Going "postal"... Albanian style

This post is basically "an hour in my life".... 

I spent some time at the post office recently, sending out some postcards. There were half a dozen people in front of me, sort of. The way that a culture forms a line says a lot about a culture....

(This is an infographic by Yang Liu illustrating the differences between the cultures of China and Germany. I borrowed it for the blog because it pretty well shows the difference between American lines and Albanian lines.)

A group of us, mostly women, were crowded together at the post office window.

Two men came up behind us.

The last man to join the "line" spoke to the clerk, asking how much something cost. She gave him an answer. He gave her the money. She stopped what she was doing for the person in "front" and gave him what he asked for. Then she finished with the first person.

The second man behind all of us started to go, but was interrupted by the person now in "front," a young woman, who said to him, "Wait your turn!" His response was something that Luke had told me about before, but I didn't quite believe. Rough translation: "I'm a man, you're a woman. It's my turn."

(Luke had explained to me that in the past there would be "the man line" and "the woman line" and they would sort of take turns. So if a man comes, no matter how long the woman's been waiting, he's first.)

She didn't look happy, but didn't say anything else. After he left, she went.

Then I knew I would have to fight for my turn. So as quickly as possible, I pulled out a postcard and showed it to the woman. "I want stamps for postcards for America. And a receipt for all the stamps. How much does one stamp cost?" The number she told me was higher than the last time I'd sent a postcard a few months ago... almost twice as much. I paid it anyway. She started to take the postcards to put the stamps on one by one. I told her I'd do it, pretty sure the people behind me didn't want to wait.

As I left the post office I found Luke, waiting just outside at a fast food place for the lunch he was going to deliver to a junior high camp. He was with two Albanian friends. I told him about the price increase on the postcards. "They ripped you off," he said. Our friends agreed that they had probably given a higher price to "the American."

So we went on a little reconnaissance mission to figure out if I had been ripped off. One of our Albanian friends went alone to ask how much it should cost to send a postcard to America.  As it turns out, the price went up for him too... It just gets me that the first thought about the post office is that they must have charged me more and pocketed the difference. It's hard to imagine growing up in a place where you have reason not to trust things like the post office.

Summertime food fun

One of the things I love about summer in Albania is fresh produce! It's beautiful, tasty, and cheap. :-)

Here's what I bought today ~

 It cost $5 for all of that - nectarines, pears, lemons, carrots, red peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and eggs.

There are some things here that are not so cheap (gas is more than $6 a gallon), but fresh fruits and vegetables we can enjoy in plenty. A woman in the village Bible study sold me some you-pick apricots from her trees for about 25 cents a pound. They weren't beautiful, but they made pretty good jam. Luke and I also picked cherries several weeks ago to help another woman in the Bible study. She sold them for 50 cents a pound to someone who would take them to the outdoor market in Korce.

(The downside to cheap produce is, of course, that the farmers aren't getting a decent price for their produce. It's a big problem, part of a larger cycle of poverty. If someone works as a waiter or a housekeeper for $5-10 a day, how can they afford to pay more for food? But if the going price stays this low, how can the farmer afford to keep growing it? The village we work in used to have a farmers' market nearby to help sell the food more locally, reducing the cost of transport and cutting out the middleman... but corruption eventually closed up the market. It's not easy for the farmers in Albania.) 

Ok, back to happy food things.  I found out where to buy whole wheat flour this week and set about making bread today. It's pretty much delicious. I can buy whole wheat bread at a bakery nearby, but I don't really like the way they make it.

It's yummy with homemade hummus too. Tahini was the exciting find at a little shop nearby that made that hummus possible. We call that shop "the Greek store" because it's pretty obvious that they go to Greece (to the same store we do sometimes) to buy the stuff they sell.

We also found some local milk to buy - a few months ago we met a Mennonite couple from the midwest who were in Albania to set up a milk processing plant in Korce. Some of the other milk processors here are a little bit sketchy, so we usually get imported UHT milk (processed for a long shelf life) or bring it from Greece ourselves. The new milk plant is up and running now and so we tried it - yay! No more weird UHT taste and we know that they are testing the milk properly. I can taste more "cow" in the milk now, but Luke is happy. :-)