Shootin' Basketballs

April 22, 2006

Earlier this week The Texan, Dave, Steve, Chris, and I met again with the Mayor of Labinot Fushe to discuss our ideas for potential community projects. A friend of Carl’s, the mayor, was also at the meeting to translate for us. We’ve had several meetings over the last two weeks – due in no small part to the fact that these meetings presented the opportunity to bring happy hour to Labinot Fushe – and had narrowed down our ideas to three.

The Texan’s host father is actually Carl’s brother, since he was a little more familiar with Carl, we decided to let The Texan give a brief summary of each of the three ideas, this proved to be short sighted as our poor translator Ervin, (“Air-Veen”), had trouble understanding the Texan slang. Carl was particularly enthusiastic about an idea to refurbish the courtyard in front of the school in Labinot Fushe, an area about half the size of an endzone with a couple of dirt paths cutting through a front lawn of cobble stones. The courtyard is the only kind of outdoor space for students, and feels more like a middle school cafeteria rather than a playground, just a place to loiter around before and after school that is very clearly segregated by gender. Coming and going from Shkolle every day, I get the same anxieties that I did in sixth grade when I walked through the half auditorium half cafeteria “Cafetorium” at Forsythe Middle School, that the whispers between the girls and the snickers amongst the boys probably have something to do with me. Why are thirteen-year-olds so disarming?

The courtyard’s cobblestone surface is in need of repair, right now it looks like a cobblestone street with a lot of pot holes. This was an idea that amongst the three of us we had decided was not feasible. We don’t know where to get the rocks and other materials, we don’t have any sources of funding, with only eight weeks left in Labinot Fushe it seems like time might be an issue, plus, we agreed that refurbishing a cobblestone school yard would include a lot digging and stuff, we’re all more “ideas men.” To our less than pleasant surprise, Carl assured us that we could coordinate with the Director of the Shkolle to get the students to collect rocks – if this guy can get middle school kids to pick up rocks all day, then I want him facilitating negotiations in Iraq – there were people in the village that could provide technical knowledge in how to lay the stones as well as some labor, and the Commune government could cover any funding that was necessary.

So the meeting was a success. We walked out with a clear idea of what our project will be for the next eight weeks, and Carl gave us some leads as to potential resources in the community. My hope of centering our community project around a drive to get the local café to subscribe to DirecTV in time for the NBA playoffs met with little support. Instead I’ll be stuck with the European Champions League soccer playoffs and the World Cup, wheeeeeee! Go Pistons!

April 23, 2006
8:00 a.m.

Get your maps out, on Friday I received my permanent site placement. After our final eight weeks of training I will move to the city of Lezha (Lay-Jsha), and will work for an NGO. The organization’s initiatives include education, poverty reduction, infrastructure improvement, and the environment. The NGO is, I think, the largest in Albania, and a fairly big name internationally, I’m going to withhold the name of the NGO for now, I’ll call it WV. WV’s primary projects in Lezha are currently the reconstruction of several schools, implementation of social programs for local children, mobilization of local parents into a kind of PTO group, and a program to increase the involvement of women in local affairs and raise awareness of the potential of women – I would characterize this last project as an attempt to move a mountain. My site assignment describes my role as a “capacity building” volunteer. I will assist in the implementation of community development initiatives and provide capacity building support to the staff. So I have no idea what any of that means.

Lezha is a city of about 30,000, just inland from the Adriatic Sea on the Northern coast, maybe twenty miles from the border of Montenegro. The literature I have on Lezha is pretty cursory; the place is really old – around 2,500 years – and its biggest claim to fame is that is the site of the tomb of Skanderberg, the national hero of Albania. The Albanian version of Braveheart, Skanderberg’s place in history is due to him having united the disparate clans of Northern Albania, who spent most of their time fighting each other, and focus on fighting the Ottoman invaders. Quite miraculously, the Albanian clans managed to hold the Ottomans at bay for 34 years until 1466 when they were finally forced to surrender, allowing the Ottomans to continue their spread across the lower right hand corner of the Risk board game. Lezha is the site where Skanderberg initially brought together the clan chieftains and convinced them to come together, I think he may have died in Lezha as well.

Aside from the whole Skanderberg thing, I believe there’s an eighteenth century Illyrian castle in town, some nice beaches and fish restaurants in the nearby port city of Shengjin, and a national park with what my guidebook describes as a “large and varied population of seabirds.” I found a few photos of Lezha on-line, it looks like, ….pretty much what the rest of Albania looks like. It seems to me that the name “Skanderberg” offers tremendous marketing opportunities for the city of Lezha. In the last ten minutes I’ve already thought of two possible names for food shops, “SkanderBurger,” and better yet “SkanderBagel.” I say to Lezha, take a page out of Philadelphia’s book, when you’ve got a historical big name associated with your city just roll with it – Philadelphians are probably wondering if I mean Benjamin Franklin or Rocky. Name and rename everything in the city after Skanderberg, create museums around the guy, dig up some kind of anniversary every month to celebrate that you can attach to Skanderberg. Whatever it takes to convince people that your city is not just a poor man’s Boston, or this case I guess I poor man’s Shkodra?

I’m heading off to a nearby village this afternoon, there are rumors of a pick up basketball game in this town on Sundays. It’s been awhile since I’ve shot hoops, but Dave and I are confident we’re better than any Albanian, and we spent yesterday harassing Nancy about how to talk trash in Albanian. I going to drop “i ndyre” all over the place, it means “nasty.”

10:00 p.m.

Back from hoopin’ in Librazhd. The staring in Labinot Fushe had begun to subside in the last week, until today when I strolled through town in basketball shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers, I felt like I was either naked or wearing a spacesuit.

