A couple of weeks ago, I was doing the dishes (at my strangely off-centered sink) and thinking, “It’s so neat that our water comes directly from the earth.” I let the water run freely and without constraint. Our water came from a newly dug well, which was about 6 meters deep- two times deeper than any of our neighbor’s wells. Naively I believed our owner when he told us that our source of water was a never ending supply. (I should mention that our water is NOT drinkable…we go to a neighbor’s house to fill up all of our drinking water!)
A few days later, I turned on the sink to some unwelcome sputtering. Thinking it was a problem with our electric pump (another luxury in our neighborhood) Steve called the owner. He came over, checked the well, jiggled a tube, and announced to us that we needed to be careful because our well was running dry. So much for my “endless supply of earth water.”
We proceeded with caution, but much to our dismay, two weeks ago, the faucet dripped its last drop. Immediately, the owner arranged (and paid) to have a crew open up a new well. However, after a day of hard work, they were struck with a bit of bad luck and hit rock. Well number 2 was a no go!
The owner brought four large barrels to our house, filled them with water, connected it to the electric pump and called it good. Each day he says that he’s going to open a new well in a couple of days….two weeks later and we’re still filling barrels for our water. We’re grateful for our generous neighbors who are supplying us with their water through a garden hose! We have a sneaking suspicion that our owner, who has now paid for two non-functioning wells is trying to hold out for some rain in the off chance that well number 1 might fill back up! In the mean time, we’re trying to use as little water as possible, and yes, we’re letting the yellow mellow!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Culture Shock...Round 2
About a month ago I read a devotion book geared for missionaries and the topic of the day was culture shock. Among one of the questions was this, “Describe your first experience of culture shock.” I really struggled to come up with some ideas, but finally wrote down some generic answers just to fill in the page.
Well now we’ve moved to the village, and even though we’re only a few miles away from Korce, I feel like I’m going through culture shock all over again. If I were to go through that devotion again today, I would have pages and pages to write about my village culture shock.
This was triggered yesterday, when at a time that was COMPLETELY inconvenient for me and Steve, our landlord insisted that we open our home to have some more work done (he put in a wooden banister on our marble staircase). Rather annoyed at the inconvenience of the project, and exhausted from a tiring day and week, I was NOT in the mood to have a bunch of drinking men doing construction in my home at night, the time when I was counting on getting some rest. But being a good missionary, I welcomed them all with a good attitude and graciously kept conversation with the men that weren’t working and just drinking beer. I even talked to a perfect stranger on the phone when a man shoved the phone in my face and said in Albanian, “here, this is my son, make him speak to you in English.” I offered candies to everyone that came in, and even entertained the owners’ wife, three children and niece well past sunset. Meanwhile, all this time, when I would have really relied on Steve’s help, he was called into an “emergency pastors’ meeting”. Sigh.
But the truth is, what REALLY got me was when I looked over at the workers and saw that one man was using MY bread knife to cut the wood!!! Without permission, he went through my drawers and took my bread knife! This got my blood boiling, but seeing as I was entertaining the neighborhood, I kept my anger to myself, and reminded myself that value of the knife was probably less than a dollar. BUT STILL!!
After everyone left, I had plenty to complain to Steve about. The workmanship of these guys was terrible! For example…everything is done by eyeball…nothing is measured and all of the wooden posts are spaced unevenly (Monk would go NUTS in our house!). When drilling holes in our kitchen cabinets, the men didn’t bother removing dishes and other things, so everything is covered in saw dust. Outside, they set their saw blade up right over our shoes, leaving our shoes covered in saw dust. And just to top it off, when I went out to clean up the men’s mess, my neighbors, whose new goal in life is to watch absolutely everything I do, told me I was sweeping wrong!! Argh.
Well now we’ve moved to the village, and even though we’re only a few miles away from Korce, I feel like I’m going through culture shock all over again. If I were to go through that devotion again today, I would have pages and pages to write about my village culture shock.
This was triggered yesterday, when at a time that was COMPLETELY inconvenient for me and Steve, our landlord insisted that we open our home to have some more work done (he put in a wooden banister on our marble staircase). Rather annoyed at the inconvenience of the project, and exhausted from a tiring day and week, I was NOT in the mood to have a bunch of drinking men doing construction in my home at night, the time when I was counting on getting some rest. But being a good missionary, I welcomed them all with a good attitude and graciously kept conversation with the men that weren’t working and just drinking beer. I even talked to a perfect stranger on the phone when a man shoved the phone in my face and said in Albanian, “here, this is my son, make him speak to you in English.” I offered candies to everyone that came in, and even entertained the owners’ wife, three children and niece well past sunset. Meanwhile, all this time, when I would have really relied on Steve’s help, he was called into an “emergency pastors’ meeting”. Sigh.
But the truth is, what REALLY got me was when I looked over at the workers and saw that one man was using MY bread knife to cut the wood!!! Without permission, he went through my drawers and took my bread knife! This got my blood boiling, but seeing as I was entertaining the neighborhood, I kept my anger to myself, and reminded myself that value of the knife was probably less than a dollar. BUT STILL!!
After everyone left, I had plenty to complain to Steve about. The workmanship of these guys was terrible! For example…everything is done by eyeball…nothing is measured and all of the wooden posts are spaced unevenly (Monk would go NUTS in our house!). When drilling holes in our kitchen cabinets, the men didn’t bother removing dishes and other things, so everything is covered in saw dust. Outside, they set their saw blade up right over our shoes, leaving our shoes covered in saw dust. And just to top it off, when I went out to clean up the men’s mess, my neighbors, whose new goal in life is to watch absolutely everything I do, told me I was sweeping wrong!! Argh.
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