Little moments of transition

I'm getting used to seeing the mosque as I look out my window from the breakfast table and hearing the calls to prayer as I go about my day.

 

the mosque on a rainy day

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There was a peaceful demonstration outside our apartment last week. Luke and I stepped out the balcony to see what all the honking and noise was about and watched a parade of furgons (vans used for public transportation) blaring their way through Korce. Some had signs in the windows with messages like "we want to work" and "a respectable wage". Furgons are the most common form of transportation in Albania - and they are so cheap I have wondered how the drivers even pay for gasoline. I'm not sure how the system works, but the government is somewhat involved in prices and availability of furgons. When we drove to Tirana (the capital) recently we noticed that police were stopping furgons at checkpoints outside of each city. We had some Albanian friends with us who explained that Korce-Tirana furgons could only take passengers to Tirana; they had to drive back empty. Likewise, Tirana-Korce furgons shouldn't be competing with Korce furgons for the drive back to Tirana.

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Earlier this week, on the way to meet a new friend for coffee, I took the trash out to the dumpster across the street from our apartment building. I tossed it in and awkwardly met the eyes of a man who was walking up the dumpster, just as he reached inside and ripped open the bag full of my trash. My first instinct was to tell him that I had already separated out the bottles and not to bother, unless he really wanted empty milk cartons, egg shells, coffee grounds, and other nasty garbage. But my grasp of the Albanian language is just not that good yet. Even if it were, I was getting distracted by the fact that he was rummaging through my toilet paper. Yes, that kind of toilet paper. The kind you don't flush down the toilet here and therefore have to dispose of with the rest of your garbage. There was something so humiliating about it that only thing I could do was turn and walk away. I had almost forgotten about it when, on the way back home, the same man passed me on another street. Again, he held my gaze for a long moment. "What are you thinking about me?" I thought. Perhaps my strongest feeling should have been compassion - the man digs through garbage for a living! - but I wanted to run, to hide. I've never felt so exposed.

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After getting home and getting a much needed hug from my husband (see above for why I needed the hug), I headed out to the closest "supermarket" to buy some food for Sunday when several of the youth from the village will be eating with us. I wandered through the little store for a while and paused at the bread display, trying to make sense of what was in a basket on a shelf about half way up. The last few times I've stopped and looked, wondering if they were selling some kind of unusual mushrooms. Today I could see that it wasn't a mushroom, but a basket full of bones. I am definitely never buying bread here.

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A much more appetizing moment is just a few blocks away though, hidden on a side street in the form of the best bakery I've found in Korce. They have huge, crusty loaves of bread, the kind you could almost eat as a meal, and they cost about 80 cents. Bread is a cultural pillar in Albania. In fact, to ask if someone is eaten is to say, "Have you had bread?" They only thing they don't eat bread with is pasta because it's kind of like having bread twice (and they laugh that that's the only thing many Americans do eat bread with). This bakery also has meat byrek - a flaky pastry filled with goodies and eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The meat filling is something I'd enjoyed in some other Balkan countries and been sad about not finding here in Albania. It is much easier here to find it stuffed with tomatoes and onions, cheese and spinach, leeks, beans, or even pumpkin.