PC Flashback - July 1997, I Amost Die

So Peace Corps had us practice getting around the country on our own. We self-selected/split into groups of four, and each group was randomly assigned a city in southern Kazakhstan. PC gave us money for transportation, lodging, and incidentals, and sent us off with no escorts and a list of tasks to accomplish. To help us become independent! My group drew a smallish town called Merke, about an 8-9 hour bus ride from Kapchagai. Our adventure started right away.

We decided to leave at night, so we could avoid traveling in the heat of the day and maybe sleep on the (scary, non-air-conditioned) bus. Well, I was having problems sleeping, and at about 2-3 in the morning, as our bus was trucking down the road, the front door comes flying open—the wind catches it and is pulling the bus so that we’re CAREENING back and forth across the highway because the bus driver is not clever enough to let up on the gas. So the “co bus driver” is clawing for the door when I suddenly see the headlights of a large truck bearing down on us from the other lane – well, actually, I shouldn’t say OTHER lane, coz our bus driver was making use of both lanes. Finally, Einstein discovers that if he lets up on the gas, the bus will actually slow down so the other dude can get the door closed. At this point, a couple of other trainees from another group going to a town near ours wake up and are all like, “What? What?” And I turn around and screech, “We were almost killed! We were almost killed!” But we continue on our merry way.

The way the highway goes, we have to go through the northern part of Krgyzstan and make a stop in their capital, Bishkek. So we stop there about 4-5 a.m., and a Kirghiz militia guy gets on to do a random passport check – and of course he heads straight for the group of Americans. This wouldn’t be so bad except that Leo (from the other group) realizes he’s forgotten both his passport AND kartochka. So while the Kirghiz cop is checking Michael & Peter’s documents, Leo starts blubbering “Korpus Meera! Korpus Meera!” which is Russian for Peace Corps – as if that is going to prevent the lot of us from being hauled off to a police station to be  beaten and robbed (standard procedure for former Soviet countries if you give them half a chance – at least according to our always scary safety & security lectures – even in Krgyzstan, the most “Democratic” of the former states/stans). Anyway, “luckily,” gunfire outside the bus forces the Kirghiz militia guy to dash off the bus  and we’re able to continue on our journey. That’s the good news. The bad news is we thus made it safely to Merke.

You know how the streets sound after/during the rain? When cars are driving on them? That’s what they sounded like in Merke, but we couldn’t figure out why, coz it CERTAINLY wasn’t raining – it was horribly hot. Well, the reason for the noise was coz the tar on the streets was melting! Jenny had a shoe get stuck in it while trying to take a picture. It was between 115 - 120 degrees the whole time we were there. Our “hotel” had only one toilet and it was out of order. One shower stall and it was only cold water and it sprayed UP and not down. And of curse no A/C.  We took a bus to the nearby mountains for a little diversion, but when we got out and asked the driver when the last bus back to town was, he said HIS was, due to “shortages.” So we went straight back.

We walked around town a bit and got all excited when we found a movie theater! We translated the “marquee” to say they were showing, “Live and Let Die” so we thought it’d be fun to see a James Bond movie dubbed in Russian—plus the matinee was only 20 tenge, which is about 30 cents U.S. Well, surprise, surprise, the movie was actually called “To Live and to Die” and had Gene Simmons from Kiss as an Arab terrorist who dies at the end when a grenade explodes in his mouth. For real. And the dubbing was a hoot – it was just one guy’s voice, even for the female characters, and a couple of times he screwed up and said half a line Russian and half in English: “Ya neez nayu where they went!” I slept through half of it and ripped my shorts on a nail sticking out of their crappy seats. But it certainly was an experience! There was also a full-sized 727 Aeroflot PLANE parked next to our hotel for some reason. Aeroflot is the Russian national airline that is so dangerous people call it Aerosplat—always crashing into the mountains.

