Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Winding Down

Two years from now, these first few weeks in Macedonia may just be a blip in our memories, as the focus changes from learning coping skills, including language, cultural nuances, family and community building, etc. This afternoon we had our formal oral language assessment and the next three working days will be filled with typical end of year time filling activities.

Before arriving here I had vague notions of what was to be expected of me and what was it that I will contribute. This acclimatization period accomplished far more and in greater depth than one would imagine, while at the same time meeting two of the three goals of the Peace Corps. One, bringing about an understanding of what an American is, divorced from the image presented on television and two, bringing about an understanding of Macedonian family life that I have shared with you. Learning to speak the language, which is really a reflection of the culture of the people is one of the more important ways in my opinion, to learn a culture. Certain words and the structure of sentences show indirectly of the evolution of the society and on which emotions and nouns it puts its emphasis.

I had written about Slava in an earlier post, but this weekend most of the families in our community have been preparing special dishes and getting ready for the most popular Slava this evening weekend -starting on Friday and ending on Sunday. Helping my family make some of the ‘sweet table’ dishes brings with it a sense of belonging and loss. Over the course of 9 weeks, we have established a functional comfortable rhythm in our daily movements. This time next week, living in my own space will be a loss of this rhythm and an opportunity to create a new one. 

Travelogue

My visit three weeks ago to the city, which I will call home for two years, triggered the lifting of a cloud, unbeknown to my conscious self. This sense of freedom opened an opportunity to see new places in the country and I tapped into it to travel and visit cities during the last two weekends.

Albeit small, Macedonia is varied and diverse and as I was travelling alone, it was both challenging and invigorating to take these two trips. Of course along the way and at my destinations, I met fellow volunteers and their host families, experiencing this variety and diversity in lifestyle as well as the topography of these cities. 

Skopje, the capital is located in the valley of the River Vardar, which is a visitor itself, coming from the mountains without Macedonia in the northwest and flowing into its southern neighbor before reaching the sea. 

The first day I travelled on a morning train, reaching Skopje when the shops were still shuttered and the city had a drowsy, mellow look. The central city plaza, on the south bank of the river and its well-known landmark – the Stone Bridge is a short 5-minute walk from the new train/bus station. Small roads radiate south of the plaza and the kilometer long wide pedestrian walkway all the way to the old train station (now a museum) is one of them. This is an outdoor living museum is flanked by upscale shopping reminding me of city centers in paces as diverse as Barcelona and Glasgow. The memorial honoring Mother Teresa, a Skopje born philanthropist revered in Calcutta where she worked with the poorest of the poor for the greater part of the 20th century, as well as works of newer artists and their works are scattered on both sides of the walkway.

From Skopje the river Vardar first flows though a wide valley before it cuts through another range of smaller mountains, among which is located the city of Veles. One and a half hours later by train, I was in Veles. Originally built along the rocky gorge of the river and now spread farther upstream to the wider bank. The main city center was a modern city with straight lines and touch of flowerbeds and trees, favored by city planners the world over. The bazaar spreads itself across the eastern bank of the river near the bus station. The narrow streets from the Turkish era full of charming, neatly organized and well maintained picturesque houses rise steeply up behind the bazaar. Walking along these winding streets opens unexpected vistas of the town below and across the valley. Sveti Pantelemon, one of the larger churches in Veles is built high above the town on the west bank. Nestled among the narrow streets and homes on this side was a remodeled mosque with the original stone of the minaret visible. Probably built in the early 13 century. 

I reached my next and final destination for the weekend by bus, crossing a wide plain covered with farmland. As soon as we came near another much smaller mountain range, not more than ½ hour by bus, I was in Sveti Nikole, named after its patron saint. This city is much smaller than Veles yet urban and sophisticated. The center and the nearby bazaar charmed me. I stayed it what I presume was a newer part of the town as the houses were neatly laid out in a geometric grid as much as a hilly topography will allow.  The perimeter of the garden was enclosed with fences, some stone & some brick unlike many homes back home where the green lawns between the homes flow into each other.

The next weekend, I made my way to another city, Kratovo. Whereas the city itself was a collection of tightly clustered homes ranging in age and upkeep and also built on the banks of a narrow river gorge, the surrounding hills captured my imagination. I hiked with a friend for the major part of the day on a trail and discovered the remnants of a camp fire in a meadow.  This was a regular hiking trail, where the hikers had packed out their debris!  The stream closeby was uncluttered with plastic, quite different from what happened to it as it reached the city. Later that day we celebrated the Slava with her family and stepped out for a night walk to discover a midnight black sky glowing with stars.  there was no city light wash to dilute the brilliance.  The following morning, before returning to my village we took a trip to a monument known as the ‘Stone Dolls’. Fascinating lava rock formation, which reminded me of the solid ash pillars outside Crater National Park in Oregon. Whereas, those still stand 200 and more feet in a sheltered valley, these older formations have been eroded forming shapes reminiscent of a wedding – a bride and groom at the altar surrounded by guests.  The monument was obviously a source of pride for the community as it was well maintained with stone walkways, elegant wooden benches and a area for tourists to picnic - complete with picnic tables and trash collections bins. 

