Getting settled into Tetovo

On November 29th, myself on 33 other Peace Corps Trainees from the United States were sworn in by US Ambassador Paul Wohlers as the 18th cohort of Peace Corps Volunteers to the Republic of Macedonia. It was a lovely ceremony that involved speeches in both Macedonian & Albanian, the singing of both the American and the Macedonian national anthems, and a traditional dance performance by a local troupe. Afterwards we had a reception with our Pre-Service Training (PST) host families and our new counterparts.

Rachel and I with our host mothers and the Ambassador

It was a very emotional affair for all of us. Most of us felt very attached to our PST families and were quite reluctant to move to our permanent home stay families the next day. We had also gotten used to hanging out with each other all the time, both daily in the PST training villages and weekly for our hub days. It was also a renewal of the sense of adventure though. We'd each been assigned and gotten to visit our permanent postings, our new home stay families, and our new counterparts. It was definitely a watershed moment in our time in the Peace Corps Macedonia.

The next morning, Goce drove me and my inordinate amount of packs and bags to Tetovo. I was honestly not looking forward to living here. My impression during our first week in country was quite limited and I really wasn't that impressed with the city the first time around. However, once I started getting settled in, I realized that it's actually quite nice. I'm incredibly close to the mountains, close to some really good skiing, and only half an hour bus ride away from Skopje. On top of that, there's really a lot being invested into the city. There's new high density housing being constructed throughout the core, there're trashcans to be found, the streets are decently well lit. There's also some really cool coffee bars and the local grocery stores do a good job about stocking the kinds of food I would want to buy. Overall it's pretty nice living in the city.

I share the city with one other volunteer,

Jordan, Shea, Me, Enid, Kelly, and Casey

Casey who is part of the previous cohort to ours (MAK17). Strangely enough, we're neighbors. In a city of 50,000 people, we just happen to live 5 doors away from each other. Two of my friends from Romanovce are here in the area with me. Jordan and Kelly live and teach English in villages about 5 miles away from Tetovo. There's not really any public spaces for women in their villages though, so they make it into town fairly often for coffee and talk. Also living in the area is Enid, a MAK16 who will be leaving soon to return to the United States. Another PNW volunteer, she and I actually have some acquaintances in common from back in Seattle. Overall, we're a pretty solid group here in the Tetovo region I think and I'm really excited to get to spend the next years of my life with them.

I'm also going to be spending the next few years of my life living with my new host family.

I live right in the middle of the city with a grandmother (Baba in Macedonian) named Dobrica. Baba Dobrica is a super energetic, fiesty, and hilarious retiree and widower. She and I share the first floor of a two story duplex. On the second floor live her son, his wife, and their two daughters (13 and 18). Baba also has a daughter who lives with her husband, and their daughter (18) and son (22) out in the village 5 miles from Tetovo where Dobrica's husband is from. Baba doesn't speak English, but everyone else does, so I try to get by in Macedonian whenever possible, but it's really comforting knowing that assistance is upstairs if the conversation ever gets too complicated.

Living here has definitely been a different experience than living in Romanovce. You're willing to put up with a lot more when you know it's only going to be for two months. When you're living with someone for the next two years though, it's really important to get things right. You want to strike the right chord and balance between being just a renter and being a full-blown member of the family. The motives of the family also have a lot to do with how your home-stay experience goes. In my case, my baba is basically adopting me. In other cases though, the host parents have been primarily motivated by have a reliable source of income. Luckily for me, my baba and I are both pretty outwardly expressive people and we're both pretty flexible. It didn't take very long for us to work out a system that worked well for both of us. I have as much autonomy as I need and try to help out around the house wherever possible. I tell her a day or two in advance what my schedule is going to look like and we plan meals around that. I get to cook whenever I want, but don't have to worry about the rest of the time. It also works out better that we have a similar diet. I like healthy breads, lots of vegetables, not much meat, lots of cheese, and not much oil. I have learnt that I have to be pretty insistent about the foods that I don't care for or I get them all the time. Medlars, persimmons, and bologna are all foods that I don't necessarily dislike but I really don't want very often. Other volunteers have definitely had more issues with finding appropriate diets.

They tell you when you get to PST that no two Peace Corps experiences are exactly the same, even within the relatively small program in Macedonia...and they're right. A large part of this is because each volunteer, counterpart, and posting are different. Within the last two years though, Peace Corps Macedonia has moved to a permanent home stay program. In the past volunteers would live in families for their PST but would move into apartments for the remainder of their volunteer experience. Now, however, we move from a temporary home stay to a new home stay in our host community and we will live in homes for the duration of our service. In addition to our differences as volunteers, the families we live with now also play a huge role in how our experiences go. Some of my colleagues, for example, are having issues with hosts wanting to be family when the volunteer just wants to board while some of us have hosts who just want more income and really don't want the inconvenience of having an extra person live with them. Some of us have huge freezing rooms in huge freezing houses while others have warm rooms in what are essentially separate units. I'm very happy with my living situation, but working with a permanent host family is definitely just another thing that can really have a huge impact on what one makes of Peace Corps service.

Probably the other largest impact on each individuals service is the work counterpart. These are our co-workers and supervisors for the next two years. Most of the time these are either fellow teachers at schools or one of the people involved in an organization or municipality. For me, I actually have two different organizations and my primary counterparts are the heads of the respective organizations. For the next two years, I'll be working with the Macedonian-Croatian Alliance of Tetovo and the Tetovo Youth Alliance, with the Youth Alliance being my primary assignment.

The Tetovo Youth Alliance is a bit of a misnomer, as they actually focus on good governance. They originally started as response of many young adults to the insurgency in the early 2000s here in Tetovo. As life here as calmed down, they have focused their energies on improving civil society here in the Pollog region surrounding Tetovo. Coming up this year, we hope to be working on a project ensuring that children aren't being used by political parties during the upcoming elections. Past projects have involved monitoring municipalities for transparency or ensuring procurement protocol are followed. They do a lot of work here in the region, but they (and many other NGOs in Macedonia) have a hard time making sure they're busy year round. A lot of the work I'll be doing with them will involve networking, finding alternative funding sources, and building up capacity so that they can operate year round and really focus on their mission. The other important work I'll be doing is to actually help them define their mission, goals, values etc. With these, I can work with them in developing five or ten year plans etc. So much of the work that I'll be doing here will have a lot in common with what I've been learning the last year at the Evans School.

The Macedonian-Croatian Alliance will be a very different work experience though. They are a volunteerism focused group that wants to share their Croatian culture and goodwill with their neighbors here in Macedonia. There really isn't any more focus to the group than that. Some of the volunteers are focused on youth sports, some of them are focused on cultural events, and some of them are focused on underprivileged or handicapped children. With them, it's a lot more difficult trying to identify ways to achieve the goal of building capacity...but implementing projects is still good experience for me so I'll go along with it. Besides that, my counterparts are very enthusiastic about the potentials of having a PCV...so it might be a bit before I figure out what exactly it is they want me to do. I'm still early enough into my service that I'm not really that worried about any of that though.

In any case, that's what I'm up to. We'll see how long it'll take for me to get some other blog posts up on here. I learned a long time ago not to promise frequency of posts. But I'd like to get some smaller posts about some of the things that I've been  up to since arriving here in Tetovo.
Hope you all have a great holiday season!