Musings on my Work

After a prolonged stay in a foreign country, when no observation needs to be described or written about, the conclusion is that this foreign culture has become part of the landscape and this country has become a home away from home.  This process of acclimatizing to the country of service, sharing American culture and bringing back the Host Country (Macedonia for me) culture to Americans meet two of the three goals of the Peace Corps mission. The first goal “helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women” sometimes comes in last, especially for generalists like myself.

Though I plunged into teaching English to many of my new colleagues at the municipality immediately on arrival, my assignment as a technical advisor (goal one) to the Local Economic Development group at the municipality of Makedonski Brod lagged.  Armed with rudimentary Macedonian following a 10-week intensive immersion course, I was eager to plunge into my site and make things happen, American style.   However, as none of my new colleagues had working knowledge of the English language, our conversations were stilted. As the first Peace Corps volunteer for this local government unit, it took many months to establish a level of trust and cooperation and in which ways I could help.   

The stereotype facing me was that in the years following the breakup of Yugoslavia, this country was the recipient of massive USAID with focus on building a broadband, internet connection in every village. When the war in neighboring Serbia and Kossovo in 1991 brought in thousands of refugees, International Development Funds flowed into the country and everyone, including small and large ngo’s and municipalities got used to grant funds.  What the municipality wanted now was money to build and repair aging water, sanitation and road facilities with the thinking that this would somehow lead businesses to invest in this dying town. I was therefore seen as an American who is here to help them access funds and was handed an grant application packet with vague reference for laying water lines to villages on my first full day at site.  Mind you, my community with more than half the total population of the municipality has piped in clean water to every home from a filtration plant built in Kichevo, a big city 26 km away.  So I had to clearly establish at the onset, that though I was ready to translate any material in English, I would not be writing grants but work with them in prioritizing and focusing on achievable goals.

So I spent the first couple of months learning the names and locations of the 50 villages in this municipality with a square area of 888m² and learning that every year the younger generation moves out, leaving behind their aging parents and grandparents. This municipality is down to 7000+ people from a high of 20,000+ twenty years ago!  A few of the 50 villages are totally empty, while all but one has seen a decrease in population.  The village, which had an increase in population is connected by road to Skopje and is about 50 km away from where I live, received infusions of funds to develop it as a weekend home area. Though this village is in the municipality of Makedonski Brod it is not yet currently accessible by a regular asphalted road from here.

It took a year of observation and personal initiative to visit many of these villages on my own to come to the conclusion that the municipality has some natural assets and a few unique folklore events that would bring tourists. By the end of my first year of service, after reaching a level of trust and articles in Lonely Planet Guide and the Macedonian American Chamber of Commerce’s 10^th Anniversary monthly magazine, my suggestion to focus on making available information on these historical folklore activities, natural cave sites, calendar of events in the villages, the hunting season for wild boar in this region as well as availability of food specialties’ of the region, such as chestnut honey, chestnuts and a mountain sheep cheese in a centralized place was met with enthusiasm. This tourist kiosk, to be set up for two or three events in the city of Makedonski Brod as well as two other specific event sites in the municipality will have informational material and a trained volunteer citizen guide to answer any questions and make suggestions of things to do in the municipality to tourists who come for these events. 

To make the program more robust, these informational brochures and material will be used to develop specific tours and marketed to the University of Tourism and Management and tourist agencies in neighboring Ohrid – a UNESCO heritage lake and city and the center of foreign tourism in the Republic. Bed & Breakfast is on the table for overnight facilities due to the lack of hotels rooms.

In addition to this, the municipality has started to actively promote the events and assets of the municipality at conferences and seminars starting with the February 2011 mid-service conference for volunteers and their Macedonian colleagues (also known in PC lingo as counterpart).  All volunteers were invited to join us for the annual May 1^st picnic that is held in the fields surrounding Cave Peshna. This was undoubtedly a success and I hope a venue for future volunteers every year. 

