“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”  – Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

The G:  Our service is coming to a close incredibly fast (meaning I started this post and am not posting it until our last day at our site), and I’m left with a lot of mixed feelings when thinking about leaving Albania.  I’m very happy we set out on this adventure a little over 2 years ago, and I’ll always appreciate and cherish my time here. I don’t think many other experiences can match the kind of cultural understanding, personal growth, and challenges that Peace Corps service brings.  I’ve grown to love Albania, and will miss much about my life here. I’m still in denial I’m leaving so quickly, but 10 things I already know I’ll miss are:

1. The people.  Before we set out in March 2016, I had read that Albanians are incredibly welcoming, and boy is that true.  I have been shown a level of warmth and hospitality here way beyond what I ever imagined. Hospitality has deep roots in Albanian culture; traditionally the guest is only second to God.  I have seen this borne out in countless ways. Every time I’ve stepped foot in an Albanian home, their main concern has been my comfort and making sure I’m well-fed. There is also a very sincere interest in the wellbeing of others.  Whenever people greet each other, there is usually a string of questions to catch up on what’s happened since they last saw one another: How are you? Are you tired? How are you feeling? Did you sleep well? How have you passed it?  How have you been? Where are you? How’s your family? How are you yourself? How’s work? From more than generous meals from our host family to students giving up their chairs so I can sit during class to friends ensuring I don’t walk alone unless absolutely necessary to shop owners giving me free produce on a weekly basis, I have felt welcomed and very well taken care of.  I will miss the overt friendliness and hospitality that is such a part of Albanian culture, and of course I will miss all the individual people I have come to know. So many colleagues, shop owners, and neighbors have become good friends, and I will miss sitting down over coffee with them to chat and laugh. We were also fortunate to serve with a group of exceptional people, and I’ll miss regularly seeing these wonderful people.
2. The pace of life.  As I’m sure most Peace Corps Volunteers can attest to, the going can be very slow.  This is quite an adjustment when first coming from the fast-paced, very action-oriented culture of America.  Instead of “What do you do for work? What do you like to do for fun? and What did you do this weekend?,” the questions in Albania are “How many brothers and sisters do you have?  How are your parents? and How are you feeling?” Life in Albania is much less work-focused and driven by the need to always be accomplishing something, and is much more people and family oriented with a greater focus on relationships.  While there are certainly pros and cons for each – for example in Albania there’s always time to sit and have a conversation with someone over coffee but it’s also very challenging to advance in your career based on merit rather than on familial or political connections – I have come to appreciate many aspects of the Albanian approach, and chiefly the emphasis on spending time with people. The school day typically starts at 8:00 or 8:30am and ends at 2:00pm, with a generous number of coffee breaks and gossip sessions in between.  The afternoon comes with a long late lunch and a couple hour break for resting/napping and especially for escaping the heat in the warmer months. In the evening, you’ll see lots of people – mostly men – out on the pedestrian boulevard walking back and forth (bëjnë xhiro) to see and be seen and catch up with friends and neighbors. And of course in the summer, there’s a solid month where about half the town is gone vacationing in their home villages or at the beach. This schedule allows for time with family and friends, relaxation, and work preparing meals, other housework, and walking around doing errands.  “Avash, avash,” or “slowly, slowly” is a Turkish phrase that Albanians have adopted and use frequently. This sums up well how things get done and alludes to the capacity for patience needed in so many aspects of Albanian life, from getting your mail at the post office to implementing any type of project. I think Americans would do well to adopt a little more avash, avash (although not quite to the Albanian level). Amid the fast pace of life back home, I hope to maintain this feeling that I don’t need to be “doing” all the time, and that time relaxing or doing nothing with other people is time well spent.
3. The food.  I’ve had the very best cherries, oranges, pomegranates, honey, hazelnuts, eggs, squash, peppers, meats, and olive oil in Albania (this list could go on and on).  I love that I can walk out of my apartment building and at the bottom of the stairs there are produce stands selling fresh and seasonal produce for next to nothing.  On the weekend it’s even better with people coming in from the villages to sell their homegrown and homemade veggies, fruit, butter, eggs, nuts, cheese, and meats (both still alive and butchered).  As a rule, the best olive oil, eggs, butter, and raki come in reused plastic bottles or bags. Ok, maybe not the raki, since the moonshine of Albania has some serious variability from fairly smooth to kerosene.  Having access to such wonderfully fresh food and the time to prepare tasty meals from scratch has been a very enjoyable part of my Peace Corps service. I’ll also miss a lot of the dishes: grilled meats and vegetables, byrek (layered dough filled typically with cheese, meat, spinach, or onions and baked with copious amounts of butter), my host mom’s petulla (fried dough), tavë kosi (meat baked with yogurt and of course butter), jufka (egg noodles, a local specialty), spec me gjizë (baked peppers with ricotta type cheese), fli (layers of dough baked in a below ground pit for hours), and all the soul-warming soups.  Most of all, I’m sad to be leaving the best grosh (bean soup) in the country made by the most warm and wonderful woman. I think Keith is already having symptoms of withdrawal.
   
