He informs me that he is already at the school, so I make my way over to the building and wander around inside until I find the director's office. About five women are sitting around in these long mauve colored lablike type coats with buttons - the uniform, apparently of the school staff. The room is dingy, with big tall windows. Everyone is smoking, flipping through newspapers or magazines. One lady is opening the mail apathetically with a long sharp knife, and the room is hot and unventilated. I ask Aleksandar if he has the report. He looks surprised. He calls Jasminka, who says that she did send the list, so I get up to go back home and Aleksandar instructs me to leave my language notebook, planner and dictionary there. I understand the words, but I don't understand why he is ordering me around.
I don't see why anyone cares, I don't like the way men here treat me like a child. Why should I leave my personal planner in a room full of people that I don't know? I politely explain that I don't mind carrying my things, and everyone looks at me curiously. (I think that people here sometimes think I make things too hard, i.e. when I moved the furniture in the apartment without calling virtual strangers for help, when I walk to the door to open it myself and people act surprised, etc. I guess they want this kind of assistance from other people?) I smile, go back home, get online on my laptop, see the thing in my junk mail, put it on a disk, and head back over to the school.
Then I am told we have to print, so myself and Aleksandar's wife Milka (also my landlord) head downstairs to the basement of the school, where there is some kind of metal working class. Tons of students are running around in the basement, shrieking, and the teacher doesn't appear to notice. One kid is riding a large, ancient bicycle in the class. There isn't really enough room so when he gets to one end, he turned around and nearly ran over some girls. I stand, bewildered, as Milka grabs my disk and some blank paper out of my hand and starts speaking with the teacher. As the kids gather around, the teachers opens a door in the back of the room that leads to a closet-type room.
The walls are lined with old shelves, and there is an island worktable of some sort in the middle of the room. Every available surface is covered with more little pieces of scrap, plastic, wire, and other unidentifiable junk and supplies that I am shocked into further silence. Drawers hang open, sharp things are lying around everywhere. Surprisingly in one corner there is what looks to be a pretty new computer and printer on a little table. I attempt to print for about fifteen minutes, but over and over the paper jams, and when it doesn't, it prints out a blank sheet.
I attempt to work with the printer capabilities and the print manager, unplugging the thing and replugging it, turning it off and on, adjusting the cartridge itself, all to no avail, while Milka and the teacher watch and tons of giggling kids gather around. Apparently it is the only "working" printer in the school. So after fifteen or twenty minutes, Milka and I head back upstairs to the director's office where she confiscates my disk and disappears. Everyone sits in this silence and tea is poured for me, sugar added that I didn't want, everyone just sitting. I think, if I knew how to explain everything on the damn list in Macedonian, we wouldn't even need the stupid thing.
I wonder, where did Milka go? After another fifteen minutes of sitting wondering how much of my day this is going to take, she returns, with the disk, and I finally get the gist: she took it to someone's house who lives near the school, who has a computer. Wouldn't you know, their printer won't print either. It bothers me slightly to think of my disk being at someone's house that I don't know. What if I had confidential information on the disk? I have dealt with these situations before, so I have one disk with nothing else on it other than what is being immediately dealt with, in case I take it somewhere and accidently lose it. (This lack of privacy affects me on a daily basis, from people at the post office calling my work and telling whoever answers that I have mail, and what kind, from my phone bill being delivered to Aleksandar's work and everyone in the whole town getting to see it and make comments about how expensive it is, to hearing from other people what I bought at the store and what I cooked.)
So Aleksandar tells me to come with him to the Kladenec office, where there is a printer. We walk outside, the NGO is only five minutes' walk, but instead he instructs me to get into his ancient car, and off we go, the smell of exhaust probably won't take long to kill me so I crack the window to avoid certain carbon monoxide poisoning. Ten or fifteen feet later his father walks into the middle of the narrow road ahead of us to get Aleksandar's attention. He stops the car and shuts it off, and we proceed to chat with his father. I don't really have anything to say, and am starting to feel more than a little stressed with the respect for time that is shown, or should I say the lack of respect. But I realize that I am the only person apparently bothered. After all, all the people sitting around in the office did not look like they were fired up for any meeting, or anything at all, actually. I am not sure how all this works, I have never before experienced this type of situation in a "workplace"!
