Placid Waters and Powerful Stories: My Trip to Ohrid, Macedonia

This post is about my trip to and participation in a conference on conflict mediation in schools that took place in Ohrid, Macedonia.

Getting There and Back. Exactly two weeks ago today, at around 12:30PM, I pulled my rented white Chevy into the Hotel Sileks which is right across the street from a public beach on  Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. My Albanian colleague and I had left Tirana around 8:30AM that morning,  braved Krabbe Mountain Pass,  stopped for a wonderful traditional sandwich called simete me bugaçë in Elsbasan, worried about getting across the border in  Qafë Thanë, and stopped at least four times after we crossed the border to ask for directions to the hotel.

But we made it.

In four hours we had traveled approximately 92 miles (148 kilometers). Don’t believe the guidebooks or Google maps that estimates a two to two and a half hour drive. It is at least a three and a half hour drive. The road is two-lane all the way and contains many switchbacks. But, as I indicated in an earlier post about my trip to Shushicë, the views from the top of the mountain are amazing.

The trip also requires navigating through Elbasan and a few villages, including Librazhd which can be fairly congested, and stopping at the border, which takes another 20-30 minutes, as there are two checkpoints.

My colleague and I could probably have shaved about a half hour off our time if we had not stopped for the sandwich or gotten a little lost once we crossed the border; but I doubt we could have made the trip in two hours no matter what.

No matter the time it takes to drive through the mountains of Albania to Macedonia, I highly recommend trying it. I must say I was fearful about the prospect of driving in a country where many people ignore solid lines that indicate DO NOT PASS and the average years of driving experience is probably less than five years, but here’s the deal: renting a car is in the end safer, more comfortable, and far more convenient than other modes of transportation.

Those other “modes” include a regular bus service that leaves Tirana at 9:30PM and gets to Struga, Macedonia at 2AM, from which you can take cab (if you can find one at 2AM!) for the 10 mile ride to Ohrid; “furgon” (mini-bus) travel, which requires finding a place where a furgon stops, negotiating a price, and  enduring a ride over the mountains stopping every ten miles or so to pick up other passengers (sometimes including livestock) with a driver who, uh, maybe has three years of driving experience; and the train—ah, the train. Apparently you can walk to the border faster than the train can take you J.

So rent the car. It may cost ten times more than the bus or furgon and fifty times more than a  train ticket (apparently you can ride the train to Pogradec, another border crossing, for 340ALL, about $3.40), but it is well worth it.

In fact, perhaps the most difficult part of car travel was actually renting the car (I had to go back to the car rental place three times before the car was ready), or driving through the streets of Tirana (I had to be as aggressive as everyone else in Sheshi Wilson to get through the roundabout), or finding a place to park the car overnight before the trip (I finally just gave up trying to find a place within a block of my apartment and parked at the school).

Or getting gas. Or should I say petrol? No, I should say benzin.  

I had to return the car full of gas, so on the way back to Tirana, we stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of town. My Albanian colleague had a long conversation with the attendant (there is no ‘self service’ gas here), which ended with her pulling out the papers for the car, handing them to the attendant, his pointing to a certain section of one of the documents, and her finally saying, “okay” (the only word I understood in the whole interaction).

Apparently they had the long conversation about what kind of fuel to put in the car. While I knew for sure the car did not run on diesel, I had no idea that deciding what kind of gasoline to put in it could be controversial. The papers indicated the car ran on “benzin,” which is what that station offered, so it all worked out. I saw no pumps for different octane grades of gas, so I guess they were all the same. When I got back to my apartment, I looked up the word “benzin”—apparently it is the German word for gasoline.

One more thing about the “benzin”: I needed less than a half tank of gas. The car I was driving, a Chevrolet Evanda, which isn’t a Chevrolet at all but a Daewoo, but that’s a story you will just have to ask me about in person, has a fairly large tank (65 liter capacity—about 17 gallons). It took 25 liters, about 6.5 gallons, to fill the tank.

