Ohrid, Sveti Naum, and Gostivar

Two weekends ago I was again in Ohrid, a town I love. It has all the character of an old European city on a lake - small cobblestone streets, little alley and stairways, ancient, historic sites, all on a beautiful lake. Ohrid is a spiritual place, and it is said it has 365 churches, one for every day of the year. The reason is that it was the center of the Orthodox religion before the Ottoman Empire conquered it, and its influence spread from Southern Russia through Greece. You live and breathe history there, and this time it was also teeming with flowers everywhere you looked. We spent a lot of time in the restaurant above, drinking a glass of wine and eating plashitsa, little baby trout that melted in your mouth. Life is good.

One day we meandered down and caught a boat down to Sveti Naum. The river Drim enters the lake there and travels the length intact before flowing out the other end in Struga. Sveti Naum is a monastery in a beautiful spot, cool, refreshing, and charming as well. It used to be in Albania, but was such a sacred spot to Macedonians that they bought it! The boat ride was gorgeous. I put in a picture of me so you can see how long my hair is! The big surprise when I grew my hair out was that it wasn't all white - in fact, once I was looking at it and couldn't figure out what I'd gotten in my hair, and then realized that what I was seeing was those few hairs that were still brown. It had been about 30 years since I'd seen them!

I talked a little last time about the shops I go to, and figured I tell you a bit more about shopping. Although big supermarkets are moving in, in Gostivar there still are all the small shops. I go to the meat shop to buy meat, and watch as they grind it up for me into hamburger, cut into pieces for goulash, or slice into rather tough little steaks for my petite BBQ. I go to the bread shop in the afternoons to visit my friend there and get my hot loaves of bread and sometimes a little treat as well. The loaves cost 20 MKD, or about 50 cents - food is very cheap here. I bought a kilo of tomatoes the other day for 50 cents and have been making tomato and cuke salads. The cheese store has cheeses from ricotta and mozarella to chocolate to sheep cheese. They also have the best yogurt. And I've already written about the bazaar for the fresh fruits and veggies - peaches are just starting to come in! There are also fruit and vegetable markets through out the town. There are very few canned goods, and there are may times I miss being able to go into the pantry to open up a can of something. But the food is fresh and good, and it makes me cook what I'm hungry for. I just finished a big pot of homemade baked beans - excellent beanies and wienies if I do say so myself. Good thing I live alone......

I just returned home from a week and Struga and Ohrid, and as much fun as I had there with my friends, it was good to return home. What makes somewhere a home? I have been pondering that since I returned. Certainly part of it is familiarity - my own bed, even if it is a couch bed, seeing how my plants have grown since I left, fixing my own food - but there is something deeper. After getting home, I went out to do some chores. As I crossed by the central square in Gostivar, the 3 Turkish girls I had escorted to Skopje for the spelling bee ran out calling my name, and we chatted. I walked a little down the street, and the psychology graduate student who is helping with the girls camp called my name and we talked for a bit. I went into my cheese store and the woman there greeted me warmly, as she always does, and helped me find the cheese I was looking for. The woman from the bread shop asked me where I was from and what I was doing in Macedonia, and we tried, as best as we could, to communicate. My counterpart and his wife, friends, sent me e-mails. Home is a sense of belonging, and it goes beyond language - to me, all these people were part of being home. The man at the import store who is always asking me and my friends to have coffee with him, the clerks at the store who always greet me warmly, the comfort of it all - Macedonia is a very friendly and welcoming place, and everyone has helped make it home. To them all, I say thank you. It's hard being away from friends and family back home, but all of you make me so glad I have come here.

