Grenades

I read an interesting article in the newspaper that kind of gives a little insight to Albanian mentality.

Two guys who live in the same apartment building were fighting over the rights to use a plot of land next to the building. One man had already built a garage there and the other wanted to use the land for some other purpose. The next day, the man that wanted the land decided to wait for the other man to come out of his apartment. When the man came out, the first man lobbed a grenade into the apartment stairwell and blew the guy up. Needless to say, the neighbors were all freaked out and the man was arrested.

I think this story illustrates well how the famous 'Balkan temper' can sometimes cloud judgment around here, and about the proliferation of military grade weapons in private hands.

In the same paper the police in a northern town found a stockpile of weapons in a cave. In it were over 200 automatic rifles, grenades, anti-tank mines, and explosives. Kinda makes you want to stay on the good side of everyone you meet around here.

Photoshop Gallery

Hey everyone,

I've been kinda bored lately, so I've been trying to improve my Photoshop skills. The combination of photoshop and boredom has resulted in many new artistic works. Most of which have involved pasting people's heads on other pictures and writing stupid captions. You can check it all out on my Yahoo photo's page. Go to Yahoo photos and the login is arbor602 and the password is baylor.

have fun

Another Lazy Sunday

Just another lazy Sunday here is Albania. Didn't really do much this weekend. Had plans to go to the beach but they never really materialized. Yesterday I had a coffee and sat outside the cafe for about an hour and a half basically just people watching. I am easily entertained just by watching people interact here, so much of it just doesn't make sense to me yet.

My friend Peter who is down South in Permet was here staying with me on Monday and Tuesday. It was good to hang out with him, we have a similar sense of humor. Humor is one of the things I miss here when I am here by myself. It is kind of hard to joke with Albanians because sarcasm doesn't really translate. And I don't really understand their sense of humor either, or think they even have one sometimes.

My other friend Peter from an earlier group of volunteers stayed with me last night, and we talked for about 2 1/2 hours just about living in this country. He has been here almost 2 years, so he had some good advice and a more experienced perspective. He has been working in the local goverment of Lezhe up north and has had a rough go of it.

August is looking to be much of the same as now. I have my English classes on Wednesday and Thursday but not much else. I'm going to try to travel around a little bit and hit the beaches down South where the water is actually blue and the beaches aren't littered with trash and construction waste.

Postage Address

Seeing as how I live in an illegal settlement, I don't actually have a postal address in Durres. So, you can send all mail and packages to:

David Sheern
c/o Peace Corps Albania
Rr. "Ali Visha"
Tirana, Albania

I welcome anything anyone would want to send me, letters, packages, whatever. My friend David sent me a CD with a bunch of mp3s on it and that was really cool of him. I have a computer here, so if you want to send me music, just put mp3s on a CD and send it.

Things are good here. Just found out that next week there is going to be a US Naval ship docking here in Durres for 3 days, and there are going to approximately 1,000 sailors descending on our small city. Should be very entertaining. My friend told me that the last time the sailors came, one of them got shot for hitting on a guy's fiance.

Oh, that reminds me. A prominent business man was killed on the beach here last week. He got shot with a silenced pistol and no one knew he was dead until the waiter came up and saw he'd been shot. There was one witness to the incident, she is a teenage girl. The best part is that the newspaper published her photo with a caption of something to the effect of "lone witness." Quality journalism.

Another Hot Day in Albania

Things are normal here for the most part. Work is slow. Spent yesterday at the beach. I am in the capital today picking up a package sent by my mom. It will be nice to have some hot sauce to cook with. I have been missing spices in my food.

There is really nothing interesting going on here. Everything is pretty quiet and normal. Still teaching on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and helping out whereever else I can. I think it is going to take a while to find my role in the office. Yeah that's about it. Okay. Til another time.

Another Hot Day in Albania

Picture of Durres

This is the Durres Port

6/28/05

I never wake up in the morning expecting to talk about President Bush’s genitals. However, each new day in Albania never fails to bring new surprises, and the things I enjoy most about living in Albania are the surprises.

Everyday I seem to discover a new difference between the culture here and American culture. One of the biggest differences I have encountered here is that no question is too personal or impolite. Any question is fair game. In America there are many questions that are simply considered taboo because we would feel that they are too personal or rude. Not so here. Within five minutes of meeting a person, it is guaranteed that they will ask you how much money you have, how much money you make, how much money various family members make, whether you have a girlfriend, whether you would like an Albanian girlfriend, which is better America or Albania, which are more beautiful American or Albanian women, how big is your house, etc. etc. While living in Belsh I was even put in the unenviable situation where two moms with young babies asked me which baby was cuter. Of course I just laughed uncomfortably and refused to comment. Come to find out, rating babies is a national past time here. In fact, about a month ago there was a show on TV where they simply showed photographs of random babies and viewers could call in to vote on which they thought was the cutest.

I had thought that after being here for three months I had encountered the full range of personal questions. All in all, I had become fairly comfortable with discussing issues that had initially struck me as a little personal. This whole personal question business came to a head (pun intended) one morning while I was having a drink with several local men in a lokale. I had just met these men that morning, so after getting through the formalities of my age, where I am from in America, and why am I crazy enough to leave America to come to Albania, one of the men proceeded to ask a question that I didn’t fully understand while making a cutting motion on his index finger. This was one of the few hand gestures I hadn’t seen here before, and the only word that I understood was gërshërë (scissors). (Please keep in mind that I had known this man a full three minutes at this point.) Luckily (or unluckily) there was a man there that spoke decent English and he was able to translate that the man was asking whether or not I was circumcised!