Guess the cost. Be realistic. Guess.

Thirty dollars? No . . . Forty dollars? No . . . Forty-five dollars? Yes!!

Forty-five dollars! Actually 4503.67ALL, but I handed the guy a 5000 Leke note and he handed me back a 500 leke note. That’s almost $7.00 a gallon. 

Whew! No more complaining about the $3.85 a gallon gas back home for me J

Language of the Conference . As I indicated above, the conference was on conflict mediation in schools. About fifty people were in attendance—from Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Slovenia. And Germany. The conference was sponsored by two German NGOs that work mostly in the Balkans.

It was a good conference, and I learned a lot about conflict and conflict mediation in K-12 schools in the Balkans. Unlike the US where bullying tends to be based on sexual identity and perhaps race and clichés, bullying in the Balkans, at least according to the conference attendees, centers almost exclusively on ethnicity: As one conference presenter asserted about the situation in Macedonia particularly, “The Macedonians pick on the ethnic Albanians, the ethnic Albanians retaliate against the Macedonians, and the Roma are picked on by all and retaliate against all.”

Basically, the distinguishing characteristic among K-12 students is their first language, which indicates their cultural heritage (back to the politics of language!). This distinction carries over into universities, where, at least in Macedonia, classes may be taught in three languages: Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish.

As another conference presenter noted, when students graduate from university, the different language speakers often plan and attend different graduation parties, perpetuating the divisions among the groups.

It is similar to students sitting with their own race and cliché in the U.S., but the differences among the students are not that apparent until they start to speak.

A rather striking example of these subtle differences even happened at breakfast one morning. My Albanian colleague greeted another conference attendees with “Miremengjes,” which means “Good morning” in Albanian. She answered in kind and then my colleague started talking to her in Albanian. She stopped my colleague and politely said in Enlgish, “I’m sorry I don’t speak Albanian.”

My colleague was a bit taken aback, “But you are Kosovar!”

“Yes,” was the reply, “But I am Serbian Kosovar.”

Subtle differences recognized by language. But differences far deeper than the language itself.

Interestingly, the “official” language of the conference was English, the second or third or fourth language of everyone in attendance but me.

English as the neutral language. The “nonpolitical” language.

As I listened to presenters and attended sessions, I kept thinking how tiring it must have been for all the attendees (except me) to be constantly translating what was said into their first language.

Since then, I have spent some time reflecting on both my privilege and my limitations of being monolingual. I am indeed fortunate that the only language I can speak is one so many people understand or want to speak.

Conference Stories. During the course of the conference, I had a chance to interact with many wonderful people working on the issue of conflict mediation in schools. Two stories told by conference attendees were particularly memorable and will follow me long after I leave this region.

One was told casually by a young ethnic Albanian Kosovar woman during a coffee break. She and I and another attendee were standing by the coffee cart by the pool of the hotel, basking in the warm sun.

She started talking about her childhood. I can’t remember why or what was said before her story, as the story was so powerful it seemed to come out of nowhere, to stand on its own. When she was a child she was an avid reader. She loved the worlds created in the books she read. But she wondered why the reality in the books was so much better than the reality of her life. And she wondered how she could enter the reality of the books.

One day when her mother was not home, she had an idea. She realized the reason she could not enter the world of the books was because the books had no doors. She also reasoned that if she made doors in the books she could enter the world inside the books. So she took a pair of scissors and cut “doors” in all the books.

When her mother realized what she had done, she was severely reprimanded for her actions, as she had destroyed every book in the house.

At this point in the story, she laughed at her childish actions. But then she said, “In the end it didn’t matter, because soon after our whole house was burned in the war and everything was lost, including the books with the doors.”

What can one say to that story? How does one react? I laughed with her and squeezed her arm, fighting back the tears in my eyes.

“What a lovely story,” I said. “About the books, I mean.” So inadequate. So outside my comfortable existence. So touching. So memorable.

