problem in other parts of Albania, and the tap water in Korca is generally safe to drink. The internet may or may not work, or have much capacity if it does, depending on whether the local teens are likely to be active on Facebook or internet games, or it is raining or windy. I have more or less figured out the many idiosyncrasies of my apartment, including my laundry, the couch, my bed, my wardrobe, my front door lock, the windows, the refrigerator, the stove, and, especially, the bathroom with the problematic water heater, commode and, especially, the shower.

I know that prices may be quoted in old or new lek, so if something seems kind of expensive it is probably old lek, which are 10 to the new. It is always a good idea to ask the cost of something, because the prices seem to vary a lot and may be subject to negotiation. Products which I like may appear and disappear, even in the larger stores. Schedules and appointments are always subject to change without notice, even if you have a functioning cell phone.

How does one ever resolve the ambiguities of a new language? Age makes it more difficult as words do not seem to stick, and I forget almost as fast as I learn. Gestures can add to the confusion. Albanians shake their heads from side to side to indicate “yes” and nod with a slight click of the tongue to say “no”. I think the worst part, however, is the loss of one of the few good things that come with age that you become increasingly comfortable in your own idiom. A return to the incompetency of youth makes me feel more crumbling than challenged. It is like when I tried snowboarding a few years ago. I am a pretty good skier, but even more than the pain from frequent falls on the board, more than I had had in years on skis, was the indignity of the clumsy dismount from the lift or the struggle down the beginner slope. My Albanian still has the jerky cadence of my snowboarding as I carefully pick my way through any substantive communication. I long for the sense of assurance I felt when I put my skis back on and confidently went in whatever direction I chose.

My last classes of the school year were this past Thursday. A couple of weeks ago, the head of the school had asked me not to give a class on that day, so I combined my last two lesson plans and finished the course. Then on Tuesday, I was asked by the assistant director to give a class. I don’t feel it is in the spirit of being a volunteer to say no, so I planned a new lesson. This was on the environment, something that is within the purview of health education, but was not covered in my life skills classes. The first two classes went well, but in the last one, the last class of the school day and the school year, it was not really possible to maintain much attention. The kids wanted to take pictures with their cameras and cell phones. I invited the ones that were interested to another room to do the lesson which involved watching some videos and discussing littering, abandoned chemical plants, burning trash and landfills (riveting stuff, I know, but it worked fine in the two previous classes). The third in command came in and asked me to return to the class to maintain order and keep the noise down. I was tempted, at that point, to say, “Hey, I’m a volunteer, you do it”. I didn’t of course, but I think I have new insight as to why the CIA is able to keep killing off the third in command of Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

I have a stack of finals to grade (I gave an open book, take home test which most of the class turned in on the final day of class) and I have to enter the scores into the program I worked up to do the grades on the curve (left weighted, and pretty easy. Life Skills is not a core course like math or literature, and doesn’t count for much). I am supposed to get them in by Monday.

I have done a lot of different jobs over my many years, including teaching graduate students, but I had never taught high school. It is much harder, probably the hardest grade level to teach. I also taught a class at the nursing college this year and that was much easier, even though it was in Albanian and the high school class in English. I want to take this opportunity to officially apologize to my high school teachers from so many years ago. I am truly sorry. I didn’t know.

Next week I start a series of summer travels. There is a meeting in Permet for the health education volunteers, a quick trip with friends to Corfu, the warden meeting in Tirana, the Fourth of July party in Tirana, a vacation trip to Romania where I will meet up with a group from Idaho for a tour and a visit to our partner church from back home, a visit from Canadian friends for a brief Albanian tour as they make their way home to retirement near Toronto after almost 20 years as missionaries in Papua New Guinea.

Like many countries in southern Europe, most of the working population in Albania goes on vacation for the month of August, so not much happens then. The Peace Corps is planning the mid service conference for my cohort at the middle of that month. It will be in Korca to coincide with the Beer Festival. I have a good friend from Idaho planning a couple of weeks in Albania the end of September. November and December are full of holidays. The end of January and the first week of February I am heading home for a visit and a course (my flight instructor refresher course required to maintain that license) before I come back to Albania for my last three months of service. The Peace Corps does not allow volunteers to leave the country for 90 days prior to their close of service date, and many volunteers use what vacation time they have left to tour parts of the country they have not yet seen. I figure the only full month of service I have left is October. It will likely go fast. Meanwhile, I will try to be more careful. I don’t want to be sent home early with a broken leg, or worse.