There was a nice turnout today. Along with Dave and I, three other Americans showed up. We played at an indoor gym at a local school, when we showed up there were a handful of guys awkwardly shooting around with a soccer ball, everyone was very impressed with the basketball that we brought. We anticipated the usual gang of eleven year-old gawkers that tail me just about everywhere I’ve been in this country, but were completely unprepared for the attention that five Americans playing basketball in one place brought. Everyone came out of the woodwork and demanded to play basketball with the Americans – I’m pretty sure we played with every man, woman, and child in Librazhd today. It’s been over four weeks since I really exercised, I walk a lot but it’s not the same, and after four games of basketball I was gassed – then we played what seemed like sixty-seven more games, we could not get a breather all afternoon. We played for about four hours, after the first five games we were ready to wrap things up and head down to a local café, but more people kept appearing eager to run around with us. When we realized that offering the court to other people wasn’t going to work – no one really wants to play basketball – we thought we’d just stop trying to win – actively trying to lose actually – and get booted from the game. Waiting for the Albanians to score eleven points also proved to be futile, and only resulted in one excruciatingly long game. We weren’t going to be able to go anywhere until we played EVERYONE.

As we expected, Albanians seem to be truly dreadful at basketball. It’s a game that no one in the country has ever really played, and that was exactly what it was like to play against these Albanian guys; generally fun, a little too easy, and absolutely maddening when one of their ridiculous shots actually goes in. My favorite opponent of the afternoon was a squat little guy named Orgent – he also had pretty good English and must’ve seen the NBA on T.V., he would say things like “No-Theen but nayt.” Orgent showed up in a mismatched three-piece suit, when he came in the game all he did was lose his jacket and played the whole game in loafers, a vest, and a tie. He shot the ball with two hands, releasing it behind his head, like a soccer player would execute a throw-in. It wasn’t the smoothest shot, most of Orgent’s bullets would ricochet severely off the backboard, rim, or wall and fly back to about mid-court. He wasn’t gun-shy either, as soon as he got the ball he’d get a head steam going, barrel his way down court dribbling the ball at about eye-level, lose track of where he was, get about three feet from the hoop and fire away while everyone else in the vicinity would dive for cover. Truly hazardous

We finally managed to talk people into letting us leave, and just in time, after hour five Dave suggested the following:

Dave: Man, I think we could just make a run for it to the furgon stop.
Ryan: Too risky, we don’t know when those things come. We need a quick and reliable getaway.
Me: (gasping for air) Does anyone have a cigarette?

As I’m writing this I’m remembering that this was a really fun afternoon. I felt like I was suprememly good at basketball today, and the ongoing challenges from the Albanians had nothing to do with a desire to beat Americans at something. I felt like it was out of genuine desire to do something with us – like being a camp counselor when your eighteen, you pick up a stick and start whacking a pine cone and all of a sudden forty kids want to do the same thing. I also have aches in my body that I’ve never had in my twenty-five previous years.

April 25, 2006

Last Saturday instead of the usual morning language class we all gathered in Elbasan for “The Assimilation Station” – which was quickly twisted into the “Imagination Vacation, Assasination Probabtion, Stimulation Inspiration,” and so forth – Language Experience

For the afternoon we were spilt into small groups and were given a list of tasks we had to do around Elbasan, sort of like a scavenger hunt. Groups had to do things like buy groceries, inquire about prices of food and sizes of clothes at the bazaar, ask about movie times, things like that. Every group had an Albanian language teacher with them to bail us out if some merchant got particularly annoyed, but they would only speak to us in Albanian, we were pretty much on our own. After four weeks I felt pretty confident about being able to ask simple questions and navigate a bazaar, but several mitigating factors made for a frustrating afternoon.

To begin with while my simple inquiries seemed to be understood, I was unprepared for the responses, which were nothing like the neat dialogues we’ve been studying in class. “Sa kushton molla?” – how mush does this apple cost – I would say confidently, ready for the stock answer of “nyezet leke” – twenty cents.

“eshte guopa dhbme kupton nyezet e pese, afer erdhe ti kam nuk molle kam ju jibber jabber, jibber, jabber, jibbe, jabber, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Would be the response.

Buried somewhere in that was a price, I think, but after a monologue like that I was helpless. I would come back with: “A mund te paguaj nje molle?” – can I buy an apple.

“Po, ju vishe leke dhe shkoj ne stilolaps hengra i darke kembe qen katerquind paguaj.”

After another slap in the face like that I was demoralized and resolved that I really didn’t want an apple that bad anyway.

To compound the confusion even further is the whole concept of “old leke” and “new leke.” The Albanian currency, the leke, is easy to convert into dollars, one-hundred leke equals one U.S. dollar. A coffee costs thirty leke (30 cents), a sandwich costs one-hundred leke (one dollar), a very decadent meal might run about five-hundred to six-hundred leke ( five or six dollars). These prices are all in “new leke,” as opposed to “old leke” where the conversion was one-thousand leke equals one U.S. dollar. New leke came into to play sometime in the nineties, when the Albanians revalued their currency. However, while prices were appropriately adjusted, it seems that when quoting a price or talking about how much something costs people still talk about prices in old leke.

For instance, when a guy says that a loaf of bread costs one-thousand leke, it actually costs one-hundred leke. The seller knows it costs one-hundred leke, he doesn’t expect anything more than one-hundred leke, he just says that it costs one-thousand leke, just because. This would be like asking “how much does this beer cost?”

“Forty dollars.”
“Cool, here’s five, keep the change.”
“Thanks, have a good night.”

People just quote prices this way. No one can explain it, its just the way it is. Worse yet, sometimes people will quote prices in new leke when they know they’re talking to a foreigner, but only sometimes. Hardly being able to understand what is said in response to my simple questions about prices, let alone the challenge that mathematical pose, have left me with no other option than to pay for everything with ten-thousand leke bills and hope that the seller is honest and gives me correct change. I really have no idea how much I should be getting back. It would be like only paying with one-hundred dollar bills for packs of gum, shoelaces, pencils, etc.

By the end of the assimilation extravaganza our group had successfully accomplished every task on the list, but language skills hardly had anything to do with it. The universal hand gestures and expressions that we’ve all had to employ in non-English speaking countries were the most effective means of communication, much to the chagrin of our language teachers.