Odds, Ends and Albania

Last weekend was the National Spelling Bee in Skopje. It was organized by two Peace Corps volunteers (who did a terrific job) and open to all kids from 5th to 12th grades. They had had to pass qualifying events in cities around Macedonia and the turnout was wonderful - over 300 students were at the finals. They were spelling English words - not Macedonian - and I can tell you, I wouldn't have done as well as some of those students. Pterodactyl? Who can spell that when they're on the spot in front of a large audience? They were divided into age groups and I got to erase for the 162 5th and 6th graders that were there. What fun and congratulations to all of them!
Tuesday Luli, his family and I went to Peshkopi in Albania. Elona's family is there, and she visited them while Luli and I went to a meeting about a cross border grant program. We're currently working on 2 grants, a small one through the Peace Corps and USAID to put on an agricultural festival and fun run, and this larger one which we'll do with an Albanian group. Anyway, I've been anxious to go to Albania and was delighted at the opportunity. The Diber area of Albania is gorgeous - very mountainous with smaller, cozier valleys than Macedonia. Several things struck me as we ventured into the country. First, the infrastructure is not in good shape - the roads and buildings were in rough shape. The economy there is worse than in Macedonia - they are not yet an EU candidate country. Enver Hoxha, who was dictator for about 40 years, I think, isolated the country and pretty much trashed the economy. He collectivized the farms, and ordered the farmers to terrace the mountains, so you can see all these terraces climbing their way up the mountains. In the Peshkopi area, he had everyone plant fruit trees, but when he died and everyone reclaimed their ancestral lands, they abandoned the terraces and many of the trees - they are just now starting to replant orchards. I saw many more horses being used by the farmers - not with wagons but individual horses packing things on their backs. There are also greater numbers of cows and fewer sheep - another thing that I think was a legacy of Hoxha. But one of his most infamous legacies is the bunkers he had built. He was so paranoid that someone was going to attack Albania that he had thousands of bunkers built for soldiers to stand in and fire at the enemy. I would see what looked like a strange round haystack in a field and then realize it was one of his bunkers. In fact, once I realized what they were, everywhere I looked was a bunker. But we had a great time, the people were lovely, and Elona's family was very gracious!
The other picture is me lounging on my 'deck' - really the roof of the empty store that is under my apartment. It's great - I have a table and chairs, tomato, cucumber and pepper plants, and, of course, my clothes line out there. Ah, the luxurious life in Macedonia!

Ah, Strawberries are ripe, and right now in the bazaar they are selling for about $1 for 2.5 pounds. Needless to say I have been eating strawberries - small, sweet, yummy strawberries. I've made shortcake for them, eaten them plain, eaten them with slightly sweetened yogurt (which is a drink here) and with a yummy bread pudding I made today. I'm surprised I haven't turned red and seedy. Interesting fact I learned last week in my agricultural seminars about strawberries: they are a false fruit. The real fruit of the strawberry plant are the seeds on the strawberry!

Last week and half of the week before I went to seminars on sustainable agriculture. They were put on by the EU for potential ag professors who will take part in developing the sustainable agricultural textbooks, teach, and take part in an exchange program in other EU countries. It was all taught in English (except for one Bulgarian who lectured in Bulgarian) which was lucky for me! Listening to them I realized all the things I did incorrectly on the farm - oh, well... But the nicest thing about the seminars were the fabulous people I met. We met aquaculture students from Tirana in Albania, a variety of people from Elbasan in Albania, and a number of students and professionals from Kosovo. Many spoke English, but some of the Albanians didn't, so I got some Albanian practice. But all were welcoming, sweet, and interesting people. The picture above is of me and my counterpart, Luli, in front of a giant aphid.

The second best part was having my hand kissed by the very dashing, adventurous professor from Portugal who taught about aquaculture. He was very charming, and I think it's the first time I ever had my hand kissed!

Luli and I are planning a 10K run to coincide with a sheep festival in Gostivar in the fall, so I signed up with some of my friends to do the 5K part of the Skopje marathon. Yep, that's actually a picture of me running! I would like to say I ran the 5 K, but actually I walked the 5 K and ran about the last 300 meters - well, walked and ran it. But it was fun and I felt very accomplished! I also visited with some people I had met on-line who were part of the ecological society, because I've been trying to find some sort of bird field guide for the Balkans. There's a stork nesting just outside of Gostivar, and it's the first stork I've ever seen. I want to start identifying birds here, and may take part in a bird count next year.

And if anyone asks you about managing manure in a sustainable way, just have them call me!

Business in Macedonia

This last week I've been attending a conference for agricultural professors in Macedonia - what fun. The all day long seminars in Intensive Swine Production and Chicken Nutrition have been led by an Englishman and a Bulgarian, both teaching in English. The seminars were somewhat technical and the poor Albanian translator knew few words for pork production, since they don't eat pork. How would she ever know weaner pig, boar, gilt, etc.? But the seminars weren't so much about learning the material as getting the power-points and networking. Consequently the lecturers would talk for 40 minutes, then we'd take half hour breaks - my way of conferencing! Luli is a premier networker, so before long we were talking to students in aquaculture and municipal and government officials from Albania, a farmer and agricultural workers from Kosovo, and Macedonians from agricultural colleges across Macedonia. Several spoke to me in English, but when together they talked Albanian, which I followed somewhat and even got to practice a little. They all invited us to visit them, and we will probably visit some of the people in Albania, but sadly I am forbidden to go to Kosovo. It's especially sad because Kosovoans love Americans, especially Bill Clinton, who championed the creation of the country. One of the attendees actually lives on Bill Clinton Street. But I digress from my topic.