Kultur in Korca

As I sat listening to a recent cello and piano concert in an upstairs art gallery at the “Cultural Palace” in Korca, it occurred to me how different my Peace Corps experience has been from what I expected. I could be living in a mud hut in Botswana or a yurt in Mongolia with only occasional opportunities to watch a native dance or listen to throat singers. Instead, even though Albania is the second poorest country in Europe, it is still in Europe with all the cultural traditions that implies. This is especially true for Korca, which prides itself on its music, art, folk traditions, and much more.

There is a moderate sized public building next to the library in central Korca that is called the Cultural Palace. It is named after Vangjush Mio, a celebrated Albanian artist who was from Korca. His home in the old part of town is now a museum. The Cultural Palace has several rooms on its two floors. Downstairs is a gallery for touring shows of paintings or sculpture. Upstairs is the salon used for recitals, usually classical European instrumental or vocal music. I have not found a reliable source for the schedule of events, so I make it a point to walk by it frequently and hope that banners about cultural events will be displayed on the front of the building before they actually occur, which is not always the case. During the past few months, there have been a piano duet and piano recital, photography from local students, a touring exhibit of art from Shkroder in northern Albania, and an exhibit of contemporary sculpture and paintings from local artists. There is a trombone and piano recital scheduled for tomorrow.

Performances usually start on time. A program is rarely provided. Frequently they are videotaped by the local TV station. The bright lights and roving camera men detract a bit from the experience. Sometimes they bump against the paintings hanging on the walls or their cell phones go off and they take the call. This is a bit annoying, but seems to bother mainly me and maybe a couple of others in the audience. At the end of a performance, invariably a couple of audience members, usually a small child or young woman, will carry bouquets of fresh flowers to the performers. They kiss the artists on both cheeks and the audience applauds. There are never encores. Often the musicians are faculty from the local music academy or recent alumni.

Across the street from the Cultural Palace is the Cajupi Theater. This is a performance hall that hosts touring theater or musical groups or local productions such as the recent high school reviews of singing and dancing, both modern and traditional, skits and even videos produced by the students. There were nights for each of the local high schools and then one night which was a compilation of the best from all the schools. I think there was a competition to be included in this although a winner was not announce and prizes were not awarded in public either during or after the show, although several performers did get their flowers.

Earlier in the year I went to a contemporary play at the Cajupi. It was a situation comedy by an Albanian playwright. I didn’t get all the dialogue, but was able to follow it pretty much. Before that, a touring musical review of apparently well known national popular singers performed. It reminded me of a Lawrence Welk show with an older couple singing romantic ballads to each other and another act consisting of a father and his five young daughters. One singer came out into the audience and the spot light was shown on a few of the attendees who broke into song, singing a verse of the, apparently, well known and beloved number in progress. Towards the end of the show, the head of the Orthodox Church in Korca came onstage to bless the performance and introduce a long haired, middle aged priest with a pony tail, who sang a popular song. For the finale, all the cast, including the priests, came onstage and sang a big number. Lights and streamers fluttered in the fans that blew at the rear of the stage. The volume, typically, was set to painful levels. I have to be more consistent in remembering to bring my ear plugs for protection.

Neither of these public venues is particularly well maintained. Plaster is falling off the walls and the ceilings are stained by leaks. There is not much heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer. The rows of chairs are not all bolted to the floor and are pushed tightly together. Some people, usually the camera men or, for the high school performances students in the balcony, smoked, although I am pretty sure smoking is prohibited. One of the high school numbers involved students dancing and singing while carrying lighted candelabras and I worried a bit what would happen in the crowded theater if the curtains or streamers caught on fire or a smoker dropped a lit cigarette on the wooden floor. Thankfully, there was not the opportunity to find out.