The other story came from the attendee who had been standing at the coffee cart with me and the Kosovar woman. In the course of conversation, he explained how he had attended high school in the U.S. at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, no less. He had then gone on to get his degree at Brandeis University in Boston. The conversation ended there, but later that day I found him alone in the lobby of the hotel and asked him how his family came to know about Phillips Exeter.

My first assumption was that he was from a family of means. But that assumption proved incorrect. He, too, was ethnic Albanian Kosovar.  Either during or after the conflict (I should have taken better notes!), a U.S. aid worker recognized him as a talented basketball player and helped him to make application to Phillips Exeter.

There he is played stellar basketball, earned a scholarship to Brandeis and was named MVP of the league during his college career. He was even featured in basketball magazines and did an interview on national television in the U.S.

He noted that although his basketball career had ended, he still worked to inspire students (I think he teaches high school or middle school) to do their best and use their natural talents.   

His story and that of the woman are excellent examples of the vagaries of life, both good and bad.

I offer one more story from my trip to Macedonia. This is a personal story. And one that illustrates the depth of generosity of the people of this region.

One afternoon of the conference, we were treated to an excursion to Sve. Naum, an area on Lake Ohrid that includes a monastery, a spring, and an open “market” of sorts (mainly stalls with tourist-y souvenirs). We took a boat to get to Sve. Naum. Here are some pictures I took from the boat. They give some idea of the beauty of the landscape and the lake.

Where we boarded the boat for the trip to Sve. Naum. On the public beach across from the conference hotel.

On the way to Sve. Naum

On the way to Sve. Naum. Development on Lake Ohrid is restricted.

Those are mountains in the background, Albanian mountains, as the country border is through the lake.

Lake Ohrid is one of the deepest lakes in the world.

As we docked at Sve. Naum, fishermen on the pier started shouting to us. I am so used to hearing languages I don’t understand that I tuned out what was being said. As the greeting subsided, another attendees turned to me and said, “That man kept asking you ‘Where are you from’ and you ignored him.”

“What?!?” I said.

“That man kept asking you ‘where are you from” and you ignored him.”

“In English?!?”

“Yes! In English!”

“Which man? Where is he?” was my rather frantic reply. I see part of my job here as being an ambassador for the U.S. and here I was ignoring someone’s simple question about my country of origin.

My colleague pointed the man out to me and as soon as I scrambled off the boat, I made a point to go up to him, hold out my hand, and say with a smile, “Hi! I’m Christy. I’m from the U.S. From America.”

The fisherman immediately shot back, “Kentucky?”

“No . . .,” I said.

“Ohio?”

“No. . .”

“Indiana?”

“No . . ., I’m from Arkansas.”

“Ar-KANSAS!” was the reply.  “Ar-KANSAS! A big river flows through Ar-KANSAS.”

“Yes,” I said, “The Arkansas River and the Mississippi River.”

“Yes,” the fisherman said, “I know my geography, yes?”

“Yes, you do!” I replied and bid goodbye.

Sometime later as my colleague and I were walking through the path lined with souvenir stalls, the fisherman spotted me again.

He shouted, “Ar-KANSAS!” Picked up something from one of the stalls and approached me. He pressed something into my hand and shut my fist tightly saying, “This is for you Ar-KANSAS!”

As I walked away I opened my hand to reveal a mother of pearl pendant in the shape of a heart. I turned around, beaming and waved to him, “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

He smiled and waved back.

View of Lake Ohrid from Sve. Naum

Souvenir Stalls at Sve. Naum

On the dock at Sve. Naum

When I told a friend this story, his response was that such simple acts of generosity give you great insights into a culture.

So true. I will cherish my time in Ohrid, my experiences at the conference, and my heart shaped mother of pearl pendant long after I have settled back into my ordinary life in Ar-KANSAS.

Happy Halloween!

Next time: Adventures in teaching J