Finally around 8:30 a.m. we were on our way to Ravna Reka (River Ravna), about 10 or 15 kilometres down a windy country road past a huge illegal dumpsite, eventually getting more and more remote and narrow as you proceed into the mountainous area. I realized, chagrined, that I had forgotten my digital camera, which I had promised to bring in order to photograph the event and to post the photos on my website. Luckily, Jasminka had a camera with film, in order to at least capture the event and later maybe we can scan in those pictures after they have been developed. (Our office is lucky enough to have a scanner, believe it or not!)
Ravna Reka is the future Eco-Tourism site, which I believe will have its grand opening in July. It is a project funded by USAID that was supposed to be completed at the end of summer 2002, but apparently it had several delays. Right now, it is a pretty large area with a circular dirt path and some grassy areas, all of which are located to the left of the steadily flowing river. Several months ago, the construction of numerous benches, and picnic tables with overhangs was completed, and they were stained and some areas were painted green. I don't know so much about construction, so maybe my explanation is not the greatest, but soon hopefully I will be putting some pictures up and you will be able to see it for yourself.
So, anyhow, we journeyed there on a school bus accompanied by some men who were wearing park-ranger type of uniforms, I am not sure quite what their job is or what governmental Ministry they were part of, but they were there with maps and something that resembled a plan, so everyone listened to them. Also present was the kids' teacher, and a two female members from our organization (I had inferred that my actual counterpart and boss were going to arrive later with sandwiches for everyone).
I noticed right off the bat, that when we got off the bus, there wasn't really anyone who took center stage to debrief everyone on what we were doing. The "rangers" were walking around with big trash sacks of baby trees, handing them out at random. Some kids had brought shovels, and were leaning on them and talking loudly with their friends. Some kids were eating burek or chips and drinking sodas or yoghurt, and I thought to myself, so help me God if I see any of that trash end up on the ground. I myself had avoided drinking any beverages since breakfast, since I couldn't be sure how long we would be there, and I had been informed that there were no bathrooms. (By the way, there were no garbage cans, either.)
So finally, even with my minimal language skills I was able to see that some kind of basic instructions were being given, and in small groups, the kids started to drift towards the river. I hung around in the vicinity of the teacher and rangers briefly, trying to gather some information on what was going on, and to establish myself as an adult rather than one of the kids! The kids were told from where to where along the river line the trees needed to be, and they started digging holes. I tried to help them with a few key pointers, such as digging the hole as deep or as shallow as necessary depending on which little trees they had, and taking care to remove the larger rocks away from the area where the roots would need room to grow. When digging in grassy areas, I tried to encourage them to utilize and break up the chunks of darker, fertile soil instead of tossing it all to the side with the rocks.
I learned a lot of words and as the next hour and a half slid by, I took care to gravitate amongst as many of the students as I could. I tried to say a few things to each of them, to establish some kind of connnection. But ultimately, some of my best young helpers stayed near to me and we we all took turns digging, pushing down the soil layer by layer to make sure the trees wouldn't be washed away with the next rain, and conversing, they to me with their surprisingly good English and me to them with my childish Macedonian. I carefully avoided topics like how much money I make here versus what I used to make in the States (not considered a rude question here), my opinions on the war in Iraq - and a new one, did I think Alexandar the Great was a Greek or a Macedonian? All eyes on me as I tried to explain that I didn't have an opinion about it.
It was difficult at times to focus them on the matters at hand. I think that like in any type of group work, some people always end up working harder than others. For example, a few girls with shovels frustrated me because I don't think I ever saw them dig one single hole! After about ninety minutes of standing around, they said they were going to take a break and walked away with everyone else, while myself and four dedicated kids continued to plant trees, all the way along the path over to the road into the area. It was kind of humorous when we completed work in the indicated areas but still had a large amount of trees left over. One ranger wandered around, looking left and right, with kids trailing after him. It was so obvious to me that he was winging it that I had to try not to laugh at his efforts. People had some interesting ideas about where to plant trees and the formation in which they should be planted. I tried to remind everyone that we had to think about how they would look in the future!
