Remembering home

One evening, around 6 pm I headed towards the fields east of the village for my walk. I met many villagers’ working in the field or herding sheep home. I went east, and then turned north to link up to a farm road I had been on. I had to cut across some fields in order to do that. Meanwhile it had became dark and though I made my way home, it became a source of concern to those who had spotted me that I did not return back the same way! The next day I tried the opposite direction in the afternoon, in broad daylight. The hill to the west is much higher and one can see about 4 villages in the distance. If I was a painter I would like to capture this vista on a canvas with the red tiled roofs seen at a distance and the rough stony farm road at my feet.  I think I will make this my daily route.  I wish I could send you a picture but a photograph with my amateur camera will not capture the essence of the place.

There are four trainees in our CD group, with one living with a family in another village. I am fortunate that my partner is in this village, so in addition to reviewing our homework assignment made available to us in electronic form, we were able to spend a few minutes Saturday morning preparing for our practicum; site visits to two different organizations on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. Our assignment is to focus on the physical & human resources, as well as the sustainability and funding aspects of the organization. After each team visits each of the 2 ngo’s and one municipality twice, a total of 6 site visits, we will be able to put all the information we have gathered together for a written a case study featuring these 3 organizations. The case study is to be presented to the big group mid way through training. My surmise is that this practical experience is designed not only to dispel some anxiety of actually working with an organization after the conclusion of training, but also to expose us to the culture of these three organizations, which in the future may be selected as a PCV site based on the information collected.

Back to my Macedonian adventure! Today my breakfast (loosely translated as poyadok) consisted of boiled fresh quail & chicken eggs, diced tomatoes picked just before serving and bread and marmalade (made on Monday with apples, pears, peaches and plums) with some coffee. If only this could continue…….it will change when I’m in an apartment, so I am making the most of it.  Lunch, which sounds like ‘rucheck’ in Macedonian is often was a meal of Maedonian peppers cooked with eggs (a ratio of about 10 peppers to one egg), white cheese and sliced tomatoes.  Dinner is usually fruit, currently grapes are in season, and bread with aivar. Cold cuts and yellow cheese is always set out, but is optional. Last night they served honeydew and a locally grown watermelon from the farm of one of the relatives!

The local bus service between the village and the city appears to be private, as there is no uniformity among the buses. Neither are the buses painted with firm name nor are there signs at bus stops. A single wooden bench or a wave of the hand along the route will stop the bus. The price though is fixed at 20 denari’s from this village to the city center, a distance of approximately 5 km. These buses are called “combi’s. They are extended minivans with most of them having 3 rows of seats. One combi owner had modified a sliding door in a garage type operation to hinge it adjacent to the front door. One could see the work of the mechanic, as no attempt had been made to finish it for cosmetic reasons. 

I went with the family in the combi to the city over the weekend.  This is the same place where we will be having our site visits.   As wew are expected to use public transportation or the combi for travels during our training, I now know the pick up and drop off points, as well as an orientation to the city center from the village. The hotel we stayed at last week was northeast to the city center, while the village is more south, southwest. Going to the center was like going to a familiar place. Visiting the green market, reminded me of a flea market, with open stalls. There did not appear to be any bargaining being done, as many vendors had rough had written signs on stiff brown cardboard atop the vegetables. I spotted, cucumbers, carrots, eggplant, leeks, cauliflower, spinach, cabbage and dill pickles along with the staples, like potatoes, onions, garlic as well as the dried white bean. Flat leaf parsley was the only spice. I remembered the fennel growing by the wayside and in some home gardens near the hotel, but there was none at the market, neither did I see any basil, though in one of the gardens in the village, the family has planted a couple of basil plants. From this, I venture to guess salt, parsley and peppers are the common flavorings used. We ventured in a regular grocery store to pick up butter and yogurt – along with the usual meats and cheese that my family favors.

The feeling of being far away from home is settling in my gut as I am unsettled by constantly reaching for my dictionary or notes to compose simple sentences! 