Since the conference continues next week but the visitors had nothing to do over the weekend, Luli wanted to set up visits for them to a fish farm, the cheese factory, a cow farm and a sheep farm. The conference was at South East European University in Tetovo, so we needed to find a bus to transport our friends. We were checking all around, but no luck, so Luli decided to stop at a friend's business, a garage, on the way home.

Another quick digression to explain the context of business here. As I've said before, people in Macedonia tend to stay close to home and family, though that is changing a bit with the younger generation. Country nationals also count their families back through 6 generations, so they have a ton of cousins, sometimes a few times removed, but still family. In addition, everyone pretty much knows everyone else who has lived in the area for a while. PC tells us that it's good to connect with a family, because then you not only have them looking out for you, but all the collateral relatives and friends as well. When they do business, they always do it with friends and family. It's therefore very bad form not to first talk about how everyone is in the family, find out who is doing what, etc. This is almost always done over a cup of coffee. If you don't drink coffee before coming to Macedonia, it's time to start. Their coffee is Turkish coffee, very strong and very sweet, but they also have cappuccinos and machiatos. You constantly see young men, sometimes even on bicycles, carrying trays with cups of coffee to some shop where people are visiting.

So anyway, before we could find out about the mini-bus, we had to have coffee. The owner of the garage pulled out 3 chairs and put them in front of the garage bays, shouted over to the coffee shop a couple of doors down, and we relaxed, chatted and drank coffee. While I was there a delivery truck from my favorite cheese store pulled up. The driver of the truck walked over to the tire rack and pulled out a tire. No, no, said the owner, wrong one, and pointed to the correct one. The driver took it out, and started to assemble the hydraulic lug nut remover. No, no, said the owner, jack it up first. So he jacked it up, changed the tire, and filled it with air. He went over to someone in the garage, told them to put it on his bill, and drove off. Boy does that reduce labor costs when your customers do the work! But they were all friends, and everyone knew what was going on, so it was no big deal! It's little things like that that I love about Macedonia!

Of course, with everything wonderful comes its disadvantages. One disadvantage is that the clannishness of Macedonia also keeps people separated, hence some of the troubles between ethnic groups and outsiders coming into Macedonia. Most business is done informally, and it would be difficult to operate if you don't have those connections. But I'm very lucky with my counterpart, who takes me along and introduces me to everyone in the community, and being an American here definitely confers special status.

Sheepbreeders, part 2

In the summer, the sheep are moved to higher pastures in the mountains. The land is owned by the government and each farmer rents and is assigned to a pasture according to the size of his flock. I always thought that the pastures were close by, but today I found out that some are very far indeed. Some farmers in Tetovo, which is in the NW corner of Macedonia, take theirs to pastures in Shtip, in the eastern central region, farmers from Gostivar to Veles, in the center, and farmers from Debar, which is on the border with Albania, to Bitola, south on the border with Greece. These locations are hundreds of miles apart, and traditionally, farmers drove the sheep over the mountains to these distant pastures. The trip from Tetovo to Shtip took 21 days, with the farmers carrying their tents and food on horses and their dogs helping to drive the sheep. The drives started in middle to late May, depending on when the snow cleared from the higher mountains, and were on traditional paths across the country. Just recently, farmers from Tetovo and Gostivar started using the train to transport the sheep, but the farmers from Debar, having no access to trains, still drive their sheep in the time-honored fashion. Luli's eyes light up when he talks about it - he'd love to go on a drive with a filmmaker and do a documentary about this old way of life which soon will die, but the timing is bad for him and he's never been able to go.

All along the trail, and during their time in the high pastures, the ewes need to be milked twice a day. There are milking sheds in the pastures, but no refrigeration, no milk pick-up, nothing. So what do they do? They make cheese, and at the end of their stay arrange for transport to pick up all of the summer cheese. The cheese is very salty and high in acid, which is what preserves it. Disease control is not the best here and some animals may have brucellosis and/or TB, and there is no pasteurization. Non-pasteurized milk makes the best tasting cheese, but those diseases can be spread through raw milk. However, after three months of being cured, the cheese is safe to eat - no bacteria can survive. Would it pass FDA standards in the States? That is a vigorous debate that's going on now - FDA requires pasteurization, but many boutique cheesemakers are fighting that so they can make higher quality, better tasting cheeses.

