The stray puppy that finally got to me

I didn't name her because if I did, I would have to keep her, landlady or no.

I picked up this dog near the Shpresa office. I was walking towards the municipality of Cair to go to the atm and check that I have limited denari. I see this little brown puppy limping on the sidewalk all alone and whimpering a little as she goes along. Against my better judgement, I stoop down to pet her. Mistake number 1. She is so sweet and she looks up at me with her sad little stray puppy eyes and I can resist the urge to pick her up- so i did. Mistake number 2. I cuddle her for a while and then put her back down. She flops on her side since her foot is hurt. I gather up my resolve and turn to keep walking to the municipality.

I get 15 feet away from lovely puppy and an old man is sitting in his car, engine off. He has been watching me with the pup and tells me "zemi! zemi!". I ask if he knows if its someone's dog and he says no, its a dobro kuche and i should take it! well alright! Epic impulsive decision fail.

I carry her home and 20 minutes later I am feeding her peanut butter and milk because its the only food i have that a dog may want. She watches me all the time. If i leave her for a moment, she starts to whine. I put her in the bathroom (tile floor for easier cleaning) on a blanket with some water and try to leave to go to vero for something to feed her but i can hear her crying through 2 doors. I have to tell Nikolinka, cause she is going to hear this anyway.

I take puppy downstairs and put her outside in the back yard. I go up to appeal to my landlady, Nikolinka. I tell her I found a puppy near work, it has a bum foot and i want to keep her until her foot is healed (which i wanted to make a very indefinite amount of time). I can tell by the look on her face that it ain't going to happen. She frowns in disgust to know its a street dog but I just stare at her and pretend I don't understand her (its not so much pretending anymore really) and she says ok, but only on the balcony. :-\ I wanted to check on the ok-ness of me keeping the pup in the bathroom at least while im not home but i forgot the word for bathroom. Nice.

Then Nina gets a different idea. I can keep the puppy in the fenced in concrete driveway area out front. Sigh. I am clearly not about this. I would rather have puppy be free in green grass on the sidewalks then penned in on a concrete slab. Didn't have to worry long, puppy slipped through the fence as we stood there talking about my weight, which was a fun side note. Nina was apparently trying to tell me that I look thinner and wanted to know how I was losing weight. I thought she was telling me I was getting fatter. (Slab - thin, debel - fat. Totally mixed it up.) I ended up telling her it was beer making me fat, drinking with prijateli, which made her confused. Beer makes you fat, she told me. Ooh ok, you weren't telling me I was fat. Raz-bi-ram sega.

Puppy picked a nice soft cluster of long grass to curl up in out in front of my apartment building. I went back upstairs to my apartment and tried not to think about epic failure in securing a puppy and consoled myself by thinking of all the reasons why I can't and shouldn't have a puppy right now. An hour later, I couldn't see her from the balcony anymore.

When it got dark, I decided that I had indulged in way too much battlestar galactica and needed to go outside for a walk. I walked slow and looked around for my lost puppy love. I found her near the prodav by John Kennedy, sitting on the sidewalk crying. I pick her up, cuddle her again and walk her off to a nice spot to lay in while i planned on going to vero for food for her.

As I was walking away, the puppy got up to follow me. Then, a little boy and his mother were coming out of the apartment buildings and saw my puppy. He picked her up and they walked off down the street.

Now, I would feel good about this. I can assume the best for my lil pup. But I just remembered a minor horrifying detail about this particular area where I set her down. Back in June or July, I recall walking to work one morning and smiling at a little boy (hopefully not the same one) playing with a puppy on a makeshift leash of string. Cute right?

3-4 hours later, walking home from work in hot summer sun, I see the same little boy playing with a dead puppy on a string. Not in a malicious way, I just don't think he was old enough to understand that the puppy was not alive anymore. Its got to be a different kid. The one that took the puppy last night probably did not live where I saw him with his mom.