Koni & I were so over the heat – one day I drank 6 liters of liquid and didn’t pee ONCE – that we decided to leave a day early as we’d accomplished all our tasks, leaving the “good” PCTs in our group (Jenny & Joan) to stay one more night as originally planned/scheduled. Again, we took an overnight bus to sleep/spare us from the heat, but there was a large hole in the floor of the bus right in front of my seat so I couldn’t sleep for fear of sliding out onto the street and being run over by the back wheels of the bus. Well, apparently, I did drift off, coz I wake up at who knows what time and see people getting off at the bus station so I wake Koni and tell her we’re there. We stumble off and notice the bus station looks just a little bit different before we see KIRGHIZ and not KAZAKH militia around, realized we’re pit stopped in Bishkek again, and barely make it back to the bus before it takes off for Almaty.  When I got home, my host mom said it was just as hot back home – so hot her thermometer broke as it “only” goes up to 50 degrees centigrade.

Seriously, how can my site compete with this excitement?

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.

Food in Montenegro

So yeah, they love their meat here. Just as I'd been cutting back in the states, I now get it pretty much every meal, outside of dinner on Wednesdays & Fridays coz host family is Orthodox and kinda/sorta fasts on those days. Bread, too - I eat a SHIT. TON. of bread. Although lately I've been able to stave off SOME of it.

Other than that, I'm definitely eating much healthier than in the states. Firstly, coz there's no fast food here. There are two Burger Kings in the whole country - one in Bar, one in Podgorica - and that's it. I mean, you can still get chips and candy and soda, but my host family doesn't eat any of that so if and when I want it, it comes out of my "walkaround" money.

I was drinking Fanta orange a fair amount when I first got here - partly coz it's better than in the states. Europe requires them to actually put a little orange juice in it, AND they don't allow the cancer-causing dyes or high fructose corn syrup. But after awhile, I just got tired of soda.  Your body adjusts pretty quickly once you start eating healthier and shitty food just tastes, well, shitty.

Speaking of Fanta, and ALL their plastic bottle-capped drinks, they actually make them so that the cap screws off but stays connected by a strip of plastic so the cap doesn't roll off or get lost. Clever thing that of curse they can't do in America because, um, er, because it makes sense?

In general, food is about 33% less than in the states. And I figured that out by buying a mix of stuff during that ten day period my host family was off at the thermals, and then compared prices to Wal-Mart online. So let's say AT LEAST 33% less - and I'm in a coastal town that is more expensive.

I've also eaten more cabbage in the past 6 weeks than I have, literally, in the past 25 years - and I know that because that's when I was in Kazakhstan! lol  Still not my favorite, but I can get it down, mixed with meat (of course) and other stuff. On the plus side, I've also eaten WAY more mandarins since the trees are all over the place here - including a few in my host family's front yard.  Also happy to see they love cherries here so I've had a lot of cherry tea, cherry jam tortes, cherry juice, cherry chocolate, cherries in my yogurt, etc.  

Unfortunately, they're not big on spices. Some of the local dishes are good enough, but, again, just not spicy at all.  You'll get garlic, the occasional peppers (but noramlly sweet peppers) and maybe some salt.  They don't have salt & pepper on the table in shakers, but will sometimes have a small bowl of salt on the table fot you to get a pinch or two to sprinkle on your food. Curiously, they have a LOT of different spicy chips. Doritos are here, in multiple flavors, and there are a lot of local chips that are spicy cheese flavored, or taco flavored, or paprika, or chili, etc. I feel like that's a hint to folks to spice up their food more since the spicy chips are popular. So I do eat a fair amount of chips, still - and, again--and like the local crackers--they taste better than in the states coz there's not so much junk and presevratives in them. Actually came across a bag of "hot dog flavored!" chips the other day and tried them just to try them. It was disturbing how much they did, indeed, taste like hot dogs, and I get more than I want of those anyway so haven't bought them again.  Their chocolate is good.

A lot of folks only eat twice a day: breakfast and then a large lunch in the mid-to-late afternoon. Some folks will have a light meal or snack in the evening. Fun/weird thing: margarine comes in tubes like toothpaste. And eggs come 10 to a carton, not 12. And they also love hot dogs.  Have eaten more of those in the past 6 weeks than in the past, oh god, at least 10 years or more. 

Will end with a pic of the exterior of my host family's place, as requested by some folks. You can see my purple bouganveilla upstairs! My door is on the left:

My Host Family and Training Site in Montenegro

So as already mentioned in my "Posh Corps" post, I definitely lucked out with Montenegro - at least so far.  As for my host family, I got pretty lucky there, too - although all of us seem to have scored as no one has had any real complaints to date.

