Schoolyard Rocks

May 14, 2006

Happy Mother’s Day!

The NGO that I’ll be working with in Lezha, also operates in Elbasan, I spent four days this week shadowing another American at the Elbasan office, his name was Nick. Like myself, Nick is a volunteer, he’s been in Albania for just over a year, my role with the NGO in Lezha should be pretty comparable to what Nick’s is with the organization’s office in Elbasan. Each day I accompanied the NGO’s staff on site visits to small surrounding villages, observing community meetings with citizens and local governments and touring completed school rehabilitation, water, and infrastructure projects. Much to my delight, the NGO has a small fleet of the stereotypical international aid organization white LandRovers with the logo on the side. Riding in these trucks, I definitely had the “well-meaning, humanitarian American, who has a cool ride” vibe going.

On Tuesday I tagged along on a site visit the village of Paper (pronounced “Popper”). I was told that Paper was one of the poorest villages in the Elbasan area, this became evident in just the way the kids were dressed, most did not have shoes. On this day the NGO was there to begin work on a fundraising initiative to raise money for the reconstruction of the local elementary school. I don’t know if Albania is what would be considered a Third World Country, it is still Europe, but the conditions of the school in Paper were about as poor as I could imagine. A two-story concrete building that was literally crumbling, 150 or so kids were crammed in the four or five classrooms in the school that were still the slightest bit hospitable. The rest of the rooms were covered in litter and other debris from the disintegrating ceiling, many were under water which has seeped in through the porous walls. The entire second floor was closed off due to the probability that the floor would collapse.

A large part of the fundraising campaign is directed at individual donors from the United States and Western Europe. The most effective mechanism has proven to be “Sponsor a Child” campaigns. We’re all familiar with the brochures and commercials asking for something like twenty dollars a year to sponsor a specific child. In the case of this NGO, children aren’t actually receiving twenty-dollars, the money that is donated is reinvested into schools, road projects, water and sanitation, and other similar projects in communities. On this day we were in Paper to take photographs of the impoverished kids that will be the faces of the donor campaign. I sat and recorded the names and ages of the terrified Kindergarten through fourth grade kids as they filed through for their mug shots.

On to lighter talk.

For the sake of exercise, the Texan and I try to go on two to three “strenuous” short hikes a week, the criteria is that we want to be sweaty and tired when we’re done. The idea of walking, let along something as radical as jogging, just for the sake of exercise is a foreign concept. Without fail, any Albanian that we bump into on our hikes is very interested to know what exactly we are doing and where we’re going. I’ll transcribe a typical conversation into English.

“Hey, Americans, what are you two doing? You look tired.”
“Yes, we are Americans, we are out walking today.”
“Yes, I can see that, but where are you going? This is a long road, here comes a furgon, let me flag it down for you.”
“No thankyou. We are just walking today.”
“Yes, but why? Do you live in the village down there?”
“No, we live in Labinot Fushe.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but Labinot Fushe is back the other way. You poor Americans, you’ve been walking the wrong direction. Let me call my brother-in-law, he’ll give you a ride back to Labinot Fushe.”
“No thankyou. We like very much to walk this way, then we will return to Labinot Fushe.”
“Why?”

The conversation inevitably leads to this question; why exactly are we out walking for no good reason, only to turn around and return from where we started. Further complicating the matter is that there doesn’t seem to be verb in Albanian for “exercise” or “work-out.” The words “ushtrime, detyra,” and “stervitje” all mean exercise in the sense of “Please complete exercise four in the workbook for homework.” There are words for “fitness,” and “athletic” and things like that, but nothing really useful to describe why you may be out hiking just for the sake of hiking.

The Texan and I have had mixed success with saying “we are walking, and we like to be healthy/fit/athletic/etc.” Sometimes this is accepted, but usually this leads to a response like:

“Well then why on Earth are you out here walking!? This isn’t good for your health, my grandmother has a terrible back because she walked around too much. Please, come to my house and my wife will make you lunch. This will make you healthy.”

