Surface differences

View of my street in my PST community of Dobroshtë.

This post is going to be about all the surface-level differences I've personally seen or experienced in my PST community of Dobroshtë.  Many of these differences apply to most Albanians living here, but just remember that all families are different and my situation isn't always the same as everyone else's.  I'm sure I will notice way more once I become more integrated and comfortable with my family and with the town.  For now, enjoy these 8 differences.

1. Toilet paper. Toilet paper is disposed of in the trash can, so as not to clog the septic system.  This is why the trashcans have lids on them, otherwise it could become very smelly, very fast.  Now this issue of toilet paper disposal is only an issue if the family even uses toilet paper.  A volunteer in an Albanian village told us to bring some toilet paper with us, as there might not be some in our homes.  I told her I didn’t mind, as I got used to bidets and washing with water when I lived in Kuwait.  That’s not the case, however, and there typically isn’t even water available.  I can only assume that they wipe with their hands or don’t wipe at all...I’m not quite sure.  All I know is that there wasn’t any TP in my family’s home, but after the first day they put up a holder, and the second day they added TP to it.  Luckily our toilet was next to the bathtub and the shower head is attached to a hose...so it wasn’t an issue for me.  If I DID use the toilet paper, though, I would have to carry it, soiled, to the “trash can” (plastic bag) in my room...and that just seems unpleasant.  All that’s left to figure out is how to dry off afterwards, or if I just pull up my pants with butt water still on them.  Time will tell what I choose to do.

   

   Notice how there's no curtain or place to put the shower head. I try not splash water outside the tub, but it seems the my host siblings get water EVERYWHERE when they shower.

2. Gardens. Everyone here seems to have a garden.  The food we eat is pulled off the plants or dug up from the ground mere minutes before eating it.  My family has carrots, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, parsley, kiwis (yes, they grow here but won’t be ready until around November), figs, and apples.  I had never had a fresh, non-sugar coated fig before and they are absolutely delicious.  A lot of families have grapes and they are hands down the most delicious grapes I’ve ever eaten.  If I had grown up eating these tomatoes, I would’ve actually grown up eating them (they grossed me out up until about 6 years ago).  Part of the reason for all the food from the garden is because salaries here are low and in order to get by, people need the extra food or revenue (if they sell their produce).

   

   Our beautiful garden.

   

   Fresh-from-the-vine fig.

3. Çaj/Kafe. At all times of the day--during, before, after, and in between meals--we are drinking tea or coffee. I don’t drink coffee (I told them I was allergic), and so I just drink tea; I don’t know if the family normally does this or not, but I haven’t seen them drink any coffee since being here, they’ve only had tea.  I am SO glad that I forced myself to like tea. So. So. Happy.  [Yet another reason to eat/drink things until you like them. You never know when it’s culturally gonna come in handy.]  I think I will drink more tea in my first week here than I have in my entire life. In their tea, though, they put a TON of sugar. So much sugar. The first tea they made me (given to me in the same small glasses that they use in Kuwait) was so incredibly sweet, and I was glad to know it was just added sugar and not how the tea itself actually tasted.  Now I drink my tea without sugar, and they just don’t understand how I like it like that. I tell them it’s healthier and you can really taste the çaj [chai].  My host sister Amire even tried it with no sugar; no one believed her when she told them the next day because she has a major sweet tooth. 

   

   It's in little tea glasses just like in Kuwait.

4. Children. I see children all the time running around without supervision.  I know Americans can be overprotective of their children, but I’m talking about 3-5 year olds (mostly boys) just running around in packs and playing in the streets.  I don’t know how to feel about this just yet, and I don’t feel negatively about it, just a little surprised to see this. Plus I know I’m in a village so that could have something to do with it.  However I did see this at night in the neighboring (decently big) city of Tetovo, so it seems to just be part of the culture here.  I’ve been told that leaving children unsupervised happens in classrooms as well.

   

   What a great photobomb by Larry, a fellow PCT.

5. Çaj/Kafe. No, seriously. You don’t understand how much tea I’ve been offered and drank already...and it’s barely been a week.
6. Bukë. I will not only be consuming massive amounts of tea, but also massive amounts of (white) bread--though it is from a bakery.  With each meal I try and eat about 2-3 slices of bread.  I will put other foods on the bread or dip it in the main dish; if I don’t constantly have bread in my hand, mouth, or next to my plate, they seem to feel as though I’m starving myself and that must be encouraged to keep my will to live...so in reality I’ve probably eaten about 3-5 slices each meal to appease my host mother and father.  I’m sure I’ll find the right stew to bread ratio and eat the bread slower so as not to cause alarm. **Shout out to Deutschland for hands down having the best bread of any country I’ve visited thus far.**
   
7. Home decoration. The way the Albanians decorate their homes is very minimal.  Almost nothing is on their walls, very few pictures are out, and it just seems a little unfinished.  Carpet isn't installed the same as it is in the US: it's more just laid over floors and it sticks up in corners and on walls. I don't know if this is just my house or not, but most of the rooms just have lights without light fixtures and things just seem unfinished.  I'm still trying to get a feeling for how well off my family is or not, but I've talked to some of the other PCT's (Peace Corps Trainees) and they also say their homes also have a sense of being unfinished.  To sum it up, they just just aren't decorated.

