May Day

April 30, 2006

I got back from a trip to Fier and Berat today. We headed South to Fier on Saturday morning, from there we rode about another forty minutes to Berat, spent the afternoon there, and then headed back to Fier to spend the night there with an American who lives in Fier – pronounced “fear,” our friend “lives in fear.” I was the only one that found this amusing. It was a long day, but a nice trip, made all the better by the pasta salad and barbecue chicken that our host made for dinner. The chicken was just boiled and then tossed around with some sauce, and pasta salad is something that I really don’t even like that much, but just a couple of different flavors made the meal quite extravagant.

Berat is another extremely old city, inhabited for the last four thousand years, and was declared a “museum city” by the government in the 1970’s. As a result the historic town center was spared from the communist urban planning and architecture that seem to characterize most cities in Albania. The big attraction in town is the citadel, sitting atop a severely steep hill in the center of town. The white brick tile-roofed houses that cling to the hillside leading up to the citadel is a pretty well-known image associated with Albania.

There aren’t any clear directions or explanations when you visit sites like the citadel in Albania, you just wander around, if a door’s open you go through it, you can climb all over things, and there’s usually a handful of chunees hanging around. Chunee is word for “boy,” but in a different, more condescending way than the other word for boy, “djale.” We’ve attached the term chunee to a specific kind of boy that the country seemed to be rife with. These would be the boys between the ages of twelve and seventeen, who spend their time loitering around, spitting sunflower seeds, and heckling people that walk by the same way people heckle opposing pitchers warming up in the bullpen. In appearance, chunnees closely resemble the “Jets” and the “Sharks” from “West Side Story,” but are quite a bit less threatening.

I believe that the citadel as it looks today – very fortified and castle-like, kind of like Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island – was completed in the 1400s, when Berat was a mostly Muslim town and Christians lived within the citadel walls. The citadel was quite a complex, it was really more like a small village, with several churches and homes, some of which people still live in. I walked through one open door and found myself standing in a kitchen with a gyshe, (grandmother), eating lunch.

The Texan and I ran into a group of boys playing soccer, using some ancient ruin as a goal – I’m not going to use the pejorative “chunee” to describe these kids. They were pretty young and didn’t have the fifteen year-old attitude that typifies chunees. We were quickly corralled by our new tour guides and led all over the citadel. They chattered away at us in Alabanian and a little bit of broken English, we responded with our usual combination of broken Shqip, (Albanian), and English – Shqiplish. The boys were very insistent in leading us to a particular corner of the citadel. We rounded a corner and the boys motioned towards a parked Mercedes, we could see two guys sitting in the front seat smoking. The Texan and I stood there for a second with the boys wondering why exactly, when were walking around this ancient citadel/castle, we were interested in these two guys having a cigarette break, we’ve seen this a few times in the last five weeks.

One of the boys tapped on the drivers side window of the car, startling the guys inside, they talked for a second, the boy motioning at the Texan and I. The two men stepped from the car, revealing their attire, bright red and green Hugh Hefner-esqe satin robes. They both wore absurd toupees, one guy tried to straighten his stick-on mustache.

“Miredita,” (good day), “Italian, German?” one guy asked raising his eyebrows at us.
“Yo, jemi American,” I replied.
“Fine, I have little English, no problem.”

The two Sears Catalogue robe models took a few steps from their car, briefly discussed something with each other, and began the show.

“Here in these citadel we may be protected and our religion grow,” said the guy in the green robe gesturing toward the perimeter of the citadel.
“Yes, in this year we must be safe from the persecution from the muslims,” red robe replied. I was impressed with the word “persecution.”
“Lets have a walks around and tour this citadel.”
“Fine.”

And the Texan and I were ushered back through all the homes and churches that we had already seen, this time accompanied by two men in satin robes, toupees, and fake facial hair, giving what seemed like a fairly revisionist history of Christianity and Islam in this city during the Ottoman Empire. After the little introduction we figured that these guys were sort of historical re-enactors – not unlike the dozens of Ben Franklins that wander around Philadelphia harassing people – except it was entirely unclear as to who they were supposed to be, with the robes we figured monks or some equivalent, but that wouldn’t explain the toupees or fake mustache. So they were really neither historical nor portraying anyone in particular or re-enacting anything. The Texan and I stuck with Father Green Robe and Father Red Robe for the comic relief, and were even prepared to pony up the few hundred leke that we thought the “tour” would cost. Surprisingly, we weren’t hit with a fee for something we never intended to buy – which does happen to me daily. Best show I’ve seen in awhile.

May 2, 2006

Just some rambling recaps of the last couple of days.

My host uncle’s wife, Mira, walked in on me in the shower yesterday. This was really not her fault at all. My strategy for conserving the hot water for the duration of my dush has been to turn off the water while I’m lathering up. I didn’t have the door locked, and without the water running Mira just walked in. I’m not really embarrassed, but Mira ran out of there completely mortified, I’ll probably never see her again. Just another chapter in the awkward relationship I have with my host family.

Yesterday was also May 1st, May Day. I had known that we would have the day off from language class and other training, but I had no idea what May Day was, or what it was recognizing precisely. I have since learned that it has something to do with Communism, I don’t know what exactly, but I think it’s on this day that big military parades have traditionally been held. We’ve all the seen the newsreels of Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean troops marching through the public square de jour in perfect formation, complete with tanks, jets, warheads, and thousands of people obediently observing. My reaction to pictures of these parades has always been: “wow, they are really good at marching in a perfect formation. It’s a good thing we fought the British and not these guys in 1776.” I think that’s what May Day is.