I’m on a roll right now, one last story before I wrap up.

There is one other American from my group who will be placed in Lezha along with me. His name is John, he’s about my age and will be working in health education, John is also Asian, Korean-American to be exact. After four weeks John and I hardly knew each other, but with both of us assigned to the same city for the next two years our solidarity formed quickly last week. As an Asian, John’s experiences over the last four weeks have been what he and I both find to be hilarious. His name isn’t really John, so I think its okay to write about a story that he told me – of course he is probably the only Asian person in Albania. I doubt it will be too hard to trace this back to the Asian twenty-something living in Elbasan, it’s not embarrassing or anything, just amusing.

When John first was dropped off at his host family’s house there apparently were some question as to why instead of an American there would be a “Chinese” person living with them. Not at all unlike my experience, John was helpless in trying to converse with his host family, let alone describe that: one, his parents were Korean; two, he was born and raised in Rochester, New York; and three; he is in fact and American. A translator attempted to convey this to John’s host family, but he’s pretty sure that they didn’t buy it, and have just come to terms that through some mix-up they were sent a Chinese kid rather than an American. He gets daily questions about what life is like in China. He described typical dinner conversations as going something like:

Host family member: What is China like?
John: I’ve actually never been to China, I’m from Rochester, New York.
Another host family member: Can you speak some Chinese for us?
John: I have no idea how to speak Chinese, I’ve lived my whole life in America.
Third host family member: Do you live in The Great Wall of China?
John: Yes, I do actually. I also know karate.
Entire host family: (Stunned silence).

I was rolling on the ground when John told me this story, I had to share, sorry John.

Cold Showers, Coffee, and Two Days in Durres

April 12, 2006

It’s been raining for three days. As I’ve mentioned before, Albania is a lot less fun when it’s wet. For one, none of the roads in L---- F----, and not very many in E----, are paved. Not that whether or not the roads are paved really matters as the country seems to have a issue with drainage. Secondly, there is a tremendous difference in temperature when the sun is out versus when it’s not, like a disparity of what feels like 50 degrees, or probably 1 degree Celsius. Buildings aren’t heated – although our school-house does have a wood burning stove in the middle of it, has the Fire Marshall checked that out – so there’s no refuge. I got home today in the same damp, cold state that I’ve been in all week, zipped myself up in my sleeping bag, and was too cold to do anything besides sit in the living room and watch Italian soap operas dubbed in Albanian. Last Sunday, only three days ago, it was sunny, probably in the 70’s or 80’s, I got sunburned just eating lunch.

My host family has been insistent on doing my laundry, which I’m fine with – I don’t think they have a washing machine and I’m not really sure how clothes can get washed without one of those. The first time they offered to do my laundry I protested half-heartedly, now I’m afraid I’ve become too willing and should maybe put up more of a fight when my host mother comes into my room to get my dirty clothes rather than helpfully hand her by bag of laundry.

At any rate, a pair of pants – a pair which I was particularly fond of – has disappeared. I’m sure they’ve just been mistaken for someone else’s pants but I don’t know how to broach the subject. Right now, my language skills allow me to say: “Where are my pants?” This seems like a rude thing for the American kid that doesn’t talk much to blurt out, and would probably only make me look crazier to them than I already do. What I need to be able to say is: “I can’t thank you enough for doing all my laundry, I think that a pair of brown corduroy pants of mine were mistaken for someone else’s. Do you know where they might be?” I might be able to string together something close to that in 2008, until then I think I’m just going to be down one pair of pants.

April 15, 2006

I’ve decided to dispense with being discreet about the names of the cities and villages that I spend time in. The organization that I’m a part of had kind of tried to scare us about things we may write in e-mails and how our writings could become more widely read than we intend and then come back to reflect poorly on us. I’m officially over that fear, and besides, I’ve really only had positive things to say thus far.

With that being said, the infamous village of L---- F----, where I am currently living with a host family, is called Labinot Fushe. I’m sure it’s not on any map, but it is just outside the city of Elbasan, pretty much in the center of Albania. Tomorrow I’ll be going to Durres, which I think is the second biggest city in the country, for two days. I’ll be staying with another American who has been in Albania for just over a year. I had a pretty good exchange with the brother of my host father – I guess he would be my host uncle – and I think I told him that I was going to Durres tomorrow and would be back on Tuesday. I had it all written out in Shqip, (Albanian), but I must have been mispronouncing “Tuesday,” he seemed confused when I got to the part about when I would be back in Labinot Fushe. If there’s anything in the news about a missing American in Albania – and since I’m not a runaway bride or an attractive twenty-something white girl, I doubt there would be – it probably has something to do with the communication barrier between my host uncle and I.

A quick word about coffee in this country before I turn in for the night. If I could sum up my feelings I would say that the coffee in Albania is TOO DAMN SMALL. “Yes is small, but is very strong in Albania,” is the response I get from Nancy, the language teacher, and every other Albanian when I complain about the size of the coffee. Yes, the little shot glasses of Kafe Turk, (Turkish coffee), are probably stronger than the 92 once Super Gulp that you can get at 7-Eleven, but this isn’t really espresso strong either. Maybe I’ve developed a high tolerance for strong coffee, I’ve been ordering dopio, (double), Kafe Turk every morning and is just not cutting it.

The four of us in Labinot Fushe that are coffee drinkers all have the same frustration, today we came to the conclusion that what we really miss is the whole of concept of coffee to go. For at least the first two hours of class every morning all I can think about is how badly I want a Styrofoam cup of gas station coffee in front of me, and maybe a bagel for good measure, but that deserves its own paragraph.. We all agree, the Kafe Turk is nice, unquestionably better than typical American coffee, but its too small. Compounded on top of the size issue is the fact that the only way to get coffee is to sit down in the café for the full twenty minute production. Again, this can be a nice, social thing, and good cultural experience, and it’s been kind of fun and quaint when I’ve traveled in other parts of Europe, blah, blah, blah. But I’m getting to school with five minutes before class, I want a to-go cup to take to school and nurse me through at least the first 30-45 minutes of the day. I’m three weeks into my twenty-seven months here and this has already become a major issue. Something has to got to change, either the country or….well, it’s gonna have to be the country, consider this an ultimatum Albania. Okay, I’m done, nighty night.