   

   Weekend market

   

   Honey farm

   

   

   Food given to us for Diten e veres

   

   Weekend market

   

   Weekend market

   

   Fresh butter, hazelnuts, and produce from the market
4. The scenery.  Albania has it all, gorgeous mountains, beautiful beaches, quaint villages, and impressive canyons.  Woven into the landscape are also reminders of Albania’s long past – Roman ruins, castles, and of course bunkers from the Hoxha communist isolationist era.  Getting around the country can be a little challenging sometimes, but at least there’s always something beautiful to look at or a historical place to discover.  As a bonus, Albania is not yet overrun with tourists so you’ll often find yourself alone exploring stunning natural areas and impressive ruins, which is another reason why you should have visited us if you didn’t.  Most of all, I’ll miss the surrounding mountains that I got to know and wish I explored even more during my time here.
   
   

   

   

   

   

   
5. Hearing and speaking shqip.  Although communication and language learning were certainly challenging, I am incredibly fond of shqip and have enjoyed learning and speaking it.  Languages give such insight into a culture, and I appreciate the window shqip has given me into how Albanians perceive and value life, not to mention the opportunity it has given me to converse with people that I never would have been able to talk to otherwise.  I also appreciate the patience and enthusiasm I’ve generally been met with by native speakers while speaking, and especially their enjoyment when I try to use regional dialect. Perhaps my favorite thing is watching and hearing Albanians speak because it’s a whole body experience.  The language itself is quite musical, and add in the prodigious use of hand gestures and body movements to emphasize major points, and it’s no wonder people watching is the national pastime.
6. Walking everywhere.  I can get anywhere in town on foot, and although sometimes an adventure, most areas of the country are accessible using buses or furgons.  Unlike many parts of the US, Albanian towns weren’t built around cars but around simpler forms of transportation, so things are closer, smaller, and more accessible by walking.  Running errands or commuting is therefore more social and pleasant because you’re outside, getting some exercise, and running into friends along the the way. Every weekday I walk 20 minutes across town to school, and within a 5 minute walk from my house I can get all my groceries, locally-made dairy products, fresh baked bread, the best grosh at our go-to restaurant, school supplies, my mail, a coffee, a dress made, shoes fixed, new or used clothes, a haircut, rugs washed, shelves made, and anything else I need.   While I enjoy the freedom having a car allows, I’m not looking forward to again feeling that having a car is a necessity.
   
7. Circle dancing and festivities. Getting work done might prove challenging, but when it comes to celebrating, Albania is the place to be.  There are plenty of national holidays, including Muslim, Christian, and pagan celebrations, with New Year’s being the most important and most celebrated (a remnant from when Albania was officially an atheist state).  For significant events like engagements, retirements, or Teachers’ Day, there is always a celebration. These celebrations usually go like this: classes at the school are shortened so teachers have time to get beautiful for the festivities; after getting dressed up, teachers meet at a cafe/bar/restaurant that has been rented out for the occasion; everyone then shares a meal that is either prepared by the women of the family being celebrated or by the restaurant – these meals include copious amounts of food and usually courses of shared salads, traditional dishes, snacks, meats, fruit, and something sweet; everyone sits at a long table together to talk and eat very slowly; after everyone has a little something in their stomach, it’s time for the music to be turned up to an unreasonably loud volume and the dancing to begin; people will then alternate between sitting and eating or getting up to dance for the next couple hours; there’s often also a short speech made or poem read or some karaoke; everything wraps up with everyone paying for the food and space and heading home.  For the dancing portion, there’s usually some pop music, but the overwhelming crowd favorite is traditional music that everyone can circle dance to. The leader of the circle dance, which changes frequently, twirls a scarf or napkin while everyone else holds hands and does the same step. There are many different traditional Albanian dances, but generally for party circle dancing, the same simple step is done for almost all of the songs. Circle dancing is great because it’s very inclusive, easy to learn, and every Albanian I’ve met likes to do it and takes pride in this tradition. Traditional dances are also performed by students at every single school activity, no matter the theme of the event.
   
