Macedonia

I flatter myself that, at least in the last few months, I've seen quite a bit of the world. Of course, it's not even a tiny fraction of what there is to see, and not even a blip on the radar of all the experiences this world offers, but still. For a 21 year old kid, I feel like I'm doing okay. And really, I have the rest of my life to travel the world. I intend to.

When I went to visit Conor and Kacey, who are in the Peace Corps in Tetovo, Macedonia, it was without a doubt one of the biggest learning experiences of my life. In just about three days I saw more of the world than I have in the last 20 years put together, and I realized some things.

The world has problems. Deep-rooted, systematic problems that will not get fixed because we put band-aids on them. They have to be solved by single people working in single locations, making progress in inches, not miles. They will only get better with the sustained effort of people who are dedicated to a larger idea, yes, but more dedicated to the people they are helping to make the world better for themselves.

What struck me most about Macedonia was not the poverty, although it is painfully visible in the stray dogs running around, the litter, the half-finished buildings and the use of corrugated aluminum as a building material. It was not the corruption, although to hear Conor talk about the political situation in the country, and specifically in his municipality, seemed (to my privileged American mindset) the sort of thing that hasn't happened in the world (my immediate experience of the world got an awful lot larger after my visit to the Balkans) since Selma in the '60s. It wasn't the certifiable chaos of Kacey's school, where the kids run unsupervised through the hallways while the teachers congregate in the lounge. All of those things opened my eyes much wider than I ever thought they could go to life outside our bubble, and I'm so grateful for that. But none of these things struck me as much as one thing: the potential.

You have to remember that I was only there for literally three days, and so my perceptions are inevitably skewed. I haven't experienced the culture as Conor, Kacey and the rest of the PCVs have, and so I may be way off in making these observations. But, having been brought up to always see the good in things, I feel like I should say it anyway.

The teachers I met at Kacey's school really love her, and value the effort that she's making to improve the education they can give to their students. They were so welcoming to me when I went to school with her, but it was the kids who really floored me. People are pretty skeptical of miracles for some reason these days, which always confuses me, since I think you witness one every time you hear a little kid start to read. Or write. Or express what they're feeling with words.

And put all of this into a different language, a language which is the kids in question's second or third, and how can you deny that it's not a miracle to hear them read to you? The kids I met at this school have grown up in an educational system that, by American standards, might not even merit that name. And yet, with some good instruction, they're writing thank you notes to people who have donated books to their new library, in English, and teaching me how to say apple in the three languages they had to learn before this one. If the human mind isn't capable of miracles, then they really don't exist.

Seeing the brightly-painted room filled with bookshelves and CD players that was not too long ago a storeroom but is now a functioning library only reaffirmed for the first of many times during this visit that there is potential in human beings to overcome the most adverse circumstances, especially when I got to see it in use by the students. The little girls who excitedly showed us around the beautiful Painted Mosque in Tetovo, proudly displaying their own Qur'ans and inviting us to see the balconies for prayer made me think a little resentfully about the inequality that women the world over, and not only Muslim women, face. But these little girls made me think that devotion to one's faith may, slowly but surely, be becoming seperate from one's dictated place in the world. I really hope so.

It's slow going, for sure. From what Conor and Kacey told me, there's a lot of racism in Macedonia, which, by virtue of being a country cut out from a larger political entity in Yugoslavia, has a very mixed population, especially around the borders. Conor and Kacey (as you should be aware if you're reading their blog) have had to learn two different languages, Albanian and Macedonian, to work in Tetovo. This incredible feat they've accomplished only makes me believe more in the potential of the human mind, and the fact that they interact with everyone completely seperate from their ethnic identity makes me hope that someday the citizens of Macedonia might be able to start to do the same thing.

Conor and I spent a day with another PCV, Karen, at her home beside Lake Ohrid, which is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It's crystal blue, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and breathtakingly lovely Byzantine churches... it's idyllic. I wish more people knew about it. Look at the New York Time's "Places to See in 2010", and then book your plane ticket. There's so much potential in this place to boost the economy of a country where a huge portion of the population is unemployed... if only the world knew about it.

It was wonderful to see my cousins, too. Of course. First of all, the human contact probably saved me from going stark raving mad from solitude, but it also meant that I got to hear their impressions of their lives right now and talk about life in general. It's people like them, like Karen, like their friend Ronan, and Vjosa and Alex who make me sure that things can get better, even in somewhere that's incredibly fraught with problems. Their efforts make me sure that, with the same level of commitment, awareness and action, each of us can make a difference to the world around us. It may not make the morning papers, but if it helps the people around you to make a better world for themselves, and they in turn help others... that's how things get done, right?

I don't want to be all sunshine and rainbows about this, because I think it's incredibly naive to minimize the sufferings of people by saying that with hard work it can get better. I believe that, but I also believe that the process can be hugely frustrating, and that's why the world still has the inconcievable problems it does. The way I have to see it is this: you feel better when you help other people. That selfish reason alone should be enough to make us keep doing it.

A little story about what happened after I left Conor and Kace:

I boarded a train for Thessaloniki, in Greece, planning to spend the night there before going on to Athens in the morning. It was dark, getting late, and the train stops at the border station, Gevgalja (forgive my spelling). And that's all she wrote. I wait for a few minutes before an engineer comes along and gestures me off. I don't speak Macedonian, it will surprise you to learn, and I have already said that it was dark and late... I was terrified. I honestly had no clue what was going on or what I was going to do. I just kept going up to random people asking "Thessaloniki?" with this scared, pathetic look on my face, and getting incomprehensible replies in languages I don't know, or shrugs.

Finally, I found what appeared to be the station manager or something, and asked him. He thought for a moment before the word came to him: tomorrow. This station appeared to me to be out in the middle of not very much, and so I wasn't sure what was going to happen now. I didn't have a plan, an inkling of how to ask for help... I started hyperventilating. This guy took pity on me, brought me into his office, made me tea and patted my arm. He and I cobbled together a conversation in which he asked me if I needed a hotel by drawing pictures and a game of charades, and I said yes. He then called me a taxi.

As we were waiting, we talked in our little language, and I learned that he has a ten year old son and a wife, and they live about 30 km outside of town. When the taxi arrived, he helped me get my stuff in, shook my hand and reminded me that I needed to be at the station at 10.00 the following morning. I never even asked his name.The taxi driver spoke English. He took me to this lovely little hotel, acting as my translator to get me a room there. He helped me take my stuff upstairs, asking where I had been in Macedonia. I told him Tetovo and Ohrid, and we bonded over how beautiful Ohrid is, and how more people need to know about it. He told me good luck and goodnight. I don't know his name either.

These two guys who didn't know me from Adam helped me out of a potentially dangerous situation (young American girl by herself in country where she doesn't speak language is always a little dangerous) out of the goodness of their hearts. They had no obligation to me at all. They were just good guys.

It's this kind of thing that makes me sure that things in the world will get better. Again, it's going to take awhile, and it's going to take a lot of work, but some of that work will just be being kind to strangers and helping people out when they need it.

That can't be that hard, can it?