April 18, 2006

It was Easter last Sunday. Without bunnies, chocolate eggs, and pastel colored m&m’s around I had completely forgotten about this magical day of Jesus – I hope I don’t forget about Christmas and the birth of Santa Claus. There wasn’t any real sign of the Easter holiday in Albania, most people had the day off of work on Monday and kids didn’t go to school, but I don’t think anyone really knows why. Apparently next week is the Orthodox Easter, which I believe will be observed by more people here than the apparent Un-orthodox Easter I’ve been celebrating my whole life, or I should really say have been going to brunch on my whole life.

I spent the last two days in the city of Durres, North of Elbasan on the Adriatic Sea, I was there visiting some other Americans who have been in Albania for about a year. There’s been a city of the site of Durres continuously for the last four thousand years, and has been alternately under the control of Greeks, Romans, a bunch of other people during the middle ages, the Turks, and probably the Canadians – there’s the history lesson for the day, I had to do some research for that. It’s a really interesting place to walk around. There are ruins scattered throughout the city, but unlike in a city like Rome where these things are considered sights and you can figure out what you’re looking at, in Durres you round a corner and you run into a pretty big Greek-looking amphitheater ruin with a sheep grazing in the middle, a house built into the side, and a byrek shop next door.

I spent the two days I was in Durres wandering around with my American hosts, eating at some nice restaurants, and, most memorably, doing the Xhiro (jsheer-ro). Xhiro basically means “promenade” or “parade,” the term is used to describe the time of day from about 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. when people come out en masse to the main street or square in a town, sort of meander around enjoying the weather after a miserable winter, stop and chat, buy street food, drink coffee, beer, and raki, and generally make themselves be seen. The Summer is the big Xhiro season in Albania, right around now it’s just starting to get going and will build up until the big Xhiro months of July and August. Xhiro is particularly big in Durres and other coast towns where there is a waterfront walk with beachfront cafes, piers to Xhiro out on to, and a dramatic sunset. In Durres there are carnival type rides, my favorite of which to watch was just a massive trampoline for kids to bounce around on, no guard rails or padding or anything, I watched kids get tossed from this thing for about twenty minutes.

I also sampled the Albanian version of fried dough – which is without a doubt the single food that unites the world and can be found in any country or culture – called petulet. The people I was with described one particular vender as the Soup Nazi of petulet. The Petulet Nazi offered three versions of petulet: chocalate, powdered sugar, or both. Naturally, the line is two blocks long, and The Petulet Nazi gives you one chance to successfully order in some kind of exact way. I watched some poor fool in front of me step up to the petulet Nazi and say: “Petulet ne chokolade,” “ne” means “in, at, or to,” definitely not “with,” that would be “me.” He was dispensed with and walked away with no delicious fried dough – I’m pretty sure he was Albanian, he just froze up and lost his composure, tragic really. I actually split an order of petulet me chokolade dhe shequer (sugar) with another person and left the ordering to them.

I stayed with a guy named Scott, he’s about my age and has a similar background, he’s doing similar work to what I expect I’ll be doing after my three months of training. Scott’s organization is working in a section of Durres that consists largely of homes and businesses that were built illegally – with no land ownership – when the former communist government collapsed and the ensuing confusion over who owned what land made it possible for whoever got to a piece of land first could construct a home. I walked around the illegal neighborhood in Durres with Scott.

This was not a shanty-town of homes made out of wood and scrap-metal. The houses are of the typical Albanian concrete construction, they look much the same as the buildings in Labinot Fushe, and some are quite substantial two and three story homes. However, the conditions in the neighborhood are quite awful and unhealthy. The area was a failed agricultural initiative, several irrigation canals had been built but the soil proved unsuitable and the plot had deteriorated into a swamp in the middle of the city. As it is now, there are maybe ten square blocks of dirt roads and homes with a few major canals of stagnant water and waste of all kinds running through the neighborhood. As a technically illegal residential neighborhood, the homes are not part of the city’s water or power grid and residents can’t count on services like fire and police protection. Residents have tapped into the city’s water supply illegally, creating a tangled mess of garden hoses running through the neighborhood and polluted canals, each one connected to a single nearby water pump and running to an for an individual house. It reminded me of the single wall socket in my freshman dorm room that had about forty-six cords plugged into it with various adapters and extenders.

Scott’s organization has worked to draft and lobby for legislation in the National Parliament that will make all the construction that has already taken place legal, give people who have built homes ownership of the land, and place a moratorium on any further building in the area. The next step would be a physical plan for infrastructure implementation, greenspace, and the hope is for schools and a hospital as well. None of this can happen without a resolution regarding the land ownership and the legality of the buildings.

The neighborhood is indicative of the growing pains that Albania has been going through during its transition to democracy and a free market over the last fifteen years. Scott explained that the country has every progressive and free market law on the books that Western European countries do, but there’s no oversight or enforcement. Albania is an immature country, it has not had time to develop organically, rather things came crashing down, a new form of government was created on paper, and since then people have been trying to figure out how everything works. All of sudden people could build their own homes, there was a big chunk of land in the middle of a big city, and so people built whatever they wanted. The mentality was something like: “hey we’re a democracy now, so this is that whole it’s a free country, self-determination, wild west thing right?” I’m encouraged right now by the recognition that a lot people I’ve met seem to have that for a while things were happening sloppily, you can’t go back in time, tearing down illegal homes and businesses is futile, rather find a way to mend these issues. By the same token Scott seemed truly burnt out after a year as a volunteer at this organization.