In the fall, there were exhibits at the museum housed in the building where the first school that taught in Albanian during the declining years of Ottoman rule. These were of photographs and paintings by a local artist. Before that, on a pleasant fall day, artisans demonstrated traditional crafts and displayed some of their wares in the courtyard in the courtyard. Across the street from this museum is a coffee shop that is in the house that belonged to Themistokli Germangji, who was the leader of the autonomous region of Korca between the world wars of the 20th century. They have a very pleasant outside garden and have a jazz band that plays intermittently during the summer.

The Museum of Medieval Art houses the icon collection in a communist era office building made out of a modified church. There are plans to restore the church and a new museum is under construction on one of the main boulevards. This is near the modern building that houses the Bratko Museum of Oriental Art. The name is misleading because it houses a fairly idiosyncratic collection of a son of Korca who made a career in Hollywood and decided to build a museum in his home town to house the art and artifacts he had amassed over his long career that included military service as a photographer in occupied Japan after WWII. I love museums like this that gives insight into the collector as well as the collection. There is one more museum, for archeology, that also serves as temporary housing and a lab for visiting archeologists who explore the many burial sites in the area that date form the Stone Age.

On the boulevard that runs between the cathedral and the university is a park dedicated to Germangji. There is a large bronze statue of him there and behind that a wooden gazebo where, on summer evenings, locals gather in a circle around a small band of accordion, clarinet, mandolin and violin, and sing traditional Korcan ballads. Often along the three main boulevards that attract scores of walkers in the evening as the weather improves, there are street musicians playing the clarinet or drums. Many of the beer gardens have live music on weekends and groups vary between traditional, Korcan music and rock. Since I live near Birra Korca, I often walk past them and listen in. Sometimes I go with friends, but since I don’t drink I don’t go alone and would awkward sitting for long.

Closer to the university is a large park where sculptures are displayed. There is an annual competition and somehow a few are selected each year to be added to the permanent collection in the park. This park has many well tended flower beds and is a favorite stroll for local families or couples during evenings when the weather allows.

The university hosts some cultural events. I went to a recent conference on Camus in the agricultural building. It was sponsored by the Aliance Francez and was in French and shqip. The room it was held in was fairly modern and not as noisy as usual. I was able to follow most of the lectures. The TV camera men roamed around during the presentations and a friend of mine later told me that my image was on the local news that night. Also, the university hosts the Korca Beer Festival in August. On the main street near the university are also many night clubs. I leave these to the younger volunteers.

In a week or two, there should be the Carnival. I have asked about it but have not been able to find out exactly when it is scheduled. I am pretty sure is will be happening soon since they have put up flags near the cathedral and I think there is the start of a stage. I am looking forward to seeing the parade with the traditional music and dancers. I wonder if the local Elvis impersonator will participate again, riding in a white convertible while he sings from the King’s repertoire, stopping occasionally to dance around the car. It would not surprise me if there are Elvis impersonators in every country where there are Peace Corps volunteers. I wonder how “Hound Dog” sounds when sung by a Mongolian throat singer.

May Day

The Peace Corps safety director for Albania sent out a general text message to the cell phones that volunteers are required to carry at all times. The opposition party had scheduled a big rally in Tirana for the day and the party in power had scheduled a huge counter protest for the next day. Volunteers are not allowed to go near anything political to avoid even an implied endorsement of one side or the other in the various political disputes. We were warned away for the weekend from going anywhere near Skanderbeg Square in the center of the city. The younger volunteers were planning a fund raiser party in Tirana this weekend for the cause of supporting Albanian youngsters to attend an environmental camp in Minnesota this summer. It is a good cause and I am happy to support it with a donation, but I am too old for beer and loud rock music parties. I planned to stay home in Korca and didn’t need the caution.

My pilot friends might think this is a distress call (things are fine, thanks), but May Day refers to May first which is Labor Day in most of the world and the big holiday under the communists. It is still a holiday here and many families plan picnics in the mountains or at nearby lakes. The weather was about as nice as you could want; sunny and 70 degrees with a light breeze. I awoke early, did my exercise routine and headed up the mountain towards the cross for the traditional Korca morning constitutional. There were lots of people hiking up the road, families and groups from teens to pensioners.