Impressions

Life is quite busy in the village for my family – certainly not at the leisurely pace that I heard is quite the norm here. On Monday, after spending so much of her day making Aivar the day before, not to speak of the big meal of the day with everything handpicked and cooked in different spaces in the house, she started on a apple, pear, plum and peach marmalade, which filled 10 8” jars! Every fruit, but the plum was handpicked in her garden, then washed, peeled, grated in preparation for the cooking. I am truly sorry that I was in class while all this activity took place, as I had truly enjoyed participating in making the traditional Aivar.

In addition to all these time consuming, labor intensive farm activities, taking up a PC trainee in their home, with very clear cut instructions to what is to be provided – especially the meals is humbling. I am truly pampered by the running hot water and an indoor western style toilet and their total attention to meeting my needs and comfort. 

However, when I was ready to leave home for class at 7:45 am, everyone was sleeping and as the kitchen cum living room cum dining room also served as sleeping quarters, I skipped breakfast. I was hungry when I returned at about 12:30 pm and found no one at home. Fortunately, I had been given a key to the house and let myself in and made myself a meal of bread, salt and Macedonian peppers with some fig preserves, which her friend had brought the first night I was here! She was mortified and yet it was an incident that cleared the air a bit. It had not bothered me that no one was at home and though I had been puzzled when I was given the key, I realized that not only are they busy but sometimes when they are in the backyard, the front door is locked (for my security?). My actions made it clear in a way no words could, that I did not expect to be waited on or that they need to worry about what I would eat –my choice of the traditional bread and salt saved the day.

In the evening about 5:30 pm, as I was studying at the kitchen table, I learned that one of the two exotic birds flew the coop and they were going to set out to search for it. I did not join the search as my priority has remained focused on learning the language and I am not familiar with the village as yet and it was late evening. The dusk turns rapidly to night and they didn’t need me getting lost or tripping somewhere in the dark. They managed to find it and secure it in the coop, after an intensive search.

Classes are fast paced and each one of us was asked to share 2 new Macedonian words with everyone. Writing them down is becoming a little easier, though I still mix up the letters and the sounds – for example the sound of English B is bat but in Macedonian it is vat; an X in English is an H and P in English is R in Macedonian and so on. In order to keep it clear in my mind, I have cut out little one-inch squares of paper and written down the Macedonian alphabet. I mix them up and then sing along as I sort them in order – it certainly made it a little easier to find the words in the dictionary and is helping me with the sounds at the same time.

In the afternoon, we split into our two main sections TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and CD (Community Development). TEFL volunteers’ met at a site outside our village while the CD section met at this village. TCL trainers brought all our material on a computer, which was loaded on the 2-gig flash drives that were issued to each one of us last week! 

Later, I walked around the village with sis to get a little perspective and become familiar with the neighborhood - it is a mixed Albanian and Macedonian community. The streets have no names, per se and people just know who lives where – not unlike a village in Punjab, India! I have roughly mapped the area with points of interest like the post office, about 4 of the few village markets, the mosque and church, the village school, our own little schoolhouse and the homes of the volunteers! It has made me feel more settled in as I am oriented not only to the location of the village but also where it sits in relation to a north south orientation as well as Skopje and our training site of Kumanovo.  

The village school has been rebuilt a couple of years ago with an EU grant from the Norwegian government. It is built on the grounds of the old school, which has not been torn down with the material hauled off to a landfill. It remains on the property in a ruined state and I feel it is a hazard, as it seems to me that it will be a magnet for a place to “escape” or “hide”. 

We also stopped at a home of a family friend, whose front yard was torn up to lay a new water line. All the digging was being done by picks and spades and I spotted a concrete mixer, so I presume they would rebuild it reusing some of the material. Later I joined in playing a spontaneous game of football with the young village kids on a rough (thorny) and grassy field. It was fun and soon there was enough of a crowd that gathered to watch the Americans play with the kids.