Futbol with Steve

April 5, 2006

Thus far I haven’t spent a lot of time interacting with my host family. It seems that I’m living in a sort of guest house, it has three bedrooms, a living room and a pretty big communal shower like in a locker room or a dorm with a Turkish toilet in one corner. The grandparents and a guy that I am now between 73% and 78% sure is the host father’s brother also sleep in the house, during the day I have no idea where everyone goes. I’ve seen the three daughters maybe four times, and last Sunday a baby wandered into my room that I had never seen before, I assume the baby was a member of my host family, but I’m really not sure, kids do gain a high degree of independence early on in this country. There’s no kitchen or dining area in the satellite house that I’m in, breakfast and dinner are brought over usually by the Gyshe (grandmother), so I think the mother ship where everyone else lives and eats must be nearby. My living situation certainly leaves me with the alone time necessary to write a 1,000 word retelling of an afternoon that basically consisted of me riding around in minivans, but I haven’t really gotten to know my host family.

I think my host father, who I’ll call Steve, has been feeling like he should make an effort to interact with me. Steve’s a big man, his pants are fighting a losing battle with his stomach, but I wouldn’t call him fat, I’d say broad is a better word. He has kind of a baby face and speaks in a very deep but an unexpectedly soft tone. Yesterday morning on my way to Shkolle (school) Steve pulled up beside me in a furgon and motioned for me to hop in. I was pretty sure that he was a police officer for the commune that the village I live in is a part of, but apparently he also drives one of these things. We stopped at a café near my shkolle for a coffee and some attempt at conversation.
“Steve, ju jeni police, po?” – you are a police, yes, I asked.
“Po, po, ne komune” – yes, yes, in commune.
“Police dhe forgone?” – police and furgon (me acting out moving a steering wheel and driving a car).

Steve shook his head side to side, which I forgot in Albania indicates “yes.” We went back and forth a couple more times before I figured out the head shaking thing, I believe that Steve and his brother split time driving the furgon, I can understand why Village Police Officer isn’t full-time job. We sat in silence for a little while, Steve offered me the newspaper he had been reading, which I took and flipped to the sports scores and standings.

Allow me to digress for moment. Sports, specifically the European Champions Futbol (soccer) League, are the only thing in the way of news or current events that I’ve known anything about in the last two weeks. I see pictures of news and what look like world events on television and in newspapers but I’ve got no idea of what’s going on. A sports score I can understand, and even though I think soccer is a complete bore and see no justification for its worldwide appeal, I look forward to the game recaps on television every night just because for about three minutes the fog is lifted and for omce during the day I understand what people are talking about. Arnold Schwarzenaeger could have been named Secretary General of the United Nations and I would have no idea, but I do know that Lyon beat Milan last night 1-0, this is my connection to the rest of the world.

So Steve notices my interest in the futbol scores, “Beni, futbol mire, po?” – Beni, soccer good, yes.
“Po, shume mire, futbol,…” (trying to think of an appropriate adjective) “bukur!” – Yes, very good, soccer, beautiful!
Steve talked at me for a few minutes about soccer and indicated that tonight (yesterday), there was a match that he had some interest in. I replied with my usual flurry of “mires (good) and faleminderits (thank you), pointed to my watch to indicate that I had to get to school and headed off for the day.

At around 6:30 I was walking back to the house when Steve roared passed me in his furgon, he screeches to halt and ushers me into the van. We drove out of L---- F---- into the bigger city of E----, Steve pulls the furgon over and parks near the center of town, and I follow him through town as he constantly motions for me to catch up. He occasionally points out the few things he knows in English: “hotel, road, ice cream, café,” and my personal favorite was when we passed a newsstand that had an American magazine devoted to fake wrestling and Steve pulled out “WWF Smackdown.” I’m pretty sure that WWF was sued by the World Wildlife Foundation and had to change their acronymn, but I let Steve keep rolling.

In the center of E---- there’s a section of the old city walls and a few buildings that probably date back to sometime during the Roman empire. This part of E---- was still unexplored territory for me, we wound our way through the neighborhood and eventually made it to a really nice café in the old section of the city. I’m not really sure what a “grotto” is, but in trying to describe what the setting of the café was like it’s the word that comes to mind. Within the old city walls the noise from outside disappears, there was a small waterfall, lots of plants and vine looking things, and since it was dark the walls and nearby mosque of the old city had some very dramatic lighting. We had some coffee and talked to each other like you might talk to a dog or a cat, I wouldn’t say our conversation was as sophisticated as one you might have with a parrot.

“Beni, blah, blah, blah, futbol, blah, blah, blah, televizor?” Steve said after we’d finished our coffees, which I was pretty sure was a questions to see if I wanted to watch a soccer game on television. This sounded good, I gave the thumbs up, we headed back to the furgon, and zoomed over to a café in L---- F----. We had a decadent meal of grilled lamb, a huge kind of antipasto platter of grilled and pickeled vegetables, cheese, and yogurt, and a bottle of vere (red wine). The food was great, the wine was truly repellant. When Steve ordered the drinks he assured me with” Beni, vere, here, shume mire,” and gave me a wink and the thumbs up. The wine came out in a plastic soda bottle, apparently it was a homebrew, it had a reddish tint to it but not the deep red that any red wine I’ve ever seen has, it looked more like Faygo Red Pop than wine. Another trait the wine shared with soda was that it was fizzy, which I don’t think wine should be. Steve doled out two generous pours, we clinked, said “gazure,” and Steve downed about half his glass in one sip. I nursed the wine through dinner and the soccer game but still walked out of the café with a moderate to moderately high buzz, and woke up today feeling like it was a Sunday morning during my sophomore year of college. A nice night though.

April 6, 2006

Yesterday a meeting was arranged between the five of us in L---- F---- with the mayor of the commune, which consists of L---- F---- and about six other similar sized villages nearby. The commune offices, the equivalent of a city hall, are in a one-story concrete L-shaped building, I’ve been walking past this building every morning on my way to school and had always thought it was an abandoned garage. The mayor, we’ll call him Carl, received us in his office, a spartan room furnished with a desk, a few folding chairs, a computer and the flags of Albania, The United States, and The European Union taped to the walls. I would guess that Carl is in his mid-thirties – but he could be twenty-five, I’ve come to discover that people tend to look five to ten years older than they actually are in this country – I’d describe him as tired looking. His English was pretty good, he understood most of the questions we asked him, but seemed too exhausted to muster responses in English, we relied on a translator. My host father, Steve, was also in attendance. He sat in one corner of the office with his arms crossed looking much the way I felt after our night of futbol and vere. It seems that along with being a police officer and a furgon driver Steve is also a kind of secretary/assistant/bodyguard to the mayor.