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Slava

It’s been a while since I wrote down anything and now two posts in a row!  

Yesterday I attended a Slava at a friend’s house. This is Macedonian custom celebrated once every year. Families in this neighborhood, on completion of the building of the family home, open the bible at random and take from the opened page the name of the saint. This family holds dear St Demetrius as their patron. They have an open house in their home every year on this day, serving no meat or dairy products, only the bounty of their farmland.  

Yet in Rebecca West’s book about Yugoslavia, first published in the late 1930’s ‘Black Lamb and Grey Falcon’ she writes when she attends one such celebration in Ohrid “I was also enchanted at the opportunity of seeing a Slava (the word means ‘Holy’), which is a distinctive social custom of the Serbs. It looks like a birthday on a very generous scale: all day the family keeps open house and offers food and drink and amiability to all friends and acquaintances and even passing strangers. But it is an inherited date, which never varies from generation to generation, and it is said to be the anniversary of the day on which the ancestor of the family who first forsook his paganism received baptism. This is plausible”.

As time goes on, I am sure I will be offered more meanings for why Slava is celebrated, as I recall that one was being celebrated later this month at my new site and one at another volunteers site

Bits and Pieces

At most of the family dinners that I have been invited to in the villages, the dinner plate is roughly about 7” in diameter compared to the larger American dinner plates, which start at about 8 1/2”. This size plate of plate is what we once used as a breakfast plate, later becoming a side plate accompanying the larger dinner plates. This size of plate has virtually disappeared in American homes for daily meals. The first few times I was invited out, it seemed at first, that the family eats out of a common dish, but after a few months I see that they actually take little bits of serving in their small plates. The celebration meal is therefore eaten over an extended period of time especially as no one item is taken all at once. Maybe for everyday meals they do eat out of the common dish, eliminating the need for the individual plates, much as we eat more informally with only the family present. I have had eaten from a communal dish in other cultures, which are truly eaten out of a common platter.
However, as a guest I not only spend time a lot of my free time with the family but with limited language skills of each other’s languages, food acts as a filler for conversation. There is erroneous assumption by my friends in the US that all PC volunteers lose weight. Here in this farming community, this is not so and I am out of shape and my dream about getting placement at a site close to either an indoor pool/gym or a fitness center, which I could use on a regular basis remains a dream as my site is a small municipality struggling to make itself attractive for its younger residents to stay.

Transportation by road and train is worth mentioning. Trains here are quite an experience – ranging from one was built more in style of the BritRail - seats with rigid high backs, facing each other, with two seats on each side of the aisle to the closed compartment with the corridor running along one side. Upkeep is also varied, more on the lack of upkeep, but as our village is connected by train to Skopje it is very convenient and we have travelled often by train. Most intercity buses look like regular Greyhound buses, though like trains the upkeep is varied. Even though intercity transport is entirely private, the bus stations are maintained by the central government. Rates are uniformly set. My trip to my future worksite was a combination of both forms of transport and with similar range of upkeep, including an intercity bus that had a city bus interior!

The volunteer community here is very cohesive and because we are in a small country, there are more opportunities to meet each other. During my first trip to Skopje for the welcome to the country get-together organized solely by the volunteers, the welcome started off with a speed dating concept – two concentric circles with the newer volunteers in the inner circle and the established volunteers outside, spending a minute or two with each other, after which the outer circle moved one spot over. I felt real warm and fuzzy, when many of the currently serving volunteers welcomed me to Macedonia, remembering me in spirit if not personally from a year ago. For so many years Halloween to me was spent decorating the house, carving pumpkins and setting out candy as well as making and costumes. I would wear my favorite black and white skeleton costume at the last minute! This year I was ‘Doc’, one of the seven dwarfs accompanying snowhite and had the added pleasure of purchasing and sewing the caps for the group at the get together organized by the training staff during the day and by the volunteers after hours!

Thus, not only is our scheduled time full and intense, the ‘after school’ activities as mentioned above, don’t allow my overloaded mind to fully comprehend and reflect on the many cultural experiences as and when they happen. Sometimes, I wonder if I will ever have the often talked about free time. I do want to write about the 'industry' that has grown around International Aid or Development. After learning some of the jargon in a workshop last month; the importance of separating the overarching goal of the NGO from its objectives: which should follow S.M.A.R.T. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely guidelines to meet those goals, matrices, etc., I have observed that it is not only developing its own language, but is creating a set of expectations among both: the people who receive the aid, and the people who work in this field!