With communism fifteen years in Albania’s past, May Day has been kept around to provide a free afternoon for people to head to town to see and be seen. I met up with a handful of other Americans for lunch, after which we settled into a café in a park in Elbasan and enjoyed a few frosty beverages. This particular park includes a bumper car rink, very similar to the bumper cars that are a part of every traveling carnival. The rink in Elbasan is popular, and on May Day in particular, there was a big crowd of people lined up, and plenty of heckling chunees to go along. Tragically, the whole concept of bumper cars seems to be largely lost on Albanians. The bumper cars are loaded up with three or four to a car, the Shakira soundtrack gets blasting, and the vehicles are turned loose. However, in anticlimactic fashion, people spend their ten minutes behind the wheel just driving around in circles. They make a concerted effort to avoid bumping, the thrill of wheeling around a twenty square-foot rink to the sounds of euro pop is, apparently, all people are after. We watched the “bumper” cars for at least an hour and saw not a single collision. After having now gotten over the initial shock and awe at how people drive cars in Albania, this was truly shocking.

Last word for today. I now have a decent enough handle on my shqip, (Albanian), and am able to talk about what I’m doing, what I have done, and what I will do in the future. This also includes the ability to say to a kamarier, (waiter), things like: “I will have the rice with meat; how much does the salad cost; do you have soup,” and so on. However, a frustrating pattern is taking shape. When I order something – in a way that is admittingly akin to the way a four year-old would speak to an adult, but simple and clear nonetheless – my request only prompts confusion.

“Une pelquej supe me pule te lutem,” – I’ would like the chicken soup please – I’ll say. The kamarier stares back at me with the puzzled, helpless expression I give to most Albanians when they speak to me. I repeat myself, and still no acknowledgement of understanding. The kamarier will look to our language teacher, or some other person with us who has already established themselves as being able to speak Albanian, with an expression that says “bail me out please.” They’ll repeat what I ordered verbatim, and then it all becomes clear, it just needed to come from someone else’s lips. I’m sure my shqip is not easy to understand, but when I’m just saying “sallate” – can anyone guess what that is – I feel like the request can be grasped. As I’ve gained what I thought was new independence with the language, this has become especially frustrating.

I didn’t sit down tonight with the intention to bitch and moan for 800 words. Maybe half way through my sixth week in Albania the honeymoon has ended and I’m beginning to get annoyed by little things that, at first, were kind of novel and quaint, and I could just chalk up to being in a very foreign country. But, then again, my biggest grievances are the lack of understanding of my broken Shqip, and the mis-use – or non-use – of bumper cars. I’m sure this pales next to the trauma that Mira went through yesterday.

May 3, 2006

In an attempt to stretch my few remaining leke until Friday, payday, I returned to my host family’s shtepi this afternoon for lunch. I enjoyed a nice green salad, rice soup, and some yogurt while watching the same Italian soap opera that I’ve now seen a handful of times and am beginning to pick up on the plotlines. Frank, my host father’s brother, popped his head in for a second. We chatted just briefly, Frank had a bag packed and was obviously waiting for a ride to stop by the house.

“Mire Beni. Mbaron shkolle sot?” – Hi Beni. Finished with school today?
“Po, pak shkolle sot” – Yes, short school today.
“Mire. A po ben mbadite?” – Good, what are you doing later today?
“Do te lexoj liber, bej pak dyterat, pastaj, do te takoj shoku im ne local. Si jeni? A po ben?” – I’ll read a little bit, do a little homework, then meet my friends at the Lokal. How are you? What are you doing?
“Do te shkoj ne Greqi per punon.”

I sat silent for a second trying to dissect the last thing that Frank had said to me. I had gotten through “I will go to ….” when he gave me a quick “mirepafshim,” kissed his wife and one year-old son, and was out the door. From the living room window I saw Frank climb into a furgon driven by my host father.

Frank’s wife scooped up the baby and walked quickly to her room, closing the door behind her. Grandpa was the next to come into the room. “Ku eshte po shkoj Frank?” – Where is Frank going? I asked.

“Ne Greqi.”

We went back and forth for a few minutes trying to come to an understanding as what “Greqi” was. Grandpa left the room and came back with a travel brochure for Greece, mystery solved. “Pse ka shkuar ne Greqi?” – Why has he gone to Greece?

“Punon” – Work.
“Frank do te punoje ne Greqi?” – Frank will work in Greece?
“Po.”
“Sa gjate? Kush do te largohet ?” – How long? When will he return?”

I didn’t understand the response to my last question. I didn’t catch a number, or the words for “days,” “months,” or “years.” Grandpa repeated his response a couple of times, I think he may have been saying something like: “I don’t know, however long it takes, maybe soon maybe later.” I won’t attempt to transcribe the monologue that followed from Grandpa, but I’m fairly confident that I caught the just of it: “there’s very little work in Albania; it’s hard to find a job, especially in a small village like Labinot Fushe; there’s much more work in Greece, Italy, England, Germany, France, and America; Frank has to leave to Greece to make money.”

The whole story is not one that I haven’t heard or read about before. This was not some “aha, people actually cross borders and leave behind families because of lack of work” moment of clarity for me. But I saw the departure and heard the justification first hand.

In six weeks I have not felt a flicker of resentment from my host family. I can rely on our interactions to be socially uncomfortable, but not because I’m American, and I have stuff like a camera and a computer, and I filter my water, and I have three pairs of shoes. But, after telling Frank fifteen minutes earlier: “oh yeah, just a few hours of school today, I’m having a nice day, I’m just watching this soap opera, I’m going to meet my friends for happy hour later on, oh, and by the way the food your grieving wife just brought me for lunch, shume mire,” smiling like an idiot the whole time, I feel a small tinge of, not so much guilt, more naiveté.