Our meeting was just a kind of meet and greet, a chance for us to introduce ourselves and ask a few questions about the administration of the commune and Albanian local government in general. The conversation turned to employment in the commune, the Texan asked if there was any data collected or surveys done on the unemployment rate and the types of employment most people have.

“Look,” Carl responded, giving up the no English charade, “there is no use in theenking about UN-ime-employment, I say that the KO-moon has maybe 20% IME-ployment. Most people, they have found some land, built their houses, have some cows and chickens and sheep, and grow their vegetables for the family. This is what they do.” This response seemed to take a lot out of Carl, he lit a cigarette.

Save for two out of ten people in the commune, life for most consists of self-subsistence farming, maybe selling any small surpluses they have, maintaining their homes, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and that’s really it, personal income is not part of the equation. Legally, Carl and the commune government are supposed to collect local taxes as their primary source of income, but as Carl explained, people literally have no money.

“Should I tell Steve to arrest the whole KO-moon for not paying taxes?” Carl asked. Steve raised his eyebrows a sort of “whatever you say boss” shrug at the suggestion.

The commune does collect taxes on businesses, but this revenue stream consists of three or four cafés, a car wash, and one hotel. This leaves L---- F---- dependant on funds doled out by the federal government – there isn’t anything in Albania that would be the equivalent of a State or Provincial government body, there are only the federal and local levels – I don’t think this situation is uncommon.

I don’t think I’m completely naïve about the situation of most people in this country, but the conversation with Carl was one that sort of flipped the light switch. The Albanian flag sandwiched between the American and EU flags is not so much a sign of partnership at this point, its more indicative of the desire of one country that for a variety of reasons has been left behind to become a part of the club. There are people in the country – and I feel that I’ve met a lot of them in just two weeks – that understand that things are broken, they know how healthy democratic systems and free markets look and should work, but are frustrated by the fact that Albania is a big ship to turn around.

April 9, 2006

There was a time not that long ago – although it seems like a distant memory – that taking a shower was something I really enjoyed. To Bej (pronounced “boy”) dush – taking a shower – in this country is akin to eating something that tastes really bad but you feel you should just to be polite, I can understand why Albanians think it’s so strange that Americans like to take a shower every day. Why would anyone want to take off all their clothes in the freezing morning, stand under water for about five minutes, turn off the water and be REALLY freezing, then run back to their room and throw on about six layers of clothes. We have hot running water, and most homes do, but you don’t get much time and the shower is just a head in one corner of a huge open bathroom so it’s not possible to create the sauna effect, and like the rest of the house, the bathroom is incomprehensibly cold. I haven’t bej dushed in three days and I’m fine with that, I got really soaking wet in the rain on Friday, so I’m counting that as a dush, and I’ll probably put off bej dushing until Tuesday. And this is a warm time of year, I think I may only dush once a week in the winter. And if your wondering if the above paragraph was just a vehicle for me to write “dush” a bunch of times, your absolutely right. I’m done now,…dush,… okay now I’m done,…dush,… seriously this time.

It’s been consistently hot here during the day, but the buildings in this country hold in cold air. Most structures are of concrete construction and have an extreme socialist look to them. This creates interior spaces that I would liken to a parking structure, very echoey, damp, and generally cave-like. We sit in language class every morning and just shiver as Nancy drills verb conjugations into us. Speaking of verb conjugations, my favorite one so far is for the verb shkruaj (to write). To saying “we write” shkruaj is conjugated as “shkruajme”, which is pronounced almost exactly like “screw me.” I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of saying that one, good times.

Continuing with the hot and cold theme, I haven’t got a clue about Celsius temperatures, or the metric system in general. Last week, in a way that suggested I was an authority on Albanian weather patterns, I said to Nancy: “so it probably gets to around 40 or 50 degrees Celsius here in the summer.” Nancy almost sprayed Turkish coffee from here nose, apparently that would be like 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Last night a cousin came over to the house who I had not met before, he was 17 and had been studying English for a few years in Gymasium (high school). He said his name several times, and very slowly for my benefit, but it was pretty much unpronounceable, I’ll call him Ron. It was nice to have an English speaker around for an evening, I was finally able to nail down who everyone was in relation to one another, two people that I assumed were husband and wife are actually brother and sister. This was the brother of Steve, my host father, and their younger sister. I was surprised, the way that the sister has been serving food to and cleaning up after Steve’s brother and I had led me to believe that she must be his wife. If I said to my sisters: “hey, can you clear this stuff out of here and make some coffee while your at it,” – which is what it sounds like is said to her – I’m pretty sure they would stab me.

It was hard to explain to Ron what exactly I was doing in Albania. “So you have gone to University in America?”
“Yes.”
“And you have graduated with a degree?”
“Yes.”
“And you have had a job in America?”
“Yes.”
“But now you are in Albania?!!!”

This did not compute with him. As I’m discovering is the case among most of the Albanians that I’ve met, the idea of an American coming here by their own choosing is bewildering. He was eager to practice his English with me, and really loved flipping through my Albanian language workbook – he kept pointing out mistakes I had made in the exercises in the workbook, this quickly became annoying, I changed the subject and took the workbook away.

Ron was a sharp kid, his plan was to study English in Gymnasium, and then attend the University of Tirana – the capital city and best university in the country – for English, which will then put him on the fast track to find work outside of Albania. A 15-year-old girl who also spoke excellent English and I chatted with on a furgon today had similar plans, she was set to leave this summer for England and enroll in a University there. I don’t think that the lack of confidence that Ron and this other girl have in this country is uncommon among Albanians. There aren’t a lot of opportunities here, and even though retaining educated people is vitally important, it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect that smart, young Albanians would pass up a chance to find good work in another country. I hope they get the opportunity.