After initially wondering why in the world he would want to know and blushing slightly, I conceded that yes I am circumcised and that most of the boys in America now undergo the procedure, mostly for hygienic purposes. After assuring his friends that he had assumed correctly that I was in fact sans-foreskin, he proceeded to go around the table and inform me of the condition of each man’s manhood. How or why he knew each man’s “private” affairs was little weird to me, but he then informed me that the deciding factor for boys in Albania was a religious one, with Muslims circumcised and non-Muslims uncircumcised. As with any lokale conversation, George W. Bush entered the conversation and I was asked if I knew what his condition was below the belt. I told them that my guess would be yes, but I didn’t really have a definitive answer. However, I assured them that while W.’s condition was just a guess, Monica Lewinsky would have a definite answer as to the state of their favorite American Ex-President’s “willy.” Happily, this reply was greeted with a few pats on the back and a free beer.

Quickly tiring of this topic they decided to move on to a different subject -- the importance of my finding an Albanian girl who doesn’t have any brothers or cousins. Finding this kind of girl, they assured me, would cut down on any unexpected and unpleasant surprises. “But”, I replied, “it’s the surprises that make my time here enjoyable.”

7/08/05

Before moving here, I expected that I would encounter cultural differences and that I would probably become frustrated at times until I was able understand the culture better. I have certainly encountered many differences, but when I ask my Albanian friends why they do these things the way they do, too often their reason has to do with a rebellious mentality towards the way things were done during the Communist period here.

For example, Albanians do not stand in line. When you go to the bank or to a food stand or wherever, there are no lines. The first time I experienced this, I was waiting to get some food at a little food stand, and there were two people waiting in front of me. Being the last person to arrive, I figured I would be helped after the two people in front of me. While I was waiting two separate ladies came up to the stand and after the two people in front of me were helped, these two ladies just stepped in front of me and asked for food. Of course I thought that they were just rude people, but when it happened again, I figured I was going to have to start to fend for myself. So now, it seems every trip I take to get something from a stand or somewhere where there would naturally be a line in the States, I have to elbow my way to the front.

With all of this being said, I have accepted this to be reality here, and I don’t really mind that there aren’t lines. What I do mind is the reason my friends gave when I asked them why there weren’t lines here. There answer was that people in Albania had to stand in line for everything during Communism, so they don’t want to stand in line anymore and no one (ie the State) is going to make them stand in line.

I understand that the Communist period in this country had unbelievable hardships and that it really did some damage to the country’s psyche, but with it now being 15 years after the fall of Communism here this country needs to move forward. People here need to realize that just because the State used to force them to do something that it is not beneficial to avoid that behavior today. This mentality of “I had to do under it communism and I hated it, so I don’t want to do it now” has had some serious repercussions on the quality of life here the last 15 years. The majority of Albanians have no respect for public space and simply throw their trash where they want and use the space however they wish, because to them public space is nobody’s space, not community space. Private homes and apartments here are immaculate, but everywhere outside to private space is usually unkempt and miserable.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, yes Communism was horrible, but it is time to move forward. Some behaviors, no matter what regime is in power, are practiced for the good of the individual and the good of society. Albania needs to identify those positive behaviors they have abandoned as a rebellion against Communism and begin behaving for the good of the whole society.

And unfortunately, even the youngest generation here, that never experienced Communism, is learning its behavior from its parents and grandparents. If the kids perpetuate the behavior of their parents and grandparents, unfortunately it may take a big effort by someone to make real change here.

Wow, sorry I am rambling, I just needed to put my thoughts into words. I guess its all just stream of consciousness.

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July to everyone. I have certainly celebrated in style here. On Saturday alot of volunteers made the trip to Tirana for a 4th picnic at the Ambassadors house. It was very interesting because the Ambassador of course lives in the American compound with many of the Embassy employees and USAID workers. It is like a little bit of America in there. Large lawns, large houses, and really nice playgrounds for the kids. Just outside the big security gate and the road deterents for suicide bomb cars is the real Albania. Lots of cement and trash and Albanian people.

Anyway the picnic was fun. They had hamburgers and beer and I was able to meet alot of other Americans that I hadn't met before. One of whom was a girl from Ft. Scott Kansas. She is a missionary and is in Albania for three weeks working with Sisters of Mercy, the Mother Teresa group. She was very nice and it was wierd to meet another person from Kansas, there aren't too many of us.

I spent Sunday cleaning my apartment. It is really dry here in the summer and so with the wind in Durres there is always dust and sand blowing everywhere. The past two weekends I have cleaned about an inch of dust of my floor and furniture. I am looking forward to the Fall with a little more rain and cooler temps. But in the fall I'll probably be wishing it was the Summer again.

Monday, my counterpart at co-plan texted me and told me take the day off for the holiday. It's not like I was doing anything anyway, so I went to the beach. The beaches here are okay to layout, but I don't swim. I'm afraid of the rashes and other various bacteria I would contract if I did. Beaches here certainly have their share of Speedos and everyone who shouldn't be wearing one usually is.

Today I spent several hours in lokale playing cards, talking, and watching a cow being butchered across the street. Albania had there national elections on Sunday, and they seem to have gone off without too many problems. It has certainly been the topic of conversation around here the past couple of months. Tomorrow I am going to start teaching an advanced english class with teenagers in Co-plan's target neighborhood with the hopes of starting a group of youth that can organize various projects for the neighborhood. It will be something to do so I am excited about it.

I think that's it for now.