   

   My awesome host sister Amire in the living room.

   
   

   

   Like an extra room for the fridge, freezer, some wardrobes, and washing machine.

   
   

   

   Do you see the pot stacked on the other pot? That's where the tea lives.

   
   

   

   My room.

8. Language. It’s hard to understand people here. It’s like they’re speaking another language or something.

   

   Host mom, Imërzat (I think that's how you spell it). She's so sweet and doesn't speak a lick of
   English...and we seem to have taken different charades courses, so it's hard to understand each other. It's getting easier, though.  Everyone keeps saying how crazy/funny she is, so I can't wait to actually start understand the little quips she keeps saying under her breath.

   
   

   

   Qemal [Chay-mall], my host father. The smiliest man ever. So kind, and quite funny. We like to communicate by laughing and pointing and not understanding each other.

Day 4-6; 17-19 Sept. 2014

If I manage to keep my water bottle through service training this week, it will be a miracle. I just keep leaving it everywhere.  Also, it’s something that identifies us as a foreigner and a behavior that confuses the Macedonians/Albanians here.

We did an intercultural training, and it was neat to learn about some cultural differences. I don’t want to give them away now, as I’m sure I’ll be blogging about them first hand when I start living with my family (I meet them on Saturday!). We’re all getting antsy and nervous about meeting our families...especially since all we know how to say in Macedonian is a simple greeting (hello, good day/morning/evening/night), I’m from America, I’m from America too, how are you, good/very good/fantastic, nice to meet you, good bye. Let me just say that with the intercultural training, they kept telling us to communicate with the families and tell them all these preferences about our schedule, foods we do/don’t like, when we take showers/go to bed, etc...and it all seems hard to navigate even if we were speaking English, as we are supposed to be indirect when making requests because being too direct is rude and we don’t want to offend anyone.

Since I’m placed in the dual language program, I am with an Albanian-speaking family (which is a language a lot like Basque and has unknown roots and is a branch of language all on its own, but thankfully uses the latin alphabet)...and we’ve learned all we’ve learned this week in Macedonian, in 2.5 hours today during Albanian-language training. Albanian (Schqip) is much harder than Macedonian, it seems.

I’m a little nervous about living in a Muslim community in terms of my freedoms and liberties I’ll have as a young, single woman.  We’ve talked about many of the restrictions we’ll have, and so I’m aware of what I’ll experience...yet what I’ll actually experience is something completely different. I want to try and jog a little bit, ride my bike, hike, and/or just go for walks...but even in a Macedonian community this is one of those “confusing American behaviors” and female athletes aren’t really a thing here. There are still volunteers who continue to be active and defy those cultural norms, and one (in an Albanian community) has even started a running club at her school and the kids really like it.  I don’t know what my type of activity or level of activity would be, but I’d like to do something.  I’ll just have to get my feel for my family, community, and level of safety; I’d also have to carry a stick or rocks to throw or threaten stray dogs with if I went out.

We’ll all be placed with our families tomorrow for our PST (pre-service training) sites.  We will only be staying there for 3 months and this is where we’ll get our training in language, culture, and procedures.  Four days a week, we’ll have 4.5 hours of language training--2 days Macedonian, 2 days Albanian.  There will be 9 of us living in Debroshte, a village of 4,500 which is just about 15 minutes outside of Tetovo (where we are now) and is about 90-95% Albanian.  Apparently the Albanians have more luxurious and larger homes, so the 4 of us who were assigned an Albanian family will probably have a very different Peace Corps experience than what is typically brought to mind when “Peace Corps” is mentioned.

Day 3--17 Sept. 2014

Day 3--16 Sept. 2014

The place we’re in for orientation this week is super nice.  It’s called the Woodrow Wilson school and is an all-English school.  It’s on a compound and very isolated.  We’ve been reminded MANY times that this is absolutely NOT what our school work sites will look like. I feel like I’m in a hotel.

View from outside my dorm window

Woodrow Wilson School

Day 2--15 Sept. 2014

We were welcomed to Macedonia today by two different cultural groups--one of a traditional Macedonian dance group, and the other was an Albanian one. They were kids and teenagers who did their traditional dances in traditional garb. It was very adorable and really interesting to see the contrast between the two cultures.

Dancers in traditional Macedonian costume.

Dancers in traditional Albanian costume.

After that Burt Putney--Deputy Chief of Missions at the US embassy in country--came to speak with us about what they are doing within the region.  He spoke very eloquently and it was fascinating to hear about his opinions on issues and tensions within the region.  We all really enjoyed hearing him and getting a little history lesson as well.