Working with the Sheepbreeders part 1

Hopefully this will work - I just see a bunch of computer stuff where pictures should be! Anyway, just finished my favorite breakfast, scrambled eggs made with yogurt, cirenje - a salty, soft white cheese - and hot peppers - yum. I've written about the adventures I've had, but not work, so I'll tell you a little about work.
I work with the Sheepbreeders Association of Western Macedonia - Shoqata e Kultivuesve te dhenves ne Maqedonist Perandimore - but it's a bit of a misnomer. Besides promoting the products of the local sheepherders, my counterpart (and the only person actually running the association) also does work in rural development. As I've mentioned before, Macedonia is a candidate country to join the EU, and to do that it has to change its entire agricultural sector.
Macedonians have farmed the same way for centuries - small family farms. The land has been in families for generations and there is a strong tie, but that way of life is dying. For me, it's great, food is plentiful, fresh, and cheap, but it's getting increasingly impossible for farmers to make a living and the farms don't meet EU standards for hygiene or environmental protection, and the processing infrastructure is weak. The average age of farmers is rising as young people are leaving the farms for the larger cities and towns. Whole villages are dying. I was in Lipcove the other day, a municipality up north on the border with Kosovo (and incidentally one that saw a lot of the fighting during the hostilities here 10 years ago) and got a copy of the strategic plan. Several of small mountain villages had population decreases anywhere from 90 to 100 per cent - from a village of 750 to 6, for example. So things have to change, but as with every change, much will be lost with the changes. Part of the task is to figure out how to balance this change preserving a way of life that many love and that provides all of us who are localvores with fresh, healthy food.

One sector that has had some success is organic farming, but that so far is small and still faces some of the challenges that traditional farming faces. Another sector that everyone wants to do is mountain/rural tourism, but there is much infrastructure work that needs to be done. Given that Macedonia is 70-80% mountains, there is lots of opportunity for mountain activities that can be combined with visiting rural villages and towns and to give people a taste of traditional life and handicrafts. A third area is the wine road. Macedonia is a big wine producer. Up until very recently, it mostly produced bulk wines that it sold to Germany to mix in with their wines, but Macedonia is now developing its own brands with regional grapes. The Pupova Kula winery I visited by Negotino is an example - that trip really was research! My idea is to package a wine and cheese tour. Tours would come into Skopje, travel around and visit some of the mountain villages around Gostivar, Mavrovo/Rostushe area for the cheese, farm traditions and mountain beauty, spend a day or two in Ohrid (another research trip I've had to take) then swing over to Negotino and up to visit the wineries. For anyone who visits I'll try to set that up for you! Anyway, so far I've met with people from the tourism board and Luli and I have written a grant for a traditional agricultural museum as part of that. We'd love to get a living museum a la Hovander park going.

So a lot of what I've done so far is meet with committees from some of the Municipalities while they're working of their strategic plans with Luli, educate myself about some of the issues and challenges, and meet people. You can see how spif I look in traditional dress above. You can also see how much farming is done. While some farmers have tractors, much is still done by hand or with horses. On the street by my apartment there are always farmers with their horses and wagons waiting to be hired for the day to help move things. You see the farmers coming down the street competing for space with cars, buses and trucks, standing upright on their wagons as they guide their horses. The attachment to the land will also be a challenge - how could you sell land that's been in the family for centuries so that there can be bigger farms that can afford the modern equipment and methods?

Luli and I will be working on several things this spring and summer. One will be to reconfigure the mission and board of the Sheepbreeders Association to make it broader in scope, but the fun things will be arranging festivals for tourists to publicize sheep products. Luli is one of the main organizers of the wine and cheese festival that happens in Ohrid sometime in early August, and in Sept. we're going to do a 10K race that starts in one of the villages and ends in Gostivar where we'll be having a sheep festival - booths with sheep cheeses and dried meat, village handcrafts, especially made with wool, shearing and milking contests, etc. The race will coincide with the farmers bringing the sheep down from the high pastures. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

I hope that at least gives you an idea of the challenges Macedonia faces in the agricultural sector and my very small part in it. Mostly I've been learning, learning, learning. It's a real privilege to be doing this, and I often have to pinch myself to remind myself that it's real. I feel like I'm getting to experience Macedonia as it's been for centuries, and very soon that way of life will be irrevocably changed. How lucky can I be?