April 10, 2006

Aside from the Texan, I haven’t spent any time describing the other three guys placed in L---- F---- with me during these three months of training. I’ll begin with Chris, a guy in his mid-fifties, who, in much the same way as the Texan, is a guy who looks and acts in a way that lives up to the stereotype of where he is from, in this case Northern California. He’s bald on the top of his head, but has the two-day gray stubble beard that more than makes up for it. Laid back is one way to describe him, but more than that, the guy just has that coolness with a touch of geekiness that I associate with San Francisco. Nearly three weeks in Albania hasn’t fazed the him, he still shows up every day in the usual business casual attire of corduroys and a turtleneck, looking like he just stepped out of his vintage MG, e-mailed his stock guy on his Blackberry, and has plans entertain tonight with really good wine and cheese, and probably listen to really cool music. When I and the other 25-year-old in our group share stories about college and our first few years afterward, Chris grins and laughs in a way that lets us know that he knows everything we do and has done a whole a lot more. The guy isn’t condescending or arrogant in a way that I associate with Southern California, it’s hard not to like him.

The last two are both from the Midwest and don’t lend themselves as easily to generalization. Dave, is twenty-five and from Ohio, he’s pretty much like me if you just add 100 pounds and replace being a Michigan fan with being an Ohio State fan. Lastly there’s Kevin, in his mid-forties from Madison, Wisconsin, who reminds me of the middle-aged men who work out at the Ann Arbor Y – he wears a fanny-pack. They’re both good guys. Dave and I have the same discussions we’ve both had hundreds of times with other Michigan and OSU fans about college football, and we team up on Kevin since we both agree that Wisconsin will never be anything more than a pesky little team to us.

One component of our training during the three months in L---- F---- is to implement a community project of some kind. It’s meant to be small in scale, the idea is for us to get our feet wet with a project that is “winnable” in just three months, and will serve as useful practice. Thus far the five of us have had a few brainstorming sessions, usually accompanied by raki, an Albanian liquor with an aroma similar to witch hazel. Under the urging of Chris, the meetings have taken on a Zen-like approach. We sit around a table and just say any idea that comes to mind, with no comment or discussion, no matter how petty or unfeasible, the idea is added to the list. The Zen approach to brainstorming has yielded a list of about fifty potential projects ranging from bake sale to the implementation of a space program.

The decision of what project to undertake is not meant to be ours alone. Ideally, we will work in collaboration with community members during the planning and implementation of any project, as this is the only way to create truly sustainable development. In the last three weeks this has shaped up as the theme of the work I’ll be doing for the next two years. We’re planning on meeting again with Carl, the Mayor, this week to get his thoughts on what’s realistic and worthwhile for the village.

Dominating all our lives right now is the language training. In terms of community interaction we can really only get so far, and that’s just up to the point of describing our family members, how old they are, and what they do. I realized today that I had been insisting to my host family that I had a “fourteen year-old cheese,” rather than brother – the words are very similar, Djale (brother), and Djathe (cheese). We’re only in our third week of language class, so as far as our community project is concerned, the brainstorming continues

Ten Days In

March 31, 2006

I so badly want to be able to use this language in the just the most simplest way. There have been some baby steps made since last Sunday, I can greet people appropriately, ask how they’re doing, probably not understand what they say, and respond with “Mire” – (nice) – and then walk away. I’m pretty much a two-year-old in terms of verbal skills around my host family. I’m just anxious to be able to make simple requests and understand and reply to simple questions.

Every afternoon, after five hours of language class, I come bounding out of the school in L---- F---- armed with new words and phrases like: “This is my backpack, I enjoy eating bananas, does your sister have a telephone?” I’ll run into the same group of kids playing marbles, – did anyone know that there is actually a game you play with marbles? – I’ll hit them with a few new phrases, and a laugh riot ensues. The kids are by far the most eager to talk, the older men around town are too busy lighting their next cigarette, and truly, the women don’t leave the houses very much at all. The other day in class we worked out simple question and answer scripts to try on the kids. Naturally, the little buggers did not reply to the questions the way they were supposed to in the script, and I had to resort to saying “thank you” and running away.

The language barrier does create some moments of great unintentional comedy. I’ve been having dinner with a guy who I think is either my host father’s brother or brother-in-law, last night we were having some kind of stew with rice, vegetables, and a meat that I couldn’t quite place, it sort of looked like chicken, but was definitely not chicken. I was able to string together a question about what exactly it was we were eating. This lead to the following exchange:

Brother/Brother-in-law: Blah, blah, blah (Albanian gibberish).
Me: Blank stare….chicken?
Brother/Brother-in-law: Blank stare….blah, blah, blah (more gibberish).
Me: Flapping my arms like a chicken then shrugging shoulders?
Brother/Brother-in-law: Getting down on the floor on all floors and crawling around.
Me: Mooing like a cow?
Brother/Brother-in-law: Shaking his head, baaa, baaa (like a lamb).

A Breakthrough! We were eating Lamb! However, this did not look or taste like lamb. The Brother/Brother-in-law continued crawling around on the floor and baaaing, then he pointed to his head, baaaed again, pointed to his head again. It occurred to me that I was likely eating meat from the head of the lamb, or perhaps something from inside the head lamb. It wasn’t bad, I cleaned my plate.

So there’s that.