Burt Putney

Here are some of the interesting facts that I wrote down during his speech:

-Greece is the main reason that Macedonia isn’t part of the EU.  They’ve been a candidate since 2005(?), yet Greece claims the name “Macedonia” as their own.  They would like the country to change to something like “The Republic of Upper Macedonia”, yet the Macedonians feel like they would lose part of their identities in changing their name.  A compromise of “The Upper Republic of Macedonia” has been proposed, thus keeping the “Republic of Macedonia” part together, yet Greece refuses to compromise and won’t accept that.

-Bulgaria is the closest language to Macedonian.  So close, in fact, that many Bulgarians say that there’s no such thing as Macedonian, and that it’s just another dialect of Bulgarian.

-Serbia won’t recognize the Macedonian church, and claim it’s just a part of their own church.

-A LOT of ethnic tensions between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians. The conflicts that we heard about seem to be parallels between the tensions in the US between Mexicans and Americans, and Blacks and Whites.

-There is a lot of control of the media by the government, and the US embassy is seeing a backslide of democracy.  There is also a lot of government pressure placed on citizens and businesses to vote a certain way, and if they don’t, those businesses tend to receive more fines, visits from inspectors, and find it harder to apply for permits.

-The overall feeling in the country by residents and citizens is pretty grim.  Many young Macedonians are leaving their villages for bigger cities, especially abroad in Europe, the US, and Canada.  Once they leave, they often bring their families with them and the money being sent into the country from those working abroad is decreasing.

That being said, while I talked about this being a nice country (and it is) and even though the country looks European and modern from the outside, there is a lot of strife and inefficiencies in how things are run.  This is also a very conservative country, thus change is slow to take hold.  Peace Corps is here for a reason and we all want to do our part in these next few years to help out our communities in whatever small way we can.

For Anne Fox: a map of Macedonia...because she was snarky.

13-14 Sept. 2014

Staging in Philadelphia went pretty well.  Found out there are 44 other Peace Corps volunteers of all backgrounds.  There are a surprising number of volunteers who were cancelled from their original locations for various reasons.  Quite a few were gonna go to Azerbaijan, but the DAY before they were supposed to leave, they got a call saying that it was no longer happening.  This happened to them in April.  A few others were already serving or supposed to go to Ukraine.  I’m just grateful that I didn’t have to wait months and months, and it sucks because many of those individuals already sold their belongings, living spaces, and quit their jobs. 

MAK19 group at Staging in Philadelphia. 12 Sept. 2014

I do enjoy the new PCVs, as we really are a unique group with a passion to help others and so many backgrounds to bring to the table.  It’s fun to be able to share our stories with one another and hear of all the incredible things that these people did, and what they want to continue to do and accomplish here in Macedonia.

We’ve heard nothing but great things about this country, and all the volunteers have said that it’s like we won the Peace Corps lottery.  Some PCVs here have referenced to it as the “Posh Corps” which the country director and others were quick to put down that term, as it is still a developing country that can use our help (otherwise we wouldn’t be here).  One of the reasons it’s such a nice place to be is that health-wise there isn’t much to battle with.  As opposed to other countries like Asian or African ones, there aren’t many illnesses that we’ll be facing that are much unlike our own common colds and the flu.  Plus our support PC staff here is apparently phenomenal and they really take care of the PCVs here. In fact, there is an extremely low rate of early departure from service, and I spoke with the Country Director who has been here just under a year, and the only people that have left within that past year had to do so under specific circumstances with family or jobs back in the States, and not due to actually wanting to leave.  In fact, a lot of people extend for at least a few months in order to finish out their school year, as the normal departure dates take place mid-year.  We’ll see how I feel in two years and if I’ll want to do that.

The school dorm we’re staying in this first week for orientation is extremely nice and we’ve been told multiple times to NOT expect this kind of niceness when we get our placements in our villages; it’s a private, all-English speaking school right outside of Tetovo. The food here is cafeteria style and seems to follow local cuisine of lots of bread, oil, and salt.  Apparently this is the “land of fruits and vegetables” and we passed a lot of agricultural fields of melons and veggies, yet we were told that a lot of locals don’t really eat them. If they are eaten, it’s usually after being slathered in olive oil and salt.  It will depend on who I’m living with and the amounts of meat and food that they eat. However, it would appear that the contract that the families have to sign in order to host a PCV includes that we must have access to their kitchen and so there should be a possibility of cooking my own food, if need be.  I’m going to try and enjoy local cuisine, of course, but I like the option of preparing my own food.  PLUS I’ll hopefully be invited to cook them the American food I brought--Kraft mac ‘n cheese, taco seasonings (Mexican food is apparently non-existent here), and Ranch Dressing seasonings (with which I’ll probably make Ranch chicken).

We are 8 hours ahead of CO time, and so I think a good night sleep will do us all well.  We’ve got a jam-packed week of language learning and general information to absorb...I can’t wait!

Arriving in Skopje (Ckopje) Airport 14 Sept. 2014