I have been thinking lately that I ought to record everything that I do for one week straight, like a detailed timetable, so people can see what I do with myself here. But true to the Balkan spirit, I decided to do it later. For now I�ll just describe my Monday.
I woke this morning at 9 am sharp to my cell phone alarm clock, coming out of some kind of nightmare. As I lay there, I remembered more and more of the dream, like rewinding a tape. It was crazy!! Then I got up, washed my face, brushed my hair, and made some oatmeal while I connected to the internet. I saw my dad online, but it was after midnight his time so we only chatted briefly. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from someone I hadn�t heard from in many months, but bummed to see that an important meeting I might participate in this week still didn�t appear to be set. I disconnected, dressed, and put on some makeup. I considered going to the once-weekly fruit and vegetable bazaar in the heart of Pehcevo, I considered doing the leftover dishes from the weekend, and I considered folding up my sleeping bag and moving it from the couch to my bedroom. I decided, later, later, and later.
Then another PCV called me for thirty minutes regarding our upcoming Eko Kamp in June, and just as I was walking out the door around 10:30 am, I received a call from my colleague Nikola who asked me to come to work with my digital camera. All I understood was that someone had brought in a document that needed to be photographed, because for some reason (insert here a bunch of words that I didn�t understand) Nikola could neither photograph nor scan it. I went to work with my camera and saw a giant Diploma from the Macedonian University in Skopje on our table. It was in a giant, thick glass frame with brass around it. I asked, �Why didn�t the guy just take it out of the frame?� Nikola replied that he didn�t want to, because he had just put it in there.
I was baffled, but set to work anyway. Nikola and I experimented with various methods of photographing the Diploma, including playing with the flash and standing on a chair to try and get the most flat, even picture of the document as possible. Nikola, who is about 6�6� at least, stood on the table to take a shot. I was horrified and stood right behind him, hoping that when he fell I wouldn�t be killed. All of this, of course, was much to the amusement of our colleague Aleksandra, who watched while sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee out of a plastic cup. Unfortunately the surface of the frame was very reflective and our first efforts weren�t successful. We downloaded the pictures to my laptop and decided that even with editing none of them were really what we were looking for.
Then we got the idea to lay the big piece of glass on the floor. I squatted over it, and without using the flash got as close to it as I could. The second time I squatted even lower, and tried to keep my legs from shaking � I have had a lot of practice here with squatting because of all the Turkish toilets. (If you don�t know a �Turkish toilet� is, well, it�s just a hole in the floor with a foot plate on either side so you don�t skid or fall.) We downloaded the pictures to my laptop, took a look, and the second one was perfect! We transferred it to a disk and used the Kladenec computer for editing the picture.
We had a ton of issues, about fifteen minutes� worth, with the program we were using, and as we sat there and fiddled with it, I joked to Nikola, �You should call the guy and tell him, listen, this is silly � we�re taking it out of the frame!� (It was too three-dimensional and bulky to put it in the copy machine � but if they didn�t happen to have an American volunteer at the digital camera in town, well hey, they would have just had to take the damn thing out of the glass.) Finally we worked everything out and then Nikola printed the document out. It was fantastic! �Original!� Nikola exclaimed � same word in Macedonian just a different pronunciation.
When Nikola called the man, a policeman, to tell him it was ready, he was surprised. He came over promptly with a big bottle of soda to �celebrate us�, as they say here. �Whatever you need us to do, we can do it here,� Nikola joked. Even though it wasn�t the most important task, and really had nothing to do with me, nor with environmental matters, it felt good to help someone with something they needed to do. I almost had a moment with Nikola offered him coffee, and began to put the water on, when the policeman suggested he tell Aleksandra to do it, but I got up from the table and moved around and my irritation dissipated. On his way out, someone stopping by the office saw the Diploma and congratulated the policeman on his graduation. He quipped, �I�ve had this thing for two years and it took me two years to get it photocopied,� and we all laughed.
The most interesting thing by far was when my friend Biljana, who is a native Pehcevo girl but who lived for seven years in London and came back again last fall, stopped by the office. She brought along with her a guy named Vlado, who she said wanted to meet me. It turns out that Vlado actually found my website last summer, and contacted me via my guestbook. I vaguely remembered our correspondence with him a few times through e-mails, and he told me that he was homesick and that it eased his homesickness to actually find something about Pehcevo, to his amazement, on the internet, and to his further amazement, done by an American who lived there!! It was a real pleasure to meet yet another Macedonian who speaks English fluently with a crisp British accent like Biljana does. It was even more of a pleasure to hear that my website was helpful or interesting to someone. �You�re brilliant, marvelous!� he told me. I asked Nikola, �Are you writing all this down?!�
Nikola told me that Vlado and he grew up as neighbors. It�s amazing how I came into contact with him as he was in London, through my website that originally I intended to be nothing more than a medium for chronicling my time here � simply an online journal. As I investigated getting it done, however, it became clear that a full-on website would be the best idea. After he and Biljana took their leave, I decided that my headache was getting the better of me, said goodbye to Aleksandra and Nikola and headed off to the bazaar � my one chance to buy tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, bananas and strawberries during the week. If you don�t get it on Monday, you have to go to Berovo on Thursday, and until then you�re out of luck. (Stores here only have dry goods.)
As I approached the bazaar I heard peeping. I looked down and almost at my feet, in three large boxes on the sidewalk above the stream, were dozens of tiny, golden baby chicks! My mouth dropped open in surprise � I am always getting teased by people here for my fascination with baby animals � goats, chickens, kitten, sheep � you name it, I love it. I quickly sent Nikola a text message via cell phone: They have baby chickens at the bazaar!! I didn�t expect any reaction from him other than a chuckle I wouldn�t hear. I had never seen animals other than large squealing pigs at Monday�s bazaar.
I reached down and stroked their soft fluffiness. An old lady saw me and tsked, then took me by the arm and said, �They�re dirty!� They didn�t look dirty to me at all. A few tried to spread their short wings in the crowd, as other adventurous little chicken spirits clambered again and again to the top of the chaotic pile. A man, sensing a sale, hurried over and agitated them a little bit to make them look fuller and livelier. I smiled and told him I had no yard for chickens, but could I photograph them? I whipped out my camera. He looked very surprised, and proceeded to fluff them up even more. I started clicking away, and a small boy nearby asked me, �How much are they?� as if I had something to do with it! �Ten denars each,� I told him, having had overheard the man earlier. (Ten denars is about twenty American cents.) Eventually I went on my way, but I could still hear the tiny peeps as I walked into the open air market and bought a kilo (about two pounds) of the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted for one American dollar.