First Week

Since our arrival in Kumanovo, our days have been packed with activity from morning to night. Over 9 hours of language classes alone! Though the country has broadband available across the length and breadth of the country, it doesn’t mean that every establishment is either Wi-Fi or wired yet! We have to go to the internet café’s in the town center to get online! With such a busy schedule, my blog updates may be spotty. 

In addition to the language sessions, I repeated the introductory anthropology session on culture and values that I had earlier this year as a museum resource person at the Social Justice Education course held at the Field Museum, Chicago. I love the exercise with the iceberg as it gets the participants engaged in the process, leading to a spirited discussion over a series of behaviors and expectations that are culturally reflective of American and Macedonian values.  

My first impressions of the residential area around the hotel was one of neatly fenced homes with a small patch of grass or none at all, but gardens full of ripe tomatoes, red peppers (not bell peppers or the hot Thai chili peppers, but milder Macedonian peppers), daikon radish, ripe corn stalks, black and green grapes, ripe apples, pears, figs, apricots and flowers tucked in here and there. The homes are made with a red-slate like brick block covered with mortar and red tiled roofs. Most of these homes appeared to me 40 to 50 years old in construction and almost all were two storied, so I surmised this to be a new ‘suburb’ of Kumanovo. Seeing a homeowner making Rakja (homemade wine) in his yard, under the open garage one morning brought home the much talked about wine and how it is mostly homemade, though urban dwellers have to purchase it in the store. However, when I passed his house the following day, he had dismantled his equipment and I hoped I would have another opportunity for a photograph. Rakja appears to be a national cure for every ailment. I have yet to taste it.

There are sessions clarifying PC policy; security and safety issues and medical policy sandwiched between the other sessions. The mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks along with an hour or so for lunches, gives time to visit with and befriend other MAK-14’s, as we are known collectively. One evening, some of the volunteers organize a dance party, as there is no scheduled activity in the evening. 

Listening to the early experiences of a few of the currently serving volunteers helped break down some of the anxiety I had of which town I was going to for my homestay and PST training and adjust to my Macedonian family as an older volunteer. Meeting a few of the MAK-13 was very pleasant, as they remembered, how medical had sent me home to recuperate from my arthroscopic surgery from staging last year!

Friday morning rolls around and I am packed once again! At morning meeting, at each of the language and cultural trainer’s alcoves, there appear to be blank tent cards on the table. In reality our names are facing away from us. As soon as morning meeting ends, the cards are turned around and we find our training site and the small group of 6 others with whom I will train for the next 10 weeks! MAK-14’s will be sworn in on Thanksgiving Day this year, with a real American Thanksgiving dinner (our family favorite) – turkeys and all arriving from the USA. How cool is that!

We concentrate on specific phases to help with conversation when we reach our homes. I receive a clue on a slip of paper that my host will also have and we will ‘discover’ them on arrival by matching the clues! Macedonian is a phonetic language, so I think I will find it easy to read and write the words, once I have mastered the alphabet. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know what the word means yet!