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.