So we finally make it to Kladenec. It occurs to me again that all this trouble is simply for a list, to facilitate nothing more than a discussion, an information sharing courtesy, a request for ideas. God, this is so frustrating and wasteful! If only I could speak English, if only I could understand the context of what is going on around me. I fire up Jasminka's computer (Nikola is not in the office) and put in the disk. But when I try to open the documents, I am not able to. The computer is not able to convert the program from my laptop. The computer is slow, and I try repeatedly but nothing works. Just as I am feeling as if my head will explode, it occurs to me to go online and re-download the two documents and just print them from Jasminka's computer, cutting out my laptop which seems to complicate things in this instance. The computer finally makes it online, taking about fifteen or twenty more minutes to get in and out of the office. Aleksandar sits at the table, staring into the distance, waiting patiently. I apologize repeatedly, which he seems not to understand. I don't know why he didn't say, "I have better things to do." People here don't seem to mind. We go back to the school, and sit down.
I am offered tea and coffee this time, but I politely decline. I am anxious to get the show on the road with the meeting. After about ten minutes of sitting I feel like the silence is getting too awkward - please note, no one else appears to notice this. I wonder, why are we sitting, what are we doing, can we DO something!! I venture to ask Aleksandar what we are waiting for, and he tells me the Director is not in the office, but on his way! I thought the lady sitting at the big desk was the Director. How silly of me. The Director is a man! After the elections last fall, a different political party was voted in and therefore, all the Directors in all the schools around Macedonia have to be changed. In some schools, this is just now taking place! This Director had only been in the school three or four days, and finally arrived a blessedly short time later. The former Directors of all these schools, well, their party is not in office now, so tough beans for them. They probably are unemployed, or looking for someone to hire them despite their party affiliation.
The next forty-five minutes was a rather painful meeting in which I tried to explain my ideas, using the English and Macedonian lists and not understanding most of the quiet, sometimes smirking conversations between Jordan and Aleksandar. I start to feel defensive as I am asked for funding, and one by one my ideas seem to be getting shot down. I try to maintain a professional composure, but I often times don't know how to react when I am being discussed and I don't understand what exactly is being said. I don't know whether to be annoyed, relieved, elaborate on something specific - how frustrating. Sometimes I will catch something like "She's just a girl" or "Women think too much" or "Why isn't she married already" or something else offensive, that causes me to not know the appropriate reaction. And of course I have to sit around and sit around, sometimes pointlessly with these people who talk about me like this, who I couldn't care less about spending time with!
Finally, the Biology teacher and one of the English teachers show up, and things start to look up. I explain some of my ideas in more detail, and we make arrangements to meet again with Jasminka on Friday, when an Eco class will be taught in the school. I am taken upstairs for thirty or so minutes after the meeting, and get to check out the Biology classroom, which is actually very cool. Tons of dead animals and bugs in jars and in cases are displayed, as well as some surprisingly intuitive student eco-art. This particular moment bolsters me, and I remember what "this" is all about. The kids, the next generation, the only hope for any of us. The room is old, the view of the factories out the windows is sad and ugly, but there are a few new tables and chairs, and the room is clean and orderly. Lots of anatomy posters are hung about the room, and other things that I am not sure about.
By the time I got home, I took a look at the laundry and the dishes and had to laugh. If I don't laugh, I will cry, and I can't cry. Sometimes it seems like the life I had in the United States was so easy. Why didn't I do more? Oh the ability to be treated with respect, the ability to speak my mind in any situation, to know all the unspoken agreements in a culture on how to act, only to know those things and I could live anywhere!