I'm living with a retired couple - Zhivorad (Zhika) and Lyilina (Leela). He is a retired Orthodox priest (!) and she is a retired banker. Zhika makes his own wine, which is great, and Leela is a good cook - altho the cuisine here in general is VERY light on the spices side. Like most Montenegrins, they LOVE meat, but luckily they don't eat it on Wednesdays and Fridays so I get a break then. Here's a pic:

I'll talk more about the religious conflicts here later (in the Balkans?? can you believe it??), but, I guess somewhat understandably, as a Serb and as a retired Orthodox priest, Zhika has some, er, rather "uncharitable" views on Muslims. I made the mistake of mentioning I was glad to be living in a household that eats bacon and he used that to get a dig in on the "crazy" Muslims (5 of the 7 of us live with Muslim families).  But they're both good people.

A couple weeks ago he asked me the dreaded, "What religion are you?" question, but I was relieved they seemed to take it okay when I said none and I quickly followed up with a story about how difficult it was (confession: it wasn't that difficult) when I was young and would go with my Grandma - who was 7th Day Adventist - to church on Saturdays while my friends were out playing, and then THEY would be in church when I was ready to play on Sundays. They had heard of 7th Day Adventists, but didn't have anything to say about them one way or the other.

This past Saturday at dinner he told me it was a day of remembrance for their loved ones who have passed. In addition to the usual prayer before dinner, he lit a candle and also some incense and chanted and sang before we sat own to eat. 

My very first night with them, their daughter was down from Podorica to help with settling in and translating (she speaks excellent English, they speak none). They asked what I had been doing before Peace Corps, so I explained what an Intensive Therapeutic Foster Parent was, started talking about Roy, and proceeded to cry a bit missing the little monster. This caused the daughter to cry a little in sympathy, and when she translated, Leela teared up a bit while Zhika put his hand on his heart and said I was a good Christian.  Probably the first time I've been called that!  :)

Since then, we use google translate as I struggle to pick up the language, and it works pretty well on the whole, although there was a fun moment some weeks ago when Leela chattered away at my phone, hit a button that switched it to another language by mistake and when she handed it to me, the English translation read simply, "I'll kill you." It took me awhile to stop laughing while they looked confused before I was able to explain what happened.  Huge laughs from Leela over that!  :)

They both like me, have told the daughter (who came for dinner last Sunday) they are fond of me, etc. They adored their first volunteer, Bonnie, from year before last, but last year they were stuck with, in Leela's words, "a fat policeman" who was a bust and didn't complete his service.  I think they were "surprised" that a police officer could not handle Peace Corps.  Me, not so much.  Lol.

As I think I mentioned, our house is barely a 10 minute walk from the beach, I have a sea-facing balcony overflowing with a large purple bougainvillea, and their driveway has a trellis overhang covered in grapes, along with a few mandarin trees next to the driveway, flowers, and pepper plants.  

We are in a collection of small villages that are in the Bar metropolitan area. Bar is the 5th largest city in Montenegro, with just under 20,000 people, and about double that in the metropolitan area. While all of us are within a couple of miles of the school where we do training, we're techincally spread among 4 different villages. Mine is a more or less straight shot down the mountain from the school, and a 30 minute walk home. I don't walk TO school, because, as mentioned, it's up the mountain from me.  Steep. I need to try to figure out the difference in elevation.

The streets are very narrow and very twisty and riding in the van to school each morning is just this side of a thrill ride with blind turns and frequent stops/manuevering if/when two cars approach in opposite directions and need to squeeze by each other. We're all amazed that we have not seen - let alone been in - any accidents. Reverse jinx! EDIT: Literally the morning after I typed this first draft, as we were headed to school, some dumbass came down the mountain on a blind curve in the middle of the road and our driver had to swerve to the right where - LUCKILY - there was a rare bit of a shoulder on the side of the road. Had we been less than 100 yards further up the road, we would have careened off the side of the mountain and tumbled down a sheer cliff.  Fun times!

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.