I tried to motivate everyone to keep going, but I was the only one interested - everyone else wanted to take a break. Several boys gathered some glass bottles, placed them on a large flat rock by the river, and began throwing large rocks at the bottles. It was a complete free-for-all. Trying to master my poker face, I carefully watched the expressions of everyone around. Girls, boys who weren't participating (there were few) and adults alike all watched, laughing and smiling. I had a difficult time at that point disguising my disgust, and made a comment to no one in particular that we came to make the area a better space for recreation, not to break up a bunch of glass.
Luckily my counterparts arrived soon afterwards with sandwiches - the downtime was killing me! (It kind of reminded me of when I worked with SED (severely emotionally disturbed) kids at the ranch before joining the Peace Corps - downtime was practically a guarantee of assaultive or at least deviant behavior!) Everyone took a seat at the picnic tables and a few kids that I had been working with earlier invited me to come and sit with them. All the guys pulled out their cigarettes and water bottles filled with rakija (traditional homemade alcohol), and explained to me, "This is our tradition. We must drink!" and one kid poured some on the table and tried to light it on fire.
I asked him why he was doing this, and he laughed "Anarchy". I explained to him in Macedonian that anarchy was the lack of government, not lighting a fire on a brand new table that was a gift for everyone to share. He kind of smirked, but everyone laughed at him so he quickly put away the lighter. I peeled an orange, ate it, and walked a short distance from the table to bury the orange peels. One kid that I had been working with earlier approached with a chip bag and asked me if he could bury it too. I told him no, and he explained slowly in Macedonian that while the orange peels would break down in a short period of time, the chip bag would probably take a million years. Relieved, I told him this was the reason. I told him to put the chip bag in one of the pockets on my backpack, and he thanked me for taking it home to throw it away.
It was at that point that I took the opportunity to ask him why he participated in the rock-throwing earlier. It was too difficult for me to say everything in Macedonian, so we had kind of a half-English, half-Macedonian conversation, with me substituting English words for the Macedonian words that I didn't know. He said that people were doing that because they didn't have a good environmental awareness. I asked him why he had been participating, if he felt that way. He said, "I can't stop them." Flabbergasted, I told him, "I'm not asking you to be responsible for other people's actions. I'm asking you why you would participate in something that you don't agree with?" He didn't really have an answer; he just looked at me. I was careful of my tone, because he came to me. I didn't want to put him on the defensive, but I felt like I needed to understand. I was so disappointed when I saw them doing that. I gestured back towards the other people, a distance away. "It doesn't matter what they think. If you don't want to do something, don't. It's okay to be your own person." He nodded and laughed nervously. We walked back to the table and sat down.
Then their teacher approached me and said some very unflattering things about Americans, made some lame accusations and finally went away. I was most disturbed by the encounter because it was so negative, and really had nothing to do with the rest of the day. (And - - it doesn't belong here on my website.) The kids assured me that none of them felt that way, and I decided to believe them, despite Mr. Anarchy's earlier comments about how cool it was when the World Trade Center got destroyed. After we finished eating, we moved into the second half of planting the trees. One kid, who was really nice and had the best English of all, was standing on the end of the shovel and wiggling it around, and the handle fell forward and smacked me super-hard in the hip, which really hurt. He was completely apologetic, and not wanting to make him feel bad, I suggested we plant a tree together, which we did. My boss made a joke about me posting a sign by one of the trees to claim it as my own, which made me laugh. Jasminka took some pictures of me and some of the kids, standing by trees we had just planted, which made me feel a little bit better, especially when some of the kids approached me specifically
By the end of the day, I was tired and sore, and proud of the work we had done. Riding out of there, and seeing all the tiny new trees standing bravely in the cold sunlight, and the piles of squares that would be placed around them the next day by the park workers, so they would not be eaten by sheep or other grazing animals gave me concrete proof, and a tangible result of the good work we had done. I really had to wonder how much of an impact I had on those kids. I hope that if I made some kind of good impression on at least a handful of them, it would have been enough to justify some of the nonsense that I had to put up with. Change happens slowly, and mentalities adjust slowly. I hope that in the warm days to come, we will all have a clean, pleasant, and more beautiful place to enjoy in Ravna Reka, than we would have without our joint actions there. And here's to more working with kids <sigh, grin>.