My Balkan Home in the Peace Corps
There are incredible personal rewards to serving in the Peace Corps. But a lot of my friends want to know what it is like to live here. Compared to a hut on the Serengeti, we’re living in the lap of luxury. It’s European, but with an eastern flavor. The large cities have shopping malls that play Christmas music, taxis, and tourist attractions. But the smaller towns, though charming, have some things that require a bit of getting used to. I offer these observations not to complain, but only to point out how different it is living here than in America. We love living in “small town” Macedonia.
My town of 5,000 is in the Northeast of North Macedonia. Set in a mountain valley with a river running through its center, the town is hundreds of years old with cobblestone streets and architecture dating from and reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
We live on the lower floor of the home and our host family lives above us.
As you can see, it’s laundry day. It’s the middle of January and the temperature barely made it above freezing this afternoon, but everyone in Macedonia hangs their la undry out to dry all year long because dryers and electricity are so expensive that purchasing and running a dryer is an extravagance that most people can’t afford. Sunday is typically laundry day because it is the only day in the week with half-price electricity. I suppose that the electric company is trying to make some additional sales since most of the businesses in the country are closed on Sunday. No shopping either. Basically, the only businesses that are open are restaurants.
You can see the host family’s car parked in the carport. It’s a 25-year-old Peugeot. That’s the standard size car in Macedonia, popular because the narrow streets were built over 600 years ago. There are also buildings still standing here in my city that are that old. The car is powered by diesel, and I don’t know how many kilometers it has traveled, but I’d bet it’s over 500,000 km. The seatbelts don’t work, and the seats stay in place with a hanger jammed into the floor track because the spring latch broke. The shifter doesn’t have a knob on it anymore and anytime it’s moving the whole jalopy shakes like a Pentecostal at Sunday service. I’m not complaining. It gets us where we want to go and back again safely. When we arrived a couple months ago, the car was on the fritz, but my host father ordered a timing belt and installed it himself. That’s the way with Macedonians. They fix things themselves, sometimes with the help of a neighbor with more expertise. There’s no reason to buy something new if what you’ve got still works or can be repaired. It is inspirational how the communities here are self-reliant. They take care of themselves and each other.
This is our entryway. Our front door is in the center, the bathroom door on the right. To the left by the front door is a washer that is not hooked up, a stand of shoes, a chair and Ramona’s grocery cart. We share the washer upstairs with our host family which requires a little coordination. If we wanted it to use the one in our home, it would have to be installed in the bathroom which isn’t really an option if we want to close the bathroom door!
The shoe stand is standard in all Macedonian houses. Nobody wears shoes in their homes. You have slippers for in the home, slip-on plastic sandals for stepping outside for a bit, and then shoes when you go out. A lot of people have extra slippers for guests. Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know. We picked up that maroon grocery cart a couple of weeks ago because it’s much easier for Ramona’s shoulders. Such carts are quite popular in Macedonia because everyone does a lot of walking, and our town is nothing but hills and cobblestone streets.
The kitchen is not heated unless we’re cooking something. The average temperature there is 60° F so far this winter. Only three of the burners on the stove work but we seldom need more than that and it gives us a safe spot to put a hot pot in a pinch. The oven didn’t have any racks in it, so we rigged up some metal stands inside. It seems safe enough. It’s taken me some time to get used to cooking electric. Nothing happens right away. The tile floor is easy to keep clean. Since the house is built into a stone hill with a 60°grade, drainage is a bit of a problem. It seems like there are drainage openings everywhere that lead ultimately to the river that runs through town. However, that doesn’t stop water from coming up from the grout in the tile floor in heavy rain. While shocking at first, after a little mopping, sometimes more, it dries out nicely.
You may have noticed the hanging light bulb in the kitchen. That’s another standard in Macedonian interior design. We visited a recently remodeled home about a week ago. It was beautiful, new tile and gorgeous walls. You could tell they were well off because they had ~gasp~ a clothes dryer. And yet throughout the house, the overhead lights were exposed wires attached to a lightbulb fixture with bare bulbs. I’m not judgin’, I’m just sayin’.
The bathroom is another story. It’s small but efficient. In the lower right-hand corner of the first picture you will see the top of the sanitary waste bin. In America, you only find those in the women’s restroom for sanitary napkins and the like. In Macedonia, those are for soiled toilet paper. People here don’t flush toilet paper because the sewer system is too old and frail to manage it. That’s the number one thing that took some getting used to. You’d be surprised how little it smells. Also, the toilets are designed backwards. Instead of the pipes going down and back, the water takes a circuitous route down and forward and then back. This means there’s a rather large slope in the back where Mr. Hanky drops leaving his telltale trail to the water. Every toilet, private and public, has a toilet brush next to it. It’s considered polite to clean the toilet every time you use it because nobody wants to see or smell your leavings.
The shower is functional, although hot water is a rare commodity. Using electricity to heat water for showers is another extravagance that is typically not done unless we’ve had a string of cloudy days. You see, many homes have a solar water heater on the roof. If the sun doesn’t shine, the water doesn’t heat. We said goodbye to long hot showers the first day we arrived at our residence. Besides, bathrooms in Macedonia are ventilated directly outside all year long. We have a 30 cm square window in our bathroom that is wide open and cannot shut. Today the temperature in the bathroom is 46° F. That’s more conducive to a quick in and out shower if you decide to brave it. It certainly saves energy!
Our spare bedroom doubles as an office. Ramona has the bigger desk, and she has spread her working area out onto both beds as well. If you come to visit, we’ll clean off one of them for you. I have the smaller desk because I despise paper. All my work is digital. We also have a climate control unit in the office that is a heater in the winter and an air conditioner in the summer. It runs most efficiently when it remains at the same temperature all the time. In the winter, this is the only room that is consistently warm. Coincidentally, it’s the room where we spend most of our time. Note the paper globe covering the hanging lightbulb; 130 denar ($2.50) at Jumbo. I think it really makes the room, don’t you?
The bedroom has a wall heater, but we don’t use it except just before bed. We’ll turn it on and watch a streaming movie or something and then unplug it. We both like to sleep in relatively cool temperatures; besides we have each other to keep us warm.
So, there you have it. Our little abode in Macedonia. Ain’t life in the Peace Corps grand?