Granted, the people that we run into on our hikes are usually traversing the same trail as we are with a load of firewood, hay, babies, chickens, and a gomar, (donkey), loaded with stuff. Walking – or what we call hiking, another verb that doesn’t exist in Albanian – is not a leisure activity. Albanians go on an “ekskursion ne kembe,” – literally an “excursion by foot” – when they have to carry something from one place to another. These are not fun trips.

Thus far the Texan and I have been able to negotiate our way out of any offers for rides – by car or gomar – or invitations for lunch.

May 17, 2006

I had already written the post mortem for our community project. Four weeks ago, after a meeting with the Krjetar (mayor) of Labinot Fushe, we had decided that we would repair the cobblestone courtyard in front of the village school. Since that initial meeting nothing had happened, not in the way of planning, gathering materials, recruiting people to help, nothing. Myself, the Texan, Dave, Chris, and Kevin would occasionally discuss how exactly this was going to happen, but would come around to the same “yeah, we’ll have to get to that tomorrow” resolution.

On Monday we cornered the Drejtor, (director), of the School at the local café, and with the help of Nancy we talked through the project and how we could try to get this thing to happen in the next week. A round little guy with gray hair and a Spartacus chin cleft, the Drejtor began by explaining that he could get the students to gather rocks anytime, but he was waiting for us to show up with the tools and cement that the Krjetar had said he would provide. We replied that we thought the kids were going to get the rocks first, and asked if he and the mayor had met personally about this project. “We don’t have to meet,” Nancy translated, “we already know what we need to do, I just need you to show up with the supplies and the students will go get the rocks.

As we were on the midst of our chat the Krjetar pulled into town with my host Father, Steve, they were riding in Steve’s furgon. The Texan ran out of the café, corralled Steve and the Krjetar and herded them into the café to join our meeting with the Drejtor. The two of them sat across from each other, with Nancy at the head of the table between them. Nancy began: “Projekt ne shkolle me vullnetaret Amerikan…”

She was cut off abruptly by the Drejtor. This began a rapid fire exchange between him and the Krjetar. They went back and forth for about ten minutes, constantly interrupting, and the level and intensity of their voices raising. Nancy seemed to be moderating the discussion to some degree, we had no chance of following the discussion, our heads just moved back forth following the tennis match in front of us.

Steve sat at the end of the table near me, he pulled out his new cell phone and held it out to me for approval. Steve’s new phone is very small, and seems rather petite for man of Steve’s broadness. The delicate phone in his hands reminded me of an SNL skit with Will Ferrel where he drives around in a motorized cart and has some microscopic cell phone. I gave Steve a “shume mire” and a thumbs-up on the new toy.

The meeting came to a close. The five of us were tired from just trying to follow the discourse. Nancy summarized the terms that were agreed upon: tomorrow the Drejtor was going to get the male students at the school to collect rocks; the Krjetar had committed to bring over tools and cement from the Commune Office; and, there would be a couple of eighth grade boys help us with the labor. I was skeptical about the prospect of the students collecting rocks – they like to throw them, but collecting and sorting them I couldn’t envision – and the plan of having eighth grade boys help with the labor seemed particularly dubious. I’m sure middle school-aged boys can’t operate something as sophisticated as a wheelbarrow, and am also certain that a shovel in their hands would just be hazardous.

Two days after our talk with the Drejtor, to our general astonishment, there were rocks piled high in the schoolyard, tools and cement had arrived, and work commenced on the project. After language class we gathered in the schoolyard, the Drejtor rounded up a few guys that looked to be about fourteen, pointed at the spots he wanted to get filled in with new rocks, and then had to leave town for the day to get to a “funeral.” We had two wooden wheelbarrows, a pick axe, a couple hammers like the one that Andy Dufresne used to tunnel out of Shawshank, a railroad tie – and I was worried about shovels in the hands of fourteen-year-olds! – and two shovels that seemed a lot flatter than I remember shovels being, they were more like big spatulas.

