Ben vs. Hole

The month of July has been very hot, in the 90’s, but thankfully not very humid. The tourists have started coming in droves, the beaches are full and the nightly Xhiro is packed. As I mentioned before, I think, we started working at two summer camps, one at a school run by Italian nuns and the other at the orphanage. Unfortunately the camp at the orphanage got bogged down in unfinished paperwork, something about who was responsible for the children, so they closed it down. So from 5 to 7 every week night we have been walking 15 minutes each way to the school. Once there, Lauren teaches a small English class, while I play games with the older boys, aged 11 to 14. Lauren tries to play as many games as possible so the kids do not think they are in class, but it is hard because we do this all outside, and her kids have to sit and watch all the other kids playing ball or doing relay races.

Meanwhile, I take my kids and play soccer or some variation of soccer or other game on the sports field that the nuns have built. It’s the only one I have seen since I got here. There are not any open spaces for the kids to play sports here. I also taught them kick ball which was an experience. They don’t play many games here, volleyball and soccer are about it. So anything where you have to throw a ball or catch a ball are strange to them. Boys here are also the favored gender and are very spoiled. Which means they can be very poor sports when losing and often cry if they do lose, or god forbid, if a girl beats them. The nuns told us that not long ago they couldn’t play any games because the boys would just cry all the time about not winning. So even though we are just playing games, the experience can be very stressful. Not being able to speak the language while trying to control or teach a group of kids is a challenge, but the Nuns are never far away. They have a total of 200 kids at the camp with about 15 other helpers and even some volunteers from Italy that have come to help for a week or two.

In first weeks at the camp, I heard several kids call me, in Albanian, “Chinese” and “Japanese”. I wasn’t sure what would drive them to call me this, so I asked on of the teachers. She immediately wanted to know which kid it was and told me it was very bad. I pressed her to understand why it was bad and try to figure the historical significance but to no avail. So the next day, when Lauren and I got to camp we were told the kids had something to tell us. Since it was the end of the second week, we figured, augh, they want to say thank you to us for coming. So all the older boys and girls lined up in front of us and one stepped out and said something in Albanian very quickly. We asked him to slow down and repeat. He did say it again but too rapidly for us to understand. Lauren thanked them all and said you are welcome. The teacher then asked if we had any questions, so I hinted that we wanted to know what the boy had said. She told us that he was apologizing on behalf of the group for calling us Chinese…

So Wednesday night we left the camp on our way home to make dinner. From playing soccer almost every night, I had developed a bad shin splint that was finally healing, but in general I have been very tired after playing for two hours in the heat. So we stopped and bought two bananas, two peppers and two potatoes at one of the many little markets that line our walk to the school. After leaving the dychan, Lauren and I were talking and I stepped into a small hole in the side walk and twisted my ankle. Now this unfortunately is a normal occurrence for me, going back to an eighth grade basketball injury. Usually my ankle will go out and pop right back in and I might have a little pain but no big deal. I tried to step down and knew this was no ordinary little twist. I jumped to get weight off my ankle and Lauren knew something was wrong. She told me to sit down and rest, but I knew my ankle was swelling and I just wanted to get home, still another 7 minutes or so away. So I hopped and as I did I got nauseous and finally stopped when I though I might throw up. I told Lauren maybe I would sit down. Here is where things get a little cloudy from my point of view, I remember sitting, then I remembering laying, I remember a lot of people gathering around me, a lady dumping cold water on me, then I remember having a very nice dream, from which I was awakened with more shouting and people trying to get an ambulance. Poor Lauren didn’t know what to do with me, I had passed out from the pain, my eye’s rolled into the back of my head and I slammed my head into the concrete. I came to, after a few scary shakes as Lauren explained to me. At this point Lauren thought I was having a seizure. She was trying to call the Nuns because she knew they had a car, but they were finishing up the camp. Plus she had me telling her no hospital, no hospital, she also had lot of Albanians speaking Albanian and broken English trying to help her and get me an ambulance.

