Baklava Day

Today is the last day of the Muslim holiday, Ramazan (or Ramadan). Traditionally, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month in which Muhammad received his revelation of the Qur'an, is dedicated to fasting from sunrise to sunset for the purpose of prayer, good deeds and self purification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan). As explained to us by some friends in Turkey, Muslims will wake in the early hours of the morning to eat before sunrise. During these early morning hours, a person will roam the neighborhoods banging a drum to wake everybody up as a reminder to eat. He usually collects a small payment in return for his services.

Now that we are living in a "Muslim" village, I completely expected early morning wake up calls and hungry neighbors during the month of September. However, as I have found out, for the Muslims in my neighborhood, their "faith" is actually rooted in family heritage. I'm discovering that Islam here is not much unlike Christianity in the States, miles wide, but only inches thick. Yes, we do have a drummer boy. But he doesn't come until well until the late hours of morning. He doesn't wake anybody up, but just tries to collect their money. Although they all claim Islam, nobody I've asked has fasted, and most of my neighbors have never even been in a mosque. The children have today off from school, but the only other sign of celebration I've seen is the making of Baklava. Lots and lots of Baklava.

Birdie on a....Suicide Mission?

A couple of nights ago, all of the neighbors started screaming my name, “OOOH KRISTAL! OOOH KRISTAL!!” This is a fairly frequent occurrence, as the neighbors usually shout for me over silly little things, “OOOOH KRISTAL!! TURN ON YOUR PORCH LIGHT!” or (7am) “OOOH KRISTAL, THE GARBAGE MAN’S COMING!” or 8am today, "OOOH KRISTAL, CAN WE HANG OUR BLANKETS ON YOUR BALCONY!?" This time, however, there was an unusual urgency in their voices.

I looked out the window and saw that everybody was pointing up and shouting. Not having my Albanian brain on, I didn’t listen to what they were yelling and assumed they were calling me to come out to see a rainbow, as it had just finished raining. Much to my surprise, when I went outside, I saw what all the commotion was about! Silly me, Albanians don’t shout about rainbows! They were shouting about the suicidal pigeon hanging by it’s neck from our roof! Somehow, the pigeon got its neck wrapped in a plastic bag, which was caught on our roof, which left for a large lifeless bird gracing our house! Why they alerted me to this travesty, and not Steve, is beyond me.

I called for Steve, who quickly ran up the stairs with a pair of scissors to free the poor bird. Much to all of our surprise, as Steve reached up to save our little friend, the pigeon managed to escape, only to land into the hands of the neighborhood kids, eager to terrorize the poor stunned bird. Is there a lesson to be learned here? Yes. Please don’t litter, recycle when possible and remember to cut you plastic coke rings! As Animal Planet would say, “it’s their planet too!”

The Oddities

Being visitors in a foreign land, we are somewhat of an oddity. Full of curiosity and with little shame, the Albanians ask us questions all the time. I’ve decided to share with you some of my favorites!

1) Where are you from?
2) What are you doing in Albania? Okay…I know these top two aren’t interesting, but keep reading, they’ll get better, I promise!
3) How is your family? This is always followed by more family questions…Family is SOOO important in this culture! I LOVE this and really enjoy telling about each member of my family!
4) Which place is better, Albania or America? This is a TOUGH one to answer, because the truth is America is my home and first in my heart. But the Albanians seems to love hearing great things about their little land, so usually I answer by saying that I love the hospitality and kindness of the Albanian people, as well saying how beautiful the country is.
5) Why don’t you have a car? Answer: we can’t afford one. They usually don’t believe us, (because aren’t ALL Americans rich) and proceed to ask…
6) Why don’t you ask your parents to buy you a car?
7) Can you find me an American husband? I was even offered a dog in exchange for a man!
8) Next time you go to the States, can you bring me _________? Fill in the blank with any of the following…peanut butter, medicine, digital cameras, diaper rash cream, underwear and my favorite...a Hummer! In this case, it was a salesman whom we met when we were furniture shopping. He was really pushy and made both of us feel incredibly uncomfortable. Every time we passed his shop, he asked us to go for coffee. It got to the point that we’d even start walking different roads to avoid him! Well, on a whim, one day we accepted his invite for coffee, and found out why he’d been so insistent…he wanted us to arrange buying and shipping a Hummer from the States!
9) How much money do you make? I hate this question! Usually I avoid it by saying something generic like, “it’s different every month.” But I’ve just recently started responding, “It’s personal.”
10) Did you fall in love or was your marriage arranged? Answer: LOVE!!

Does This Country Make Me Look Fat?!

Probably like most of the American population, I could afford to drop a few pounds (I call them my “Donna’s mocha pounds),” but I wouldn’t consider myself fat. Well, these skinny Albanians make me feel like I am a big fat cow. Today I came into church, wearing a pair of pants I love and thought were slimming, and immediately one of the youth said loudly, “Wow! You’re fat.” Again, later today, another Albanian said, “your not fat here (pointing to my waist), but you’re really fat here (pointing to my hips).” Unfortunately, this is an everyday occurrence for me! People frequently ask me why I’m “fat”, and sometimes I just shrug me shoulders, but if I’m in a good mood I just tell them I love chocolate too much!!

Mellow Yellow

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!

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.

Bikinis and Baptisms

The highlight of June was a few weeks ago (while the American team was here) when the church celebrated the baptisms of seven Albanians and two Americans. The church body, along with some local youth, filled up a bus and we all went together to Lake Ohrid. We gathered in a grassy area, and those being baptized shared their testimonies. Most of the Albanian testimonies began,
“I come from a Muslim family…”

We prayed for the “baptizees”, and headed off for the water. I, Kristal, got a good laugh watching Steve and Plator wade through the murky water looking for a clean place to do the baptizing. The four women being baptized were extremely nervous, and as women here don’t usually know how to swim and don’t have bathtubs, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the first time they’d ever been completely submerged under water.

The three pastors went out into the lake together and all took a part in baptizing the nine. Steve was absolutely honored to be a part of this and worked hard to make sure he could properly baptize in Albanian.

As the church witnessed the baptisms, so did everybody else on the beach. Many people asked what we were doing. Even children playing in the water gathered around to watch. I thought all the women in bikinis (the only type of swimsuit worn by women here) made for an…interesting….setting for such a spiritual occasion. Celebrating the baptisms in public really was a true declaration of faith for these committed believers.

The adventure met its high point while on the bus ride home, the back window shattered and we all ate dust for about an hour as we poked along the dirt and gravel roads. By the end of the trip, I think we were all ready to be baptized, just to wash the layer dirt off! The day was a joy for everyone, and as one of the Americans said, “It was epic.”