I stopped briefly at St. Theodur’s church, about halfway up. I said hello to the caretaker who is there every day about 5:30 AM. He has been doing a lot of work on the yard around the church, planting trees and fixing the stairs to the chapel. It is very small, but has some of my favorite icons. A lot of the regular morning walkers use it as their destination and pull the rope to ring the bell before heading back down to the city. I continued out the back gate, up the hill, past a spring where some people had already spread out their picnic. I walked along the road a bit, past a couple of large groups of teens, and then took a steep and rocky path that is a more direct route to the summit. It offers some nice views of the canyon that is to the south of the mountain. I decided to explore the opposite side and make my way down to the path along the stream and through the canyon back to Korca.

Beyond the cross, the path was not well marked. It was steep and rocky. On the plus side there was hardly any litter and the view was spectacular down to the stream and canyon below and up to the higher, snow covered mountains to the east. I carefully made my way through the rocks and trees and eventually found a path. I followed it down the mountain to the creek where I came upon a group of teenage boys swimming in the water. I walked down the creek, occasionally passing a few people on foot or horseback. The horses had the traditional wooden saddles that look uncomfortable to both wear and to ride. They are ridden side saddle by up to three riders. The horses, like the people here, work hard.

I came out of the canyon at the village of Mborje which is adjacent to my end of Korca. Even though the hike had taken several hours, I was not in a hurry so I decided to further explore along the road to the south. After a bit it took a bend in the wrong direction and then petered out. I didn’t want to back track and then noticed that a man with a load of wood on a small mule went off on a path in a better direction off the side of the road. I followed him.

Before long I caught up with him and he struck up a conversation. He asked me where I was from.

“America”, I said in my limited shqip.

“Do you speak Greek? Italian?” he offered as a way to facilitate our speaking.

“No, only English, Spanish and a little shqip”, I replied. Most Albanian are multi-lingual, but with languages that don’t usually help an American. Older, educated people speak some Russian or Chinese from the sequence of communist alliances, the aged often some French from past cultural ties particularly in Korca where there was a French school and there is still a French library, and the younger adults who have done migrant labor in Europe, usually Greek or Italian.

I told him I was looking for a path back to Korca and he told me to follow him. We walked along a fence and then across a field. We came at last to a group of houses and he invited me in for a drink. As I have mentioned before, this is the principle risk of hiking in Albania. Of course, I accepted.

His name was Nadir. We sat at a table in his yard among his flowering quince and apple trees and budding grape vines. I was introduced to his father, his mother, his wife and two year old daughter. He told me his five month old twins were inside. He had been born in Mborje and had built this house about 8 years ago with money he had earned in Greece working in farm labor and construction. It is a nice home. He has two cows in addition to his mule. He has some land a couple of kilometers away where he grows grain and hay to feed his animals. He recently bought a tractor and hires out with his machine to work for other farmers in the village. He said gasoline was so expensive it was hard to make much money at this enterprise. It has recently risen about 30% to about $1.50 a quart. He asked me how much gas was in the U.S. I told him it was about half what it cost in Albania. I didn’t tell him how much people complain about the high price of gas in America. We finished our Turkish coffee. He asked me if I liked it. I don’t mind it, it is like cowboy coffee back home, so I it was not so strange to me when I came Albania. I did tell him I usually drink what they call “filter coffee” or “American coffee”. I have a drip coffee pot, kindly left to me by another volunteer when she returned to the States. Nadir had never had that. I offered to give him some if he would visit me in Korca. We exchanged cell phone numbers before I headed off down the road towards town.

The other night, my landlord, Palo knocked on my door to introduce a neighbor who wants to learn English. Most young Albanians see English as a key to a more prosperous future. She has been paying for classes and having trouble finding time between her two work shifts and also it is expensive. Neighbors have obligations to each other in Albania, so of course I agreed. The Peace Corps provided me with some computer based English teaching materials which I have found very helpful. I have a couple of people I tutor one on one. One is going off to college next year, so I will have some free time for another student.

My neighbor is a young woman who I think is the mother of Megi, who is in the group of young kids who frequently knock on my door to talk to me and practice their English. It is taught in most grammar schools. At their age it is not much beyond “hello, how are you?”, but I try to introduce new words. Sometimes I lead them around the apartment building, picking up trash and give them each a new word when they put something in the bag. I figure this way I am staying true to my primary assignment in health education, which includes the environment. It’s not an environmental camp in Minnesota, but I don’t have to organize a party to raise money.