So after bouncing my head off the concrete once, I think I got a slight concussion and proceeded to pass out again. Someone woke me with another startle but this time there was a guy in a white coat there, all worried about my head for some reason. At this point I still had no idea about what was going on, and just kept telling people it was ankle they needed to be looking at. They told me my head was bleeding and then I needed to go to the hospital. Now I am not all that tall but for Albania I am well above average so when they slid me in the ambulance and I looked down and noticed my feet dangling past the end of the stretcher, right where the door was about to be closed, despite the sheer agony I lifted my ankle up and out of the way of the slamming door. The jarring ride didn’t take all that long, but seemed like a hour. The cold water that had been poured on me had given me bad chills, so I started to shake pretty bad, all while Lauren was trying to call the Peace Corps to talk with our medical officer. We got to the hospital in less than 10 minutes. I kept trying to tell them I worked there and even asked for the one doctor I knew who spoke English, but he was gone for the day and they were not that interested that I worked there. So a nurse came and started to clean my head wound, and was very impressed with my ability to speak Albanian. Lauren took one look at this process and went and sat down before she almost passed out. As many of you know Lauren and blood do not get along, neither do Lauren and hospitals for that matter. The doctor came in and asked me to move my fingers, he meant toes since they use the same word in Albanian for fingers and toes, as several random Albanians walked in to watch what was going on. He said my head was just scrapped, but he wanted an x-ray of it along with my ankle.

They put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me along the smoke filled lobby to an elevator. We went down one floor and then the orderly, who was the same guy that picked me up in the Ambulance, wheeled me to a set of stairs and said to get up. So now with my swollen ankle and slight concussion, they wanted me to hop on one foot down 10 stairs… looking back it is kind of funny but you have to think about what happens with the people who can’t walk at all? The X-ray room was straight out of the 50’s, I had to again hop to the elderly doctor who set me up to do my head and then my ankle never offering any led covering for the rest of my body. Then I had to hop back to bottom of the stairs and wait for the X-rays to develop. They were all normal, I hopped back up the stairs, got wheeled back to the elevator and then to an exam room, that I shared with an elderly woman who was having back problems. They asked if I had any allergies, wanted to give me some medication which I declined and told me that I was free to go. We asked about crutches and ice, they said they had neither but I should get both. They wheeled me out front to where Sr. Maricruz was waiting with her car. Lauren had done well in working the phones. We asked who we had to pay and the orderly just looked at us, no payment required. We even got the x-rays rolled up in paper as a keepsake.

Lauren waited til we got home to tell me that they had shaved a chunk of hair out in order to clean my wound.

So now I am writing from bed, with my two bags of frozen “mixed vegetables” wrapped around my elevated foot. My head ache is dull but not too bad now and the pain in my foot is nowhere near what it was. So now I just have to keep off of it for another day or two and then slowly start using it again. The problem is Sarande is built on a big hill so it is not the most conducive place to recover. So for now I have been biding my time between watching episodes of Entourage, Family Guy and listening to Pod Casts of NPR on the computer as well reading my new book this month, Three Cups of Tea.

Lauren is reading a book that was given to us by the missionary here, Richard, and the book is called the “invisible servant.” It is a book he wrote about his time here, from his first visit, to giving up his job to come work here for free, to being shot at, airlifted by British commandos and still living here after 14 years. We have met him twice and he has been a great resource with regard to living in Albania as well as how to work with Albanians. He does not sugar coat it by any means but his insight has been invaluable. We are hoping to work with him on some projects in the future (like filling up holes in the sidewalks); he is taking leave for the month of August but will return in September.

Well that is about it, everything else is about the same, my work at the hospital is slow, we did do a beach clean up, but it fizzled out, with only about 7 minutes of people cleaning and then claiming it was too hot to continue. Lauren and I cleaned two bags of garbage as the rest went and got ice-cream. One of the “beachistas” as he called himself was quite impressed that Lauren had come all the way from America to clean the beach. My counter part informed me that the beach was cleaned nightly by the city, so we didn’t really need to do much.

Lauren has started a review class at the university for the students so that they can catch up on some of the items they did not get a chance to cover last semester. She only has two students coming so far. So that’s where we are at today. We are very excited that Joan, Lauren’s mom, is coming to visit in less than a month! And again, we want to thank those of you who have sent packages and letters, the post lady has come to know us very well. Hopefully by our next entry I will be up and walking, maybe running and my hair will have grown back! Anyone know how many times you can freeze and unfreeze peas and corn before you can no longer eat them?

Foggy Saranda Afternoon

P.S. Oh yea...one more reminder to add to the list of daily reminders that we really are in the Peace Corps. I gave Lauren a haircut the other day. I don't remember if we talked about the "lovely" multi-layered haircut she got here during training, but after 2 mos., she finally gave in and let me trim off the point. I enjoyed the experience much more than she did!