   

   

   

   

   
8. Religious tolerance.  Albania is the most religiously tolerant place I have ever been.  It’s a majority Muslim country, but there are also regions that have a Christian majority, and I’ve met many people who are agnostic or atheist.  Different religions were brought to Albania in waves, with rule by the Ottoman Empire resulting in the Muslim majority. Under Hoxha’s communist regime, Albania was declared an atheist state.  I’ve never gotten the sense that religion is a core part of what makes Albanians feel Albanian. Other traditions, such as hospitality and how guests are treated, are more deeply rooted in the culture than any religion.  This is exemplified to me in the fact that during WWII, Jews that fled to Albania were welcomed into Albanian homes and protected from occupying forces by a Muslim-majority population. I think in part because of their long history being influenced and incentivized by conquerors and neighboring powers to adopt one religion or another, and the period in which religion was outlawed, Albanians don’t have the same kind of fervor about religion as many other places.  The outlook of most people I talk to is that people should be free to practice whatever religion they want and there’s no reason religion or lack thereof should be a point of divisiveness or division. I think Americans, and many other peoples around the world, could learn a lot from Albanians about how to live respectfully and peacefully with those that practice other religions.
   
   

   Orthodox church

   

   Mosque
9. The sense of life.  Aside from a couple hours in the afternoon in which the streets are more or less deserted and people are eating lunch and resting, the city streets are generally pretty lively.  People are always out walking to run errands, meet someone for coffee, or just to past the time and see if they come upon anyone they know. As you walk along the sidewalk, small shops have their wares displayed outside and people are always stopping to greet each other as they walk.  Any decent cafe (the #1 business venture in Albania) will have an outside patio with seating so that patrons can people watch while they sit for hours over a coffee. Especially when the weather is nice, there are always kids playing outside and people hanging out and chatting on park benches.  You’ll always hear a few “O bab(dad),” “O Mario,” or “O Laura”-s throughput the day as people call up to their family or friends in the apartments above. It’s very unusual to have prolonged silence. In the teachers’ lounge of my school, where I have spent many a day, teachers are always swapping stories, laughing, or talking.  Before I knew the language very well, I often couldn’t tell if people were yelling at each other or having a normal conversation because Albanians tend to talk loudly, expressively, and over each other no matter the topic. I have an Albanian friend that has been to the US several times for work and once told me that when she was there she missed seeing people out and it felt lonely – so many people hop in their cars in the morning, go to work, run errands in their cars, and then go home.  There’s so much less walking around and meeting people in common spaces in the US, and I think I will miss the lively, noisy, and busy streets of Albania.
10. Uncertainty and surprise.  Although it was one of the hardest things to deal with initially, in some ways I’ll miss the constant feeling of not knowing what will happen next.  In general there is much less planning in Albania than in the US, and this paired with being a foreigner and new to the culture led to many unexpected events and much confusion as to what was happening.  Often this was stressful, like when I had to teach impromptu sex ed in Albanian or try to navigate situations in which I only understood 40% of what was happening. But, it also made every day interesting and led to some great memories and fun adventures.  More than that it made me more comfortable with uncertainty and better able to take things as they come and adapt to constantly changing situations. Very little worked out as planned, but with a little creativity and perseverance it usually worked out.

A few things I’m looking forward to returning to are of course family and friends, American optimism and a greater collective sense of agency and hope for the future, and the clean air and drinkable water we enjoy in the US.  Hope to see you all soon after a couple months of travel!

Big thank you to my parents to coming to visit again and taking all our stuff home!