Smaller community development projects pop up as and when a need is identified, such as starting a fitness exercise club, working with the primary school children on arts projects, working with the women’s ngo on needs assessment, translations, etc.  A few volunteers invited for the ‘Veligdon’ celebration on the Monday after Easter Sunday enjoyed the folklore events of the day.

Though I have primarily focused my activities in my community, I enjoy working with other volunteers as the financial coordinator for the weeklong national girls camp (GLOW – Girls Leading Our World) for 80 girls and have assisted in a couple of other events. 

Now with just six months left, it seems I will not have time to visit other parts of Macedonia let alone the other Balkan countries as planned before starting service! I have moved from the earlier days of “a watched pot never boils” to the “time flies when you’re busy” state of mind.

One and a Half Year Later

This month 50 years ago, Americans responded viscerally to the clarion call of our government and the Peace Corps was established. Thousands of young Americans signed up to travel to different countries for twenty-seven months with only a rudimentary knowledge of the local language and culture, living far away from loved ones and familiar surroundings.  The mission then and as it is today, is to provide technical help of an unknown nature, adapting and developing ideas from learned theoretical processes and applying them to the situation at hand.  This, together with sharing American culture and values and bringing back an understanding of the local culture and mores to share with others at home is what PC service is all about!

Though it could be argued that volunteers are more prepared than ever with information available through high tech gadgets and the internet, this visceral response remains the same today as it was 50 years ago. Even with 7% of the volunteers over 50 years old and an average of 28 years today, volunteers are still open to the idea of learning a new language and culture, choosing months of maybes, why not’s and lets see coupled with days of isolation and loneliness, just because beneath it all they are cocksure and foolhardy to think that they can conquer anything, anytime or anywhere.

The PC mantra is not only a safe and moral choice about helping others, but it is also to prove to ourselves that we can do it.  Though we sign up for any number of reasons and use different coping skills, each one finds an inner strength to live, work and return, with a better understanding of self and that all human relationships are based on fragile, cultural norms.

Macedonians I have learned define nationality by culture, tribal or bloodlines, and not by territory or citizenship. So, the citizens’ are Macedonians, Albanian, Roma, Vlach, Bosniaks, Turks, etc. even if they have lived here for hundreds of years! My readings of the Balkan people suggest that it is also true elsewhere in this region of Europe.  The people are not integrated in the rural towns and villages; they live parallel lives, at times with little or no social interaction beyond public life.  In small towns and villages they remain segregated and a recent fight between two students (one from a neighboring town (Turks) and one from here (Macedonian) at the local high school quickly took on an ominous overtones of them and us..

Beyond that great divide, a year and a half later, I no longer see Macedonia with ‘foreign’ eyes, loosing that observer mindset, as the daily activities concerned with work and life have insidiously seeped into me.  I enjoy the “let life happen” attitude and take things and events as they come, with a shared sense of working towards common goals and a collegial feeling with coworkers.  The focus of local government is still on finding ways to get grant money to take care of ambitious municipal projects, to rebuild the town in the manner of a great metropolitan city and less on improving maintenance of the infrastructure or encouraging investment in the shuttered factories in town.

Though I still have difficulty fully comprehending the subtext of a Macedonian conversation, the mothers’ voice the same concerns and anxieties I had about raising kids. We are equally concerned over changes in generational values and mores. Yet I see the comfort and ease with which different age groups talk and interact with each other.  This may be more widespread in the villages and small towns with fewer economic resources, but is in stark contrast to the trendy adult living communities, in the US where families with children cannot purchase or rent a home.

On a closing note, I met an incredible woman, a soul sister, separated not by ideas or thoughts, only by a different language.  We manage to communicate and understand abstract notions by a combination of hand gestures, analogies, and isolated Macedonian and English vocabulary, albeit occasional misunderstandings.  Once she told me that if only she could speak English, together we could introduce new ideas in her school and community filled me with hope for the future!