Warning: While I am is constantly cleaning up Lee’s mess, rearranging everything to accommodate her every desire, and having to share all my stuff with her in my “bachelor” apartment, I have assigned her the task of writing this newest posting. Please forgive the lower quality writing style that follows.
It has been two weeks since I (Lee) woke up in Probistip and I’m amazed at how quickly one can get accustomed to conditions that seem unthinkable to an American from New England at first blush.
Like needing to plan at least two hours ahead before taking a shower—that’s how long it takes for the tank hanging over the bathtub to heat enough water for a quick wash-up. It takes about a half hour to heat water to wash dishes, so we tend to save them up for the end of the day.
And discovering why the village has no recycling program: materials we take for granted are scarce and expensive, so very little gets thrown out. Soda bottles become wine decanters; jelly jars make fine sugar canisters; butcher paper can be used to grease a baking sheet.(No such thing as Pam)
It’s an excellent day when a merchant gives you a plastic bag because your cloth bags wouldn’t hold all your purchases--it means you can keep your bread fresh an extra day or you can cut it open to use as a pastry cloth.
And learning to watch out for oneself. Apparently Macedonians still believe people should have a certain degree of common sense and see no need to post signs indicating that hot products will be hot, that a road obviously under construction could hold unexpected hazards, or to warn people to watch their step around gaping holes in the pavement.
The posted photos tell most of the story: Probistip, where Michael is assigned, is truly a different world from ours--sort of post WWII era Eastern Bloc with cell phones and grocery scanners. It strikes me as strange that they would spend money on such technology when they lack so many conveniences Americans take for granted. But here my own cultural assumptions have skewed my perceptions: this is not a choice for them; technology is relatively inexpensive whereas, for example, it would cost a fortune they don’t have to replace all the Turkish toilets with ones that flush.
I am reminded that choices come only with affluence.
The town we're in is tightly packed into a small valley, with houses stopping abruptly on the edge of town to give way to fields and vineyards and lambs and goats. This is the kind of ‘cluster zoning’ small town America has been resisting since it was first proposed in the 1970’s, preferring instead to control growth by demanding one or two acre minimums for each new house built. End result? Suburban sprawl that means no one can get anywhere without a car.
Though each home here sits on only a tiny patch of land, every square foot is put to use. Give a Macedonian a two by five-foot patch, and he’ll grow strawberries, leeks, lettuce, tulips, roses—you name it. Those who have cars pave only the two strips needed for tires and plant the middle strip with onions and root vegetables. Poles with a few wires strung between them support grape vines, which leaf out in the spring to form cool shady patios by the time the summer sun heats up with Mediterranean ferocity.
Without massive expanses of lawn to fertilize, water, weed, and mow, their energies go in to creating tiny Edens—virtual outdoor rooms, glimpsed through garden gates but otherwise totally private, overflowing with immaculately maintained roses, lilacs, lemon trees and tiny evergreens growing in patches of ivy.
To compensate for small house lots, many families also have plots of land outside the village where they grow grapes to make their own wine and rakia--a deadly cousin to brandy which is tossed back at the slightest provocation. Michael's host family, seen in the pictures posted in May, took us up to their plot, which we reached by hiking up a hill past a shepherd (a full timer whose job description hasn't changed in thousands of years)and his flock and fields of wildflowers.
Kocho is one of the lucky ones whose plot is relatively flat, but from his hilltop vantage point you see plots of grapevines clinging to the hillsides at angles only a billy goat could love. Undeterred, small growers like Kocho turn the soil between rows each year one shovelful at a time and trek out regularly to tie the vines meticulously to succeedingly higher layers of wire as the spring and summer progress.
On May 1--celebrated fervently here to honor the working man and woman--people go out into the woods and fields and up mountain tops to have skara--roughly comparable to what we call a barbecue. Since rain threatened this year, our hosts hauled tables out on the patio and cooked up the unbelievable assortment of meats pictured in the May photos. Not only is the food fantastically tasty but even the simplest snack is presented in a way that puts Martha Stewart to shame.
You rarely see a chubby Macedonian though, at least in the villages, because whatever you want or need you must walk to acquire--and have I mentioned that it's hilly here? You get interval training whether you want it or not. Which is good, because along with the very healthy cucumber, garden tomato, cabbage and leek salads and chorba (a thick Macedonian soup) I have acquired a taste for burak (pronounced boo-rahch). The closest thing I can compare it to is a huge croissant pastry filled with meat or cheese and spinach and baked in a sea of oil. Macedonians eat them for breakfast along with drinkable yoghurt.The light variety is about as tasty as fat free cream cheese, but the high test is ambrosia.
I'll have the rest of my life to eat egg white omelets and lowfat cottage cheese, I reason, so on the mornings that I don't go into school with Majkl I walk a few blocks down to one of the little shops that seem to occupy every third building and pick one up fresh for 30 cents.
Michael is badgering me for another post, so more later. The buzz is that strawberries are coming in today and to the quick go the spoils, so
I’m going to hoof it down to the town square where the stalls are set up and see what I can score.
No comments:
Post a Comment