Going for Coffee

July 12, 2006

After four months, I can usually anticipate an approaching uncomfortable situation involving myself and Albanians. Sometimes these can be avoided, but usually it’s beyond my control and something that I just have to roll with. There have been a few circumstances this week that have left me feeling particularly ill at ease.

The oldest woman I have ever met has been staying at my host family’s house this week. On Monday the mother of my seventy year-old host mother came for what I think is a week-long visit. This is a woman whose grandchildren are my parents age and has great-grandchildren my age. I’ve tried to nail down how old she is but anything that Stergyshe, (great-grandma), has said to me is indecipherable, and neither her children or grandchildren seem to be sure. I’ve gotten ages ranging from ninety and a number in the hundreds that I’m unable to count to or understand in Albanian. She looks every bit of a hundred-and-thirty – although she still gets around pretty well – with apparently only one bad eye, corrected by an inch-thick monocle she wears making her left pupil absurdly magnified. She has a witches nose, long and hooked inward with a wart on the end, like exaggerated stage makeup meant to be seen by people in the fifth balcony.

The family has decided that I need plenty of alone time with Stergyshe. When I’ve been in my usual “Beni wants alone time” spots the last few days Grandma shepherds Stergyshe into the room and sets her up within speaking distance of me. I’ll look up from my book or game of Snake on my cell phone to be met by one enormous eye behind a monocle trying to focus on me. I’m positive Stergyshe finds this at least half as excruciating as I do, but, like me, she is helpless to the whims of my host parents.

I’m not sure of her name and have fallen back on calling her great-grandmother. “Si jeni Stergyshe?” – how are you great-grandma? I ask as clearly as I can. This is met by a giant one-eyed blank stare. We sit awkwardly for a few hours every day, a few brief outbursts from Stergyshe – which I can’t understand but are probably her recollections of the Ottoman Empire – punctuate the silence, I shake my head knowingly.

I do think that Stergyshe likes me. She tends to snuggle up close to me on the couch or at the dining table, doesn’t say much of anything, just hits me with her magnified eye, occasionally petting my shoulder or hand. I never not notice when she’s in the room.



Last Thursday morning a colleague from WV, my NGO work placement, asked if I’d like to get a coffee.

“Sure, where would you like to go Gjovoline?”
“Oh, maybe not now but maybe later Beni, I thought we get coffee and then I can get to know about you, because I have made this my homework when I am not at work to learn more about you and we can talk, okay?” he replied nervously.
“That’s fine Gjovoline, we’ll have coffee today sometime.”
“Yes, this is what I thought also, and then we can talk…..”

Gjovoline really likes to talk to me. At some point every day he’ll corner me at work and talk himself into a circle about the sandwich I’m eating or the shoes I have on. He has an anxious, panicky manner when he speaks English, – it is his third language – but we get a lot further than we would if we spoke Albanian. I do terribly at the office small-talk game in English, in Albanian I can get as far as “it’s hot today!” before I have to flee the situation.

So the day moved along, my coffee date with Gjovoline was still pending at four-thirty when I was getting ready to leave. “Gjovoline, do you want to get coffee after work, or maybe tomorrow?”
“Oh yes Beni, we can go after work today and have coffee maybe we can go and sit and talk with coffee that would be good today after work maybe we will go at seven this is a good time for you to have coffee?”
“Sure, that’s good,” I said, not understanding why this was being put off for two and a half hours.

I killed time over beers with my site spouse John until about six forty-five when Gjovoline drove by. Town was just starting to get lively with the early comers for the evening xhiro, there was good people watching to be had and a leisurely coffee sounded nice. “Where would you like to go Gjovoline?”
“Beni come, get-in, we will go and have a coffee now, we can go wherever you like Beni, get-in the car and we can drive to a coffee, do you think so?”

There were plenty of cafés within walking distance, but Gjovoline seemed to be set on driving somewhere, I wasn’t going to fight this battle. I’m usually pretty good when asked things like “where should we go, what do you want to eat, what movie should we see.” I’m not shy about saying what I’d like to get out of the situation, knowing that replying with “I don’t care,” or “whatever” will certainly lead to the one thing that I had no interest in.

In the car with Gjovoline I hesitated. He gave a few suggestions of places to go, and my fate was sealed as soon as I said “whatever you think is good.” He suggested we drive to the nearby beach town of Shingjin, I went along with the idea. The beach in Shingjin is crowded with hotels, bars, and restaurants, all of which I’m sure serve a fine thimble of espresso. We pulled onto the shore road and began to slowly cruise. At this point I was restless, ready to get out of the car and enjoy a quick coffee before heading home for dinner. We kept driving, to what I assumed was some destination Gjovoline had in mind, talking in our usual way.

“Beni, how are you finding Albania in this time that you have been here with living with families and do you find Lezha to be a good town I think you have lived and seen other cities in Albania do you have family in America that you can speak to about Albania the sea is very nice near Lezha I think….”
“It’s goodGjovoline, things are good.”
“Yes Beni, I think you will find Albania to be a nice place in the summer but winter can might be very cold outside but do you know Beni that the snow does not come to Lezha it is only very cold I think I have heard that snow will come to America in the winter…”
“I don’t like the cold.”

Gjovoline might have been wrapped up in our disjointed conversation, we continued to drive along the shore road for twenty minutes, the hotels and cafés disappeared and the road eventually deteriorated to a dirt path. “So Beni, whenever you find a place that you like we can stop for coffee.”

My reluctance to suggest a venue for coffee had come back to hurt me. Not only had I passed on the opportunity to determine where we would go, but Gjovoline was apparently just going to keep driving until I said “hey, let’s go there.” We might have just driven to Vienna, I’m sure they have good coffee there, hmmmmm.

I said we had better turn back towards civilization and just go to the first place we saw. This turned out to be a grass-roofed, open air beach bar, about twenty feet from the water. Uncomfortable backless chairs that looked like foot rests surrounded a dance floor, a few shirtless guys stood behind the bar, and atrocious euro pop completed the ambiance. Gjovoline and I were the only ones at bar, – why do places have to blast music when no one is there? – they didn’t have coffee, but margaritas were a welcome substitute. We sat on footrests and sipped our umbrella drinks, the music made conversation impossible. I’m sure that Gjovoline was thinking the same thing I was: “why did I ever want to get coffee with this guy?”