Belgrade

From Podgorice, we took a night bus to Belgrade. Arrived at 5am, and wandered like ghosts until the bakery opened. Saw this graffiti on a street in the center. "Smrt" means "death". Dunno about the cyrilics, anyone?

Leaving Albania and heading North

What else would you rather do than cycle in mid-August at one pm in Albania on a highway that is being completely reconstructed? Nothing!

We said farewell to our friends in Tirana, young and old, and took a bus to Skodra, at the side of Lake Skodra. All attempts to find another bus to take us to the capital of Montenegro, Podgorice, failed. The road it turned out, was bad. Not bad, one taxi driver told us, very bad. We bought gyros at a fast food shop, and a guy eating pizza started chatting with us. Turned out he had lived in Michigan for six years. "You're going to cycle on that road?" He raised his eyebrows. "I just drove on it, it's terrible."

Lacking another choice, we went for it. The only positive part of the experience was that no one drove fast, as the gravel, dirt and rocks prohibited it. Giant trucks passed us constantly, and our mouths, nose and ears filled up with dust. The heat beat down. We passed an old bunker that had been refashioned into a tattoo studio. We finally reached the border with Montenegro, saw the lake again, and headed for the city.

The cold water spring Part II

Even in the mountains, the heat was intense during the day. After doing some garden work, and eating the required hot milk with pieces of bread breakfast, and listening to the cranky old men, and washing some dishes, we holed up in our quarters (the family room that Hysni kept locked when he wasn't there. All rugs, blankets and a fireplace.) We listened to the BBC worldservice somewhat relentlessly. Clarence and Orgys were bored by this, so they disapeared to swim or fish, or ride the donkey down at the farm.

One morning, an old man from the farm below, also a down and out pensioner who Hysni had taken in, came into the garden where we were working. He said a lot of things in Albanian, and then took the garden hoe from me, to show me how to do it. There was only one hoe, so I began pulling weeds with my hands. "He says don't pull them with your hands, only with the tool," translated Orgys. The old man kept on with the hoe, and the rest of us stood around, watching him. Very efficient, very Albanian.
When the old man finally left, Orgys was mad. "He said Clarence and I stole his mobile," Orgys said. "He saw us at the farm, and he thinks we took his mobile." Orgys kicked the dirt. "He's a stupid man," he said, bitterly. I didn't disagree.

There was a spring from the earth ten minutes down the hill, and since the old men regulated their water pump with a Fascist spirit, we started collecting water there quite often. (Indeed, why didn't they tell us about it sooner? We were strong and capable, and very willing to please, we would have hauled water all day if they wanted). It was Monday, and it was reported that Hysni was coming to fetch us, and so both sides were happy. Michal and I went down to the spring to get water, and wash, and pick plums. The path there was steep and shady. Water poured from a fixed spigot, and the air was fresh and cool. Plum trees were everywhere, and yellow and purple fruit spilled onto the ground. We were filling our bottles when suddenly, out of no where, the tall, skinny frame of the mute man Boujar appeared, carrying an empty jug to fill.
"Hysni!" he gasped, though it sounded more like "Hoos!" He pointed at his wrist to indicate time, and then waved his arm wildly towards the house. "Hoos!"
"Hysni is coming? Now?" Michal and I looked at each other. Boujar repeated his message, stamping his feet impatiently.
"Ok, we get it." We nodded vigorously, and this satisfied Boujar for a minute. We stood surveying the cool scene. Then "Birra!" Boujar mouthed, making the motion of drinking from a can. He pointed to us, to him, to the can. "Birra!" He made a gesture that looked like money.
"Ah, he wants us to buy him beer," said Michal. Boujar nodded vigorously, and then said "Shhh!" and put a finger to his lips, his face utter seriousness. "Shhh!" and a slapping motion on his face.
"Don't tell anyone," we translated. He waved his finger in the air to say "no no no."
"Ok," we nodded. Boujar looked happy.
Michal took his jug to fill, and as he bent down to the water, Boujar put his arm around me. He made grunting sounds as he was wont to do, and then, as I didn't know what to do, he got closer. I felt his unshaved, concave cheek next to mine, and I smelled cigarettes. He gave me a passionate kiss on the cheek, which was enough for me. I moved away.

For a 50 year old man, Boujar was very weak. He couldn't carry the jug up the hill and neither could he walk 20 steps without a break. He slapped his legs and shrugged to show that they were weak. We waited for him under the fig trees as he caught his breath, and then he pointed at me, Michal, him and made the motion of an airplane. "Take me with you," he was saying. He looked defeated and repeated the motion. "Take me away with you."