April 1, 2006

This morning before language class I was having coffee with our instructor, I’ll call her Nancy. Nancy has excellent English and a better understanding of English grammar than most American college students. She also has that great stereotypical Eastern European accent, as well as the tendency to misplace words in a sentence, put the wrong ending on a word, or just throw in unnecessary words, she’s really fun to listen to. Nancy was explaining to me this “special thing” they do in Albania today where as she put it: “peoples are playing the jokes and tricks all the day.” I wasn’t following, today was Saturday, did she mean that they play these “jokes and tricks” every Saturday? “No,” she explained, “it is because April 1st in Albania is the special day that we play the jokes and tricks.” Now I knew what she was getting at, I explained that we’ve got the day of jokes and tricks in the United States as well, we call it April Fools Day. I’m thinking: “this is a great cross-cultural exchange that I’m having! This is definitely portfolio worthy. Then Nancy explained that she had thought that the day of jokes and tricks was a uniquely Albanian phenomenon, she looked genuinely disappointed.

April 2, 2006
7:30 a.m.

I haven’t really described the village of L---- F---- in any detail. The word “village” might actually be a little misleading. L---- F---- is pretty much a crossroads of about maybe a 1,000 people ten or fifteen minutes outside of the bigger city of E----, just off of the main road heading West out of E----. The town is a three or four square block maze of dirt paths winding through one-story concrete and brick homes, chickens, sheep, goats and the occasional cow are sprinkled throughout the town. The center of town consists of a small school – maybe six or seven classrooms – with a dirt kind of courtyard in front that’s used mostly by the local kids for playing marbles or staring at me as I walk in and out of school, a few cafés, a very small mosque that I have not seen anyone come in or out of, and what looks to be an abandoned concrete building with the word “Spital” (hospital) spray painted on the outside – I never want to get sick in this country.

L---- F---- is set just off the banks of a medium-sized river and is one of a number of small villages scattered throughout the area outside of E---- that have been built on the few patches of flat land amongst what I would consider mountains, but what Nancy informed me were just some pretty modest foothills. L---- F---- is right at the base of one of the bigger “hills,” from the village you can see some kind of radio or cell phone antennae on the top, which of course meant that someone had been to the top of that bastard. The temptation was too great for the Texan, and he and I went for another hike up this particular hill the other day. It took about half an hour to get to the radio tower, the reward was an amazing view of the river carving through the hills, to the East we see the sprawl of E----, and to the West snow-capped peaks, which I guess are what people consider mountains. Whatever, I still say I climbed a mountain, there may be bigger mountains around, but still.

The Texan took some really good photos, I should be able to post those once he e-mails them to me. I’ve been having battery issues with my camera. Specifically, the rechargeable batteries I brought don’t seem to be charged right out of the package – does this seem unfair to anyone else – and since I forgot to use the power converter with my battery charger when I first plugged it in, it has now been fried and isn’t working at all. My goal today is to successfully buy batteries.

7:30 p.m.

Twelve hours later I have returned to the shtepia – house – with no batteries, it was however an eventful Sunday. With the day off from language class my plan was to walk into the larger city of E----, have some coffee, buy batteries, find some lunch and do a lot of people watching. The walk to E---- was a bad choice, it was a lot longer than I had thought and hardly pleasant, pretty much walking along the shoulder of a two-lane freeway. It seems that outside of intercity roads or main roads in bigger towns there is very little paved terrain, and forget about sidewalks. Today was a particularly hot and dusty day, which I do find preferable to the wet and very muddy days.

I got to E----, picked out a nice looking café, and enjoyed a Café Turk – Turkish coffee – while people stared at me and I stared back. Another American guy living in the nearby village of K---- called me to see if I wanted to head out to his site and wander around the town a little bit, sounded good to me. The inter-city transportation in Albania is handled by either antiquated buses that look like something Rosa Parks might have rode, or privately owned minivans called furgons. The furgons I’ve rode in so far have all had the seats removed in favor of milk crates, trunks, saw horses, or something of the like – I’ve have yet to ride in a furgon with fewer than ten people. The quality of the furgons ranges from “this van is really disgusting and I’m surprised it actually runs,” to “I didn’t know you could make a mini-van out of cardboard.

I headed over to the area of town that seems to have been set aside for the furgon drivers to park their vans and smoke, and started saying: “Une nevoj furgone ne K----” - I need a furgon to K----. This attracted a lot of attention and incited a handful of arguments over who was going to take the American for a ride. I eventually found a furgon that was actually going to K----, piled in, and tried to ignore the staring long enough to get through a paragraph in my book. It took about twenty minutes to get to the first stop – which I assumed was K---- - when I hopped out I attempted to check with the driver to make sure I wasn’t getting off too soon. “Ne, K----, po?” – here, K----, yes – I asked. This question got a few chuckles out of the rest of the furgon passengers. After a ten minute exercise in miming with an exasperated driver and about eight other passengers I figured out that we had passed the village I trying to get to and this was essentially the end of the line. One guy on the furgon spoke just enough English to assure me that the driver would be heading back to E---- shortly and I could get dropped off at K---- on the way back.

I’m not sure what town I was in, the furgon driver may have lived there, at any rate he knew a lot of people in town and wanted to show off the American that didn’t know when to get off the furgon to all his friends in town. So I was introduced to three or four guys, talked at really fast, stared at a lot, had two Turkish coffees, and an hour later we were back in the Furgon heading to K----. I did finally manage to meet the people I’d been trying to track down all day, had time to chat for an hour, then had to get going before it got dark and vehicular traffic in the country pretty much stops.

I wanted to avoid furgons on the trip back to L---- F---- and opted for the more predictable Autobus. The World War I era bus I caught made it about 200 yards down the street before breaking down, leaving the passengers to walk along the road until another furgon came along. I crammed in the first furgon that came along and was hit with the inevitable stares and questions about what I was doing in this country. I told people my name and that I was living in L---- F----, before I could get to my age a guy pipes in: “po, Amerikan vullnetare, pese vullnetare ne L---- F----” – yes, the American volunteer, there’s five of them in L---- F----. Someone else on the bus knew what family I was living with in L---- F----, and another guy wanted to know where the other four Americans were, if they had gotten lost he knew their host families. I was in a completely different village about an hour from L---- F---- and these guys knew my whole story, I had great sense of self-importance at this point.

First solo trip out of the village, no batteries but I’m back alive. Phew, I got tired writing that.