International Children’s Day is held annually on November 20th. I don’t think we have this in the States. In Albania, Children’s Day is held on June 1st. Yesterday morning, 11 of us piled into the forgone (van) and headed off to Fushekruje. Alban and another pastor in that city had been working together over the past few months to plan the events for this day, but I hadn’t realized just how big the event would be. In retrospect before the fact i.e. in the van, I shouldn’t have gone anywhere yesterday. I had been awake most of the night with some kind of intestinal issue. Between that and Gensi’s driving, it is truly a miracle that I was able to keep from vomiting until less than a minute after we reached our destination.
First we had a meeting in a church located on the second floor of a nondescript building in an area of town I would never be able to find again on my own. Fushekruje is about as big as Auburn Washington, but it is a relatively featureless place. The back-roads are as twisted as the thatch of a sparrows nest. We were all issued black t-shirts and white baseball caps, and off we went. I was working with Fatjon, who is the young man who translates for me on Sundays when I am in town. Fatjon is going to do great things for God. Because I was not feeling well, we went to his house where his aunt served me a glass of kos. Kos is like a yogurt with a consistency somewhere between cottage cheese and Chinese egg-flour soup. I was also introduced to Fatjon’s father’s mother, Fatjon’s sister, and four of his cousins.
The kos had a settling effect, which I was very thankful for. I am often times conflicted between following common wisdom which says that the only way to protect your body while living abroad is through polite refusal of these kinds of offers; and the local wisdom of the people who deal with this type of malady, in this context, daily. Fatjon and I soon departed to lend our hands in carrying the day’s water. Our route was interrupted because a major street had been taped off and cleared by the police. Part of the day’s festivities involved a footrace along the main drag in Fushekruje. There were half-a-dozen heats between the two sexes and various age categories.
I couldn’t be relied upon for anything which required a sustained effort. I wanted to sleep, or to be comforted by a big bowl of pho while remaining close to an American style bathroom. I spent a good part of the day resting in the shade of an umbrella provided at a bar-cafe near the school where many of the day’s events took place. On Friday afternoon I saw a child of less than 18 months walking alone in the pasture lands near the school I’m living at. She was about one-hundred yards from home. Her older brother was calling for her to return, but there was no sense of alarm to speak of. The children here are often given responsibility for each-other. I was a curiosity to two such beautiful boys at the cafe I took rest at.
After an extended break, I rejoined the people working at the school. Fatjon had assured me that, of course, his school had bathrooms; it is the largest middle-school in all of Albania. “Of course,” I thought. I soon had need of locating these bathrooms. Bathrooms the world over are stacked one floor above another so that the builder can then use a common drain system between them. This also saves on plumbing costs for bringing water to the bathrooms, because it cuts down on redundancy of supply piping. There were two toilets for men on the bottom floor, just inside of a room with no door between it and the hallway which led to it. The toilets were located just below a broken drain pipe which had water pouring out; a continuous shower of what appeared to be clean water. Each stall had an aluminum frame door with the glass missing, but what I hoped to accomplish was something I had hoped to secure privacy for. I’m sure you understand. I headed upstairs to try my luck there, only to find that the broken drain I had seen on the first floor was from the toilets on the second floor. I couldn’t in good conscience put this system under strain. I soon paid another visit to the bar-cafe I had so recently patronized. Ali, I have mentioned him before, soon found me and asked me to go with him. After I had gathered my confidence to venture out, Ali and I headed to the town square to run an errand for Alban.
After that, we walked back to the school where Valentina asked me if I could help with something. “Of course.” “Can you help carry this bag for us?” “Of course,” I said again hefting the large yet surprisingly light duffel bag under my arm. About four blocks later I asked where we were going. “To the Cinema,” she said. I had never been there before. When we arrived I saw that it was a performance hall. We made our way back-stage behind the black curtains, maintaining relative anonymity of movement and purpose. Once we were in a back room Valentina said “I need you to do something for me, can you?” “Of course,” I replied. The contents of the duffel bag were soon made known to me. Few experiences could cap a day like the one I had already savored like dressing up in a lion suit and going on stage to perform in front of my friends and a few hundred kids.
God invented comedy.
albaniacalling 