When we returned, Michal bribed the men with money and beer. Boujar always waving his finger and saying "shhh!" The men looked happier for a while, but even this gift couldn't shift their position of being poor, family-less men in a rich family man's world. We learned after we left that they had all been transferred to the village from the city because they were capable of working, and because perhaps they didn't fit in in the house in Tirana. The crabbiest old man, it turned out, was an alcoholic who had mistakenly set his room on fire.

Hysni arrived with his brother, Clarence and Orgys's father. Their father was short and smiling, with a limp because of a bad hip. He spoke a bit of German, and was excited to show off his gun, talk about life, and his sons. We were sitting out in the yard as the sun was setting over the mountains, and Orgys's dad said to us " You did some good work here, the men are lazy, so you showed them how the house can look." We smiled uncertainly and then he turned to Boujar. He loudly mimicked his grunting sounds,and rolled his eyes. "You're lazy," he said to Boujar. "You're lazy and stupid." Boujar grunted and then nodded, and then sat down. This was all through Orgys's translation, so Michal and I sat politely, in disbelief. Orgys started talking about something else, and Clarence munched peanut snacks from a plastic bag that later he threw on the ground. Boujar looked blue.
"Hey," said Michal, putting a hand on Boujar's shoulder. "Ok?"
Boujar grunted, and nodded his head.
The twilight turned into dark.

The village behind Mt Dajt Part I

We drove into the village on a streambed. The Mitsubishi Galloper was flying like in a comic book, Hysni at the wheel smoking Marlboros and an older fellow from the home next to him, quietly throwing up out the window. "The road is good at the beginning," Hysni had told us through the translation of his 14-year-old nephew, Orgys. "It's bad at the end." To us, it hadn't even been a road. But in Albania, we quickly learned, the possible and impossible have a very blurred relationship.
Orgys was our teenage-going-on-forty-year-old friend and translator. He and his younger brother Clarence and Michal and I were packed into the back seat with all our luggage. We were headed to a small village behind Mt. Dajt, 20 kilometers or so from Tirana, where the Kuka clan was originally from. Hysni had a few of his elderly poor men living out here, and we were going to help them. We weren't sure how exactly we would help, but help we would.
At our arrival there was much fuss, and neighbors, dogs and cows greeted us. The small house where two men lived was fairly basic, with cement floors and some cots and a basic kitchen. It turned out that most mountain people cooked on a wood fired outdoor stove, and they even baked bread inside of it.
"bukë" (say boook) means bread in Albanian, and is synonomous with the word food. "ujë" (say the oy of boy) means water. I will never in all my life forget these two words, as they were the constant conversation topics in that house. Either there wasn't enough, it wasn't satisfactory, or in the case of water, the men needed a whole lot of it to pour into their washing machine--the one modern appliance in their small homestead. But this all comes later.

When Hysni was there, we visited nearby cousins and neighbors, and at every stop we were plied with strong turkish coffee boiled over gas camping stoves, and strong Rakije (plum or grape alcohol--homemade of course!) We had meat, soup and bread. The men smoked and discussed. When Hysni left, with a calf and lamb strapped into a trailer, banging back down the streambed, we learned that the men of the house had opinions about us being there. Their opinion, it turned out, was not a favorable one. The cranky ring leader, whose name I never learned, bossed. The tall, gaunt mute man named Boujar, was bossed. The quiet man who had come with us (throwing up) became ornery and opinionated, though we didn't understand him. It quickly became clear that they didn't want to share their scarce water with us, nor their food.

Orgys, still looking like a young boy, called the men dajë (judgay) meaning uncle, and in turn they called him djalë (dyal), meaning boy. And the kids we met in Albania were super subservient to adults, in a way that American children would be amazed and then scared about. So the cranky old man bossed Orgys too, and he translated for us. So then, we were bossed as well.

Luckily we were given the garden as a task, so I was happy to pull weeds from the tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. You could hear the tinkling of cow and sheep bells from every vantage point, and the mountains were a panarama. My other task, it became clear, was to cook. Duh! I was a woman, what was wrong with me? The men had ideas about what I should cook, how I should serve it, when I should wash the dishes. But they wouldn't do those things, only knew how I should do them. It took a couple of days to learn their wishes, but being a pleaser, I did. I washed a lot of dishes, heating water on the outdoor stove, and lugging fresh water from a underground spring, which was down a steep hill. The men usually sat outside in the yard, smoked and talked. They talked late into the night "blah blah blah bukë! blah blah blah ujë!" and then woke up early in the morning, and talked some more. We wondered that they never ran out of conversation topics, but talk they did. They smoked, sat around, and then did some washing in their washing machine.


(to be continued)

The scenery

The house

Boujar and Michal

Orgys in the creek

Orgys and Clarence with their dad and his gun. Which he shot off for us. "Only for protection," he said. Then strung a bullet belt around his waist.

