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| Click here to watch the festival in the castle. |
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| Click here to watch the "Valle Amerikane"... |
Monday
Mirupafshim Balkan gloom..
Oh how nice it is outside! Kohe shume te mire! Now instead of everyone asking me if I like the snow they ask me what I think of this new weather and my response, with a big smile is "I like it A LOT!" I believe that seasonal depression is real and I also believe almost every member of this town has no escape of enduring it at least a little, myself included. We've coined this seasonal depression as 'the Balkan Gloom.'Volunteers living in Shkoder, a large city in the north western part of Albania hosted a 5k "Race to the Castle" event, partnered with The Door (an Albanian NGO) that was also on the same day as a traditional arts and crafts fair and 5th Annual Lojra Popollure! Garrett, Eric and I decided to go, thinking we would have a straight and easy trip by ferry. Wrong. Turns out the ferry wasn't running yet and was still shut down for the winter. No problem, just another day of relying on public transportation, so we hopped on a furgon and went 4.5 hours south to the fork in the highway and then traveled back up an hour and a half to the north western part of the country, in total our trip around 6 hours (compared to three). Albania is funny that way, most roads tend to run vertical and seldom go horizontal, making short distances harder to travel.
We arrived in Shkoder on Friday and met up with some other volunteers and went back to Corey's town, Vau i Dejes for the night. Saturday morning we woke up and helped load the Judo vans with mattes for their performance later. Corey practices Judo every day in his town and since we've been in Albania he's moved up to his orange belt. I have a lot of respect for his Judo master, who was paralyzed practicing the sport that he loves and instead of giving up on it he is now a teacher and offers the youth of Vau i Dejes a constructive and beneficial activity, teaching discipline and promoting exercise.
We ride into Shkoder with all the eager Judo kids and get dropped of at the base of the castle. The 5K race began at 10am and there was a great turn out! PCV's and Albanians alike ran through the city of Shkoder. There was a 3K for younger runners and a 5K for the more daring. There was even a 78 year old Albanian man that runs 10 kilometers every day that participated. Our Peace Corps country director came out and ran as well.
After the race we all hike up the small mountain to the kala (castle) of Shkodra. One of the most famous and largest castles still remaining in Albania. We enjoyed traditional dance, music, arm wrestling, pop music, judo, circle dancing and even an American dance. It was so nice to see Albanian's celebrating their culture and hosting such an amazing event.
After the festival we all went to the Volunteer's home who live in Shkoder and had a pot luck dinner.. delish. The photo in this post is me after dinner at an Irish bar in Shkoder, my first time ever shooting pool behind my back... and I made it! It finally feels like Spring and I can't wait to get some sun. Now that spring is here, the Balkan Gloom will fade away! Oh, lesson learned, never open a Paypal account from Albania. It will be considered 'suspicious activity.' Mireseerdhe pranvere!
5th Annual Loja Popullore..
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| Can you spot me circle dancing? |
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| Sharing American traditional dance, Peace Corps Volunteers doing the "Boot, Scoot and Boogie"... |
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| Traditional northeastern Albanian dress.. |
Northern Albania, east and west..
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| Shkodra from the castle... |
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| Our small mountain town, Bajram Curri, from a far... |
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| "We are one"... |
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| The center or 'qendre' of Shkodra... |
Thursday
Tuesday
Albania: Return to virginity for women
In the past 20 years, a phenomenon quite like selective abortion has hit Albania. Every day 3 girls or women in Albania undergo an illegal surgical procedure that medically turns them into virgins again. The western medical term is 'hymen reconstruction.' Why? Because female virginity is a synonym of purity. It is very typical for young female Albanians to keep long distance relationships with Albanian men who are outside of the country until their marriage and while there is no proof of infidelity on the male counterpart of the relationship, the female is meant to remain a virgin until her fiance returns home for marriage. Also, on traditional Albanian values, a bride dowery is placed on the bride and is 'bought' from her future husbands family and part of that deal is that she's a virgin. This procedure goes on in other developing countries, not only Albania, based on previous ideals from traditional values (India, Macedonia, Vietnam... many more).
Now in traditional Albania, and some but not so much any more, after the first night that a newlywed couple spent together, female members of the male family would check the sheets that the newlywed's shared the previous night for evidence of virginity from the female. Now, not so typical, this still holds true in some very traditional families and when a 'bride dowery' is in place.
"Until the 50s, in this country a woman had to hang out her blood-stained sheets after the first wedding night, to prove her virginity to her husband, relatives and neighbours. It is exactly the same phenomenon. Some women even come to the clinic accompanied by their partners, who want to verify their young wives’ virginity when they do not bleed during their first sexual act. This happens in 38% of cases", the gynecologist continues...
According to last years statistics, most Albanian girls loose their virginity at the age of 13. "Male sexual freedom is well accepted, while female sexual freedom becomes a disadvantage once women get married." Click here to read the entire article.
Friday
It's been a year since I've...
- stepped on American soil
- driven a car
- seen any member of my family
- put clothes in a dryer instead of hanging them
- taken a shower everyday
- used a drive-thru
- had a western toilet in my apartment
- slept in a bed, not a couch
- seen/used a parking lot
- put toilet paper in the toilet
- understood the conversation next to me
- not known which family or farm eggs, milk,
meat and produce came from - cut my hair
- used a dish washing machine
- blended in
- spoke the same language as my coworkers
- had a refrigerator in my house that kept things cold
- used a microwave
Wednesday
After school English lessons..
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| The Bashkia was closed today so I went with Eric to his after school English class for students who are going to take their English final/exit exam from high school.. |
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Gëzuar Ditën e Verës (Happy Summer Day)...
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| My neighborhood on 'Summer Day'.. not very Summer like but the snow is melting! |
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| My neighborhood.. |
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| This is half the size it used to be.. |
Monday
Menu translations for tourist season..
Hotel Vllaznimi is basically where I hang out when I'm not in my apartment. The waiters are my friends, as well as the hotel manager and owner. They're all such great men and the hotel has wireless so I can get work done which is always nice. They're one out of two places in town that make pizza too so we've also befriended the pizza maker. We've decided, as a small project, to help them translate a menu for their food and for their hotel for this year's tourist season as well as create a simple logo, going off of their orange embroidered design on the uniforms of the waiters. Believe it or not, Bajram Curri gets a decent amount of tourist each year. The amount of tourist coming through this small Albanian town has been growing every year since the government settled. (I'm going to plug a bit) The North Eastern part of Albania has probably one of the most breath taking mountain ranges I've ever scene in my life and if you're ever traveling through the Balkan region you should definitely pass through here. This morning, after work, Garrett and I met for our usual coffee at Hotel Vllaznimi and told one of the waiters that we wanted to help them with a menu we had talked about earlier. Not 5 minutes later we had the owner and manager out our table wanting us to meet them for pizza to discuss the details. This is typically how things get done in Albania, either by chance or when you're not technically at work. When you do plan things or make meetings they usually get pushed back or fall through all together. It is true though that you're always at work when you're out in your community though as a volunteer because you're always being looked at or asked about something, so being in my office sometimes I do less work than outside of my 'workplace.'
Anyway, this was not one of those times and we got a lot done over pizza and beer: translations, prices and room costs, as well as showing the in progress "Women in the Workplace" documentary and showed off our tourism website, which hopefully we can put the website on the menus. We had a great time with our friends and also got some work done, that will hopefully benefit their business.
Every little thing counts.
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