I keep hoping its not the same kid. I keep wishing I kept the puppy. I did not see her again today, but I am carrying around a can of poshteta in my bag just in case we meet again. cause i'm a sucker.

Time to Catch Up 11.12.08

11.12.08

The village life is losing its charm and I can’t wait to move to Skopje. I love my host family and I do love Romanovce, but I’m really falling into such a lazy lifestyle that if I were here for 2 years, I doubt I would accomplish anything. My average day is:

-Alarm set for 6 or 6:30am.
-Actually get out of bed at 7am. Abuse of the snooze button is still a problem.
-Maybe shower if there is hot water or if my bangs look bad.
-Get dressed in whatever is clean, regardless of whether I wore it in the past day since most Macedonians wear the same thing everyday anyway.
-Rush downstairs by 7:30am for breakfast, which has been (with the exception of about 4 days total) scrambled eggs and ayvar, bread, margarine and chai (Russian tea). Most times my host mom is napping on the couch and I wake her up, she is cranky because she is not a morning person and she has lots of aches and pains.
-Rush down the hill to 8am class or to catch transportation to Kumanovo (at 815am to ensure I make it to Kumanovo, 4km away, by 9am). Class is a 10 minute leisurely walk. Transportation can mean the community kombi, a wild taxi driven by a husband of a lady I’ve met over coffee, or even just a free ride from friends or random strangers who are going to Kumanovo. The only way I have not gotten to Kumanovo is via cow or horseback, neither of which will be happening, sorry to burst that bubble.
- 4 hours of class learning pieces of Albanian or Macedonian, or 4 hours in Kumanovo doing mostly nothing. Either way, I feel tired and devoid of soul at the end. Practicum days bum me out more because I have nothing to show for my time spent in Kumanovo.
-Afternoons are spent ngosti-ing (ngosti is Macedonian for visit) or lounging at home. Maybe playing soccer. I don’t read, I don’t write blog entries. I don’t draw, listen to music, crochet or do anything. I zone out and I don’t feel too guilty anymore, which scares me. I don’t study language anymore either. Nichts.
-I go to bed at 10pm, +/- an hour. This is when I steal some alone time for movies, music or something, but I rarely make the most of it since I feel lazy and tired.
-Alarm set for 6 or 6:30am…. Life set on repeat.

Of course, there are days and nights that break the mold, like tonight. I had class at 12pm after practicum in Kumanovo. I spent last night at home doing nothing but chatting around the heater with my family, which while lovely, was not too exhilarating. Ree asked me to come to Kumanovo to go shopping, which turned into me having coffee with David while Ree shopped and then we met up with more volunteers at the ever American-friendly Irish Pub.

Over a few bottles of wine, mugs of Skopsko and cheese plates, we vented about our experiences so far and some people are at a low point. While we were discussing the issue of trash, a Canadian woman came over to us because she noticed we were speaking English and heard us talking about Macedonian culture. She herself is at least half Macedonian, and had married a Macedonian 4 years ago and lives in Bitola now. Her input really didn’t lighten the mood, which was already quite dour.

Her advice was to subsist. As a foreigner, you can’t change anything and the culture here works against the new.

I appreciate that she came and talked to us, but I do believe in very minute change. I also didn’t come here to single handedly change Macedonia into America #2, so I’m not at the rough spot that other people are feeling. I really came to learn languages and live abroad. The rest is a bonus. If my efforts positively impact Macedonia, excellent. If a handful of people realize that there is an alternative way to meeting basic human needs that might be better, cleaner, healthier, easier, anything- then ok, I did something. If a handful of people realize that people in America aren’t all millionaires, then that’s great too.

There more I get to know and partially understand Macedonian culture, I feel less guilty about some of my opinions of human nature and the best ways to manage societies. But I’ll leave that for another time and place, it’s a bit too much to share on a public blog meant to encourage cross cultural experience and other sunshine and rainbows.