It has been some time since I’ve last written and a number
of things worth writing about have happened. So bear with me, this will be
lengthy.
First, a new housekeeping note. I have decided to change two
of the tabs on my blog from **** and **** to Books and Blogs. Books will be a
list of the books that I have read while I’ve been here. Hopefully it will not
be embarrassingly minimal, but my days here are quite full. Blogs will be a
list of other blogs that are being kept by my fellow Peace Corps trainees here
in Macedonia. Anything I was going to put in the other spaces I will just put
here, and this way anyone reading this blog will have the chance to see the
experiences of other people working in Macedonia as well. Alright, to the
story.
Today is Sunday, it’s early (for me), a little after 8 AM at
the time of this writing. I’m lying in my bed, recently awoken, typing away. I
live on the second floor of a very nice house. It’s not exactly proper to call
this place a house, it’s more of a compound. We’re in Romanovce, which is a
small village south of Kumanovo. Kumanovo is about the size of Green Bay,
Wisconsin. Romanovce is a village of 2,500 people. On a good day. About 3Km
separate the two places, and the easiest way to travel from one to the other is
by combi or taxi. Taxis are cheap, about 150 denari (3 dollars), but combis are
cheaper. Combis are sort of like privately operated buses that are
semi-reliable, universally uncomfortable, and always an experience. They charge
20 denari each way, which equates to about 40 cents. We’re not allowed to
travel yet on our own except in special instances where we need to go into
Kumanovo to get money from the ATM or items from the store that are not
available in Romanovce.
To get to Romanovce from Kumanovo you must drive to the
outskirts of town, past a beautiful mosque, then through a one-lane tunnel
under the highway, and along a ridge. The ridge elevates you high enough to see
the enormous mountains to the west, which separate Kumanovo from Skopje (pronounced
Skop-yay). It also elevates you enough to look down on Kumanovo, see many of it’s
surrounding villages, and also see the smaller mountains to the north and east.
The valley that Romanovce, Kumanovo, and all the other villages in the area
reside in continues to the south. You descend down into a valley as you enter
Romanovce. The football pitch is on the right. It’s about half the size of a typical
pitch; the goals have no nets and the surface is mostly dirt. On one end, about
ten meters past the goal, there is a precipitous drop of about 20 meter down
into a trash-filled ravine. Play stops for about five minutes every time one of
the kids (or, more frustratingly, an adult) kicks the ball over the edge. After
the pitch comes the post office, then a small dirt road leading off to the
right that goes through a long one-lane tunnel under the railroad tracks that
run through town and leads out to Kelsey’s house. Recently we’ve been going to
her house in the evening to play football with her family and some of her
neighbors. It’s a younger, less competitive group and a fun family-esque
atmosphere. I think it evokes memories of home for a lot of us.
The main road continues to wind through the valley that in
which Romanovce is situated, roads leading off to the left and the right to
people’s houses. Once you reach the center of town there is a basketball court
on the left, a café on the right, and a road on the right leading off up the
hill to the railroad tracks (also where you would board the train to either
Skopje or Belgrade) and a small neighborhood. Continuing south on the main road
you come to the school on the left, the orthodox church also on the left, and
the town mosque on the right. All of these buildings are beautiful. At the
school there is a wall covered in a series of murals that were painted by a
trainee/volunteer (I don’t remember which) that was stationed here in the past.
My house, and for safety reasons it’s recommended I don’t
divulge exactly where in town I’m living, is gorgeous. Like most people in
Romanovce we live on the side of a hill. As I said before, it’s not exactly
proper to call our living space a house, it’s better understood as a compound.
We have walls that go around our entire space with gated entrances. Within that
space we keep pigs, chickens, and the most amazing garden I’ve ever seen. My
family also owns fields outside of town where more crops are grown. We also
have two dogs, Sharko (small) and Medo (scary big). I practice my Macedonian
with them. There are also piglets and chicks right now, so it’s been fun
showing other trainees my space. I really consider myself fortunate to have the
family I do and live in the place that I live. I’m quite comfortable, the food
is amazing, the house is wonderful, and I haven’t had a bad experience here.
There are several small buildings on site. One houses the
pigs, there’s an outhouse, one for machinery, an area that we use to eat (which
I think is just a really old house. It’s small, with about three rooms smaller
than a college dorm), an upper house and a lower house. My understanding, and I
could be catastrophically mistaken, is that the upper house was built by my
host grandfather while the lower house was built by my host father. I’ve only
seen the inside of the lower house, which is where I spend my time. We have a
toilet, a wash room, a living room, and my bedroom is upstairs. Also upstairs
is a porch space (no railing, so don’t be clumsy) with a magnificent view of
the surrounding area. Our laundry hangs there on the line, swaying in the wind,
and I often find myself reading or doing my domashna rabota (homework) out
there. When I am indoors I spend most of my time in the family room reading and
drinking coffee. I have earned the privilege of making my own coffee on the
stove and I have yet to blow up the house or burn it down. It’s the small
victories. The computer and the television are also in the family room, so if I
want to watch old American action movies, the news, or Turkish soap operas
dubbed in Macedonian, that’s where I go. My internet access is by the computer
in the living room, so I usually type out my emails and then go downstairs to
send them, rather than sitting in the living room for half an hour typing away.
The food has been terrific. I’m not one to analyze every
meal I eat, though I know that interests a lot of people and I will do my best
to make mention of what I’m ingesting. Yesterday was a glorious day in my
eating history. For lunch we had tomatoes, goat cheese, bread (homemade, as
always), roasted peppers, and a casserole dish with hamburger, rice tomato,
onion, pepper, and cabbage. It was heaven on my plate. Wanting to turn my meal
into a cultural experience for my family I practiced the American Thanksgiving
Day tradition of overeating and falling asleep on the couch. As I said, heaven.