The five of us were left to coordinate the project with the students that wanted to help. We started out with a labor force of what seemed like seventy kids. It was chaos, but I loved their enthusiasm, with only five tools and a railroad tie to go around the kids just started digging away and moving rocks by hand. Cement was poured into the sections we excavated and the rocks were placed and tapped down one-by-one. After about five minutes of moving rocks from one pile to another most of the kids moved on to the much more entertaining activity of playing keep away from Dave with the frisbee they stole from his bag. The project came to resemble the union jobs I have seen around Philadelphia, with the four of us – Dave was chasing frisbee thieves all over the village – and two other kids who remained committed to the task working, and about fifteen to twenty “supervisors.”

The work continued to move along, in two hours we were out of cement and had picked through the good rocks, bringing the project to a close. While we lost most of our workers early on, the many elementary-aged spectators did offer constant advice. I had exchanges along the lines of the following with about nine different kids, with approximate English translation.

Kid: Hey Beni, here’s a really nice looking big rock. You guys should use this one.
Me: You’re right, can you put that in the wheelbarrow, how about help us carry these over there?
Kid: Oh, no I can’t.
Me: Why not?
Kid: Hey look! I’m going to go play with that Frisbee!

My favorite was a little guy named Andi. He’s probably ten or eleven and part of the usual gang of kids that always seem to be hanging around whenever we walk through town. Andi comes up and talks to us just like all the other kids, but not in the same admirative way that most young kids do, his is obviously a mocking tone. On this day he was a particular menace. He would do things like come sprinting right up to the edge of the wet concrete, we would all be waving our arms, pleading with Andy not to run across the concrete, and would stop about a centimeter short, and then double-over in laughter. I asked him several times, “Andy, pse ti nuk punon?” – Andi, why aren’t you working – he would motion apologetically at a small scrape on his arm, as if to say: “oh, you know I would, but I’ve got this scrape on my arm, and I’m just not physically up to it.” He would then snatch Dave’s frisbee and scurry up a tree faster than I think a squirrel could. Hurt arm my ass.

Just as we finished the job the kids were called back for after school activities. We realized that had we waited a couple of hours, the kids would have cleared out, we had decided to do this over the two hours in the afternoon when the kids had a break and were loitering around, and able to harass us. I didn’t mind all the spectators, some pitched in a little bit. Dave on the other hand described the atmosphere we had worked in, with a hundred or so fourth through eighth grade Albanian boys running around with his frisbee, as “Hobbesian.” I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, I called Dave on it, guessing he had just heard it once and wanted to flash his vocabulary.

“It’s like, when something, or a situation, is…chaotic,….no order, ….and ahh,” Dave trailed off. “I don’t know, those kids are just crazy, and they stole my Frisbee, I call that Hobbesian.”

I guess.

May 18, 2006

It seems the world of Detroit sports has been turned on its head. Today at the internet café I let out a fairly loud “ohh, what the f----” when I checked up on the Pistons only to find out that, after winning the first two games of their series with Cleveland, they have lost three games in a row and will face elimination from the playoffs tomorrow. This prompted a few heads to turn my way. I attracted yet more attention when I exclaimed: “NO F----ING WAY?!!” after seeing that, one month into the season, the Detroit Tigers possessed the best record in baseball. Most eyes in the café were now one me. In an effort to take my vibe down from “loud, obnoxious American” to “just excited about the Tigers,” I attempted to show the girl sitting next to me that I was just looking at the standings of American baseball teams. I was met with a vacant stare.

May 20, 2006

Unable to find a way to watch the Pistons last night - or this morning as the case would have been - I made a bee line for the internet cafe today. Big sense of relief today to find out that they came away with the game six win.