The glasses series

The Kuka's cement terrace has no shortage of stuff scattered around. Tidiness is not next to Godliness here in Albania, there are bigger things to think about. We found some broken glasses, and here is the photo series that followed:

A tent in Tirana

We set up our tent on the breezy, cement terrace of the Kuka family's house, which both confused the parents and delighted the kids. Hysni Kuka pointed at our Coleman blow up mattresses and then held his back, indicating we would have a painful if not crippling experience sleeping there. In three minutes, kids were lugging up mattresses to the second floor terrace, and in five minutes our tent had transformed into a certain type of bed heaven. We just hoped the mattresses weren't from the beds of any old, ailing old folks.
It looked like the kids had never seen a tent before, and they were in and out of the thing like lightening, testing out the headlamps, sleeping bags and our bike helmets with gusto. "tent! tent!" they tried out the new English word.
Below the terrace is the small, but lively street. The cafe and betting shop and the corner store all in the same house, people are chatting, playing football, preteen boys are constantly testing their strength and machoism with short and passionate fights, and then there are the dogs and cats, slinking around, looking for delicious morsels of trash (to be found everywhere).
It's like a mini village in a corner of the capital city.

A little bit about volunteering in Tirana

"Hello," says Jenny. Then, pointing at herself, she says, "Emri im është Jenny" (My name is Jenny). "Ju?"
"Sarah," I say.
"Ah, Sarah," she says. She grins and the tops of her false teeth press into her gums. "Here, Tirana," she points at the floor. Ju?"
"I'm from America," I say.
"Ahh, America." Then, "I love you." Kiss on both cheeks.
A man wanders by, smoking a cigarette. He never sits down, walks up the stairs, out into the yard, onto the street, back again. His teeth are missing, and I don't know his name.
Etem takes our laundry. Through a series of gestures, and through the Italian he speaks, he makes it understood that he will do our laundry for us. "Benissimo!" He says proudly, as in, that's what your laundry will look like.
"Hello, Emri im është Jenny," says Jenny. "Ju?"
"Sarah," I say, shaking her hand.
"Ahh, Sarah. Good," says Jenny. "Here, Tirana. Ju?"
"America," I say. It goes on like that.
Four hours later our laundry is still washing in Etem's machine. "Piano, Piano," he says, adding more water into the soap loader. "Benissimo." He points at his undershirt, which I must say is quite white.

Welcome to Residence Kuka, a house for elderly people who don't have a home. We ended up here through a series of cancellations, and it isn't really in desperate need of volunteers. At least so it seems. Hysni Kuka is the man in charge, and he chain smokes Marlboro cigarettes and comes and goes from his job at the ministry. He has six brothers, and they all live in the same neighborhood in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Hysni speaks absolutely no other language besides Albanian. Some words we have in common are "system", "no problem" and "d'accord." (Ok, in French). Luckily, one brother emigrated to Germany, and is visiting with his family, so the teenage sons translate from Albanian to German, which Michal understands. I'm mostly in the dark.
"Jenny," Hysni sighs. He makes a sign at his head to indicate that she's crazy. So far, she has managed to take my phone charger and a skirt from my bag and hide them in her cupboard.
"Jenny has Alzeheimers" says Argi, the older man who speaks English. He was a professor of law and lived for years with his daughter in Istanbul until she went to study in America. Now he mostly watches TV. "When there is something missing in the house, we go and look at Jenny's room."
Hysni has three young kids and his brothers all have kids. There is a cafe connected to the house, a store, a classroom for homeless Gypsies. People pile through at different intervals, some related some not.

This morning, after we were served our breakfast in the dark little cafe of warm milk and bread (you rip up the bread into little pieces and eat it like cereal in the milk.) we went upstairs to sit with the really old folks. There are men on the third floor who look like breathing is an exercise. One man has one closed eye and then one that is far too open. He sat with his back to us, spinning a hard boiled egg on the table. The other guys told us they were 85 and 65, even though I would have guessed 95 and 75, respectively. Gena, a young nurse and teacher takes care of them. She is blond and pretty, with Cleopatra eyeliner and wears a white lab coat. When we wake up, she is cleaning the bathroom, and when we eat breakfast she is cleaning the old folks. "Do you need help?" we ask her. "No, no," She smiles.

Today a boy from Hungary is supposed to arrive, and on Sunday a girl from Austria. Michal has regaled me with volunteering stories from Montenegro and Germany through similar organizations, but this one is different. "What can we do to help this afternoon?" We ask Hysni. "Oh," he says, mumbling and shrugging and then invites us to his house where there are visitors eating fruit. "You can stay here, relax and watch tv," he has his nephew translate.

Hard work happening here in Tirana.

Ancient Roman gladiators battle in amphitheatre, Durres, Albania

Gladiator Michal chose this ferocious turkey as his opponent in a true to life reenactment of an ancient Roman fight.