My first week here was hectic and not a great way to begin
orienting myself to the community or life here. We had language classes each
day from 8am-12pm. Then we took half an hour for lunch before the TEFL
volunteers (English teachers) hopped a combi to Probistip. An hour and a half
later we would pull up in front of the school in Probistip, hop out, and have 3
hours of teacher training through the Peace Corps. Another hour and a half bus
ride home would leave us back in Romanovce at around 6:30 each night, always
after dark, and usually just in time for dinner. We would do our homework and
then hang out a little, if possible, before going to bed. That was Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of my first week here. This past week
has been much better, with volunteer receiving most afternoons off.
The weekend after my first full week here we made wine,
crushing the grapes and putting them away for three weeks to ferment. In the
meantime we’ve been drinking sweet wine, which is like grape juice but without
all the sugar that is thrown in back in the States. This past week went by much
slower than the previous because we had considerably more leisure time. After
noon Monday-Thursday there were very few commitments for most of the trainees,
so on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday many of us were able to play football
with local kids either at the pitch or at Kelsey’s house.
Monday was a different story. On Monday I returned home from
school at about 3 (we had to go back for a bit for a short training) and told
my host mother that I was going to head out soon to play some football. She
said no. That night we would be slaughtering a pig, and I had to stick around.
(Fair warning, the forthcoming description is very graphic.) So Sam, Casey, and
I hung out in my living room for about an hour before the time came. My host
father and three host brothers led the unlucky pig from the pen up to the
house. Cardboard was put in front of the opening in the pig pen so that her
brothers and sisters wouldn’t be able to watch the proceeding. A tool is used
to wrap the pig’s mouth, I assume so that it can’t bite. One thing this wrap
does not do is prevent the pig from screaming, and scream she did. I was
admittedly a little unnerved by the whole thing. To be sure, I eat meat and
always have. If I am unwilling to witness and participate in the slaughtering
of an animal I am more than willing to eat, there is something cowardly in
that. It certainly creates a new appreciation for where meat comes from. We had
a conversation at length about the ethics of it, which didn’t ease my mind any
but was a useful intellectual exercise.
Once the pig’s mouth is held they corral its legs and knock
it on its ass. From there its back legs are tied to a fence to make sure no one
is injured from its kicking. Its front legs are also tied and held by someone.
So to be clear, it’s a three person process. Front legs held, nose held, one
person is responsible for the knife, and the back legs are tied to a fence (or tree,
or anything else sturdy). At this point the pig knows something’s up and has
defecated in fear at least once. It also, at least during the moments of
greatest trauma (having the tool wrapped around its snout, being knocked on its
side, etc), is issuing blood-curdling screams. My youngest host brother
participates in the skinning and cutting of the pig, but sits inside with
headphones on during the actual killing because of the sounds.
Once the pig was down, on its side, and properly controlled,
my host father stepped over the top of it and cut its throat. The loudest
screams and most violent kicks came in the few moments immediately after this.
As the blood begins to spill out my host mother brushes it with a broom into
the gutter. My host father continues to make precise use of his knife to speed
the process of the pig’s death. It kicks violently still, and is still
screaming. Now its screams are issued as much through the wound in its neck a
through its mouth, though, so they are garbled and gurgling as the blood
continues to spill. The pig finally dies a few minutes after the initial slit,
though its legs kick and twitch for a minute or two longer as the neurons in
its brain continue to fire. Then it’s over.
The body is turned to its back, washed, skinned, and cut.
The cutlets of meat are laid out on a table, packaged, and refrigerated. Once
the meat is safely stored for future meals, dinner is served. Pork loin, mmm.
The whole process left me a little shell-shocked, though I’m
back to eating meat. We’ll kill another couple of pigs while I’m here, and
though I’m not sure I will ever be comfortable with the exercise of
slaughtering a pig, it won’t shock me the same way again. Casey, Sam and I
watched from a comfortable (ha) distance and participated only minimally, in
essentially superfluous capacities. The dogs watched with keen eyes, ears
raised and tails wagging. It was truly a family affair, and dinner afterwards
was celebratory, even though I didn’t feel much like celebrating.
The rest of the week was tame by comparison, but Friday we
had our first hub day, where we all reunited at Hotel Satelit for a day of
group training. The training sessions were not the main attraction of the day
however, seeing other volunteers was. The Peace Corps brought a selection of their
library, so I picked up a few books to keep me occupied in my free time. After
sessions ended we all went into Kumanovo and got dinner together, giving us
some time purely to sit and talk about whatever we wanted to talk about. A
group of us gathered at a bar/restaurant in Kumanovo’s main square, had a
couple drinks, ate food, and relaxed for a little bit, back in the company of
Americans. I love Macedonia, Macedonians, and Albanians, but spending time with
fellow Americans is just necessary sometimes.
After dinner we all boarded our buses home and went to bed.
Yesterday was a slower paced day, with homework, reading, and football being
the main constituents. Today has also been slow. I’ve spent about two hours
writing this, in aggregate, had breakfast, and will be reading and doing
homework this afternoon. I expect tonight to be a late night since I’ve been
informed that a cousin of mine was recently married in Skopje, and we’ll be
having a party tonight at my aunt’s house by Hotel Satelit. Should be a fun
time, and I’ll get to practice my Macedonian, which is always nice.
Looking forward to this next week it’s a lot of the same.
Language is the lion’s share of the day Monday-Thursday. Friday brings another
Hub Day. Then on Saturday each sector of Peace Corps Macedonia (TEFL or CD)
gather to prepare for their practicum next week. Practicum consists (at least
for English teachers) of working in a school Monday-Thursday and teaching
lessons. It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks. I’ll try to give this thing
some love once or twice, but it may be a while.
Ciao!
