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.

someone please explain the excessive watering of pavement.

ive noticed as summer passes through Skopje that my biggest pet peeve is pavement watering in its many forms. water conservation has definitely not reached Macedonia yet. people are always hosing down sidewalks and driveways and roads.

why do i hate it? for mostly silly and selfish reasons.

1. waste o' water.

2. mosquito prevelance may be directly related to the amount of standing water in the city.

3. its gross to wear sandals because the watering just leads to mud and grit.

4. i slip on wet pavement and tiles.

5. i see it as a huge waste of time.

6. it makes the city air feel humid.

this also extends to the street cleaning trucks too, which inspired my gripe today. i happened to see one turn right in front of me on the way to work which meant walking to work with my pant legs held up high and carefully trying not to step in puddles that building up in the uneven parts of the road. the truck was a tanker truck with jets in front, no scrubbing just power pushing. it manages to wet the streets without cleaning anything. i've seen some with brushes on them, i think, but even those just push crap around.

i have no clue what the motivation is behind the excessive watering, but ive made up a few of my own hypotheses that i find too amusing to actually kill by asking a HCN why they are watering the pavement.

A. Keep dust under control.

If its wet, its just mud and mud can't be blown around by the wind. However, when it dries in 20 minutes, you'll still have to wet it again. Its a futile battle if you ask me.

B. To counteract the cultural art of spitting.

Spitting is out of control. Its a real talent for some of the babas I've seen. I've seen an old woman shoot a spit bullet through a gap in her teeth that was so impressive, I wanted to try it- unfortunately, i don't have gaps big enough yet. But, I imagine spit builds up and maybe this is why the watering happens.

C. Stray dog excrement/garbage residue

D. its fun?

I've got an english speaking friend here, I guess its time to ask...

there is something obscenely wonderful about vast expanses of road that are dead empty at ungodly hours of morning.

i just returned from a 4:10am bike ride. marissa caught a cab to the airport at 330am and i figured, eh, im already up and i needed to get back over to karposh 4 side of town anyway. i left my house and within the 2 short turns it took to get on the main road, i already was taken back by how awesome it was that the city was silent. i had 2-3 lanes of pavement all to my biking self. i could disregard most street lights and i was wasnt worried about being mowed down by a city bus.

i remember that night shift as a toll collector held similar moments of awe and general fascination. between 3-5 am, the time when you can feel the chemicals in your body switching over for a new day, making you feel nauseous and restless and wanting sleep so bad, i would sit in the 9x booth in the middle of 15+ lanes of black road and marvel at how odd it was for this place to be so quiet. bizarre to think that in just 3 hours, the plaza would be hopping with commuter traffic to nyc. i would shut off my movies, stop reading, turn off my music and just enjoy the silence. i would risk a cigarette, even though i knew it would probably just make me feel more gross that late/early in the night/morning, knowing that no one else would see me or catch me smoking in the booth. its a good time for thinking.

it would be nice to say that i will get up at 4-5 am from now on and bike around skopje, but lets be realistic- it ain't going to happen. ill just have to remember the feeling of this particular ride through a ghost capital and hope that maybe it will inspire me at least once more to do it again.

on that note, im going back to bed.

Evaluation

Ten months in.

Accomplishments: few

Language skills (including english): dimished

Spirits: low

makin' friends at the pazar

first, a short quiz.

Finish the sentence.

1. Heidi is __________.

a) Albanian
b) American
c) Bulgarian

The correct answer is clearly 'b', but i do hear about people around here thinking i am albanian. and today, someone was convinced i was bulgarian for about 5 minutes until my macedonian vocab failed me at the market.

let me expand on that story because it was cute/annoying.

there is a small pazar in Cair that I go to on occasion, more now that i have somewhat conquered my irrational fear of markets and it does not make me feel as people claustrophobic as the bit pazar. i have been trying to go to the same stands to build up a rapport with some of the people there and feel like a part of the community. there is one lady who gets happy to see the "amerikanka" at her stand. there is an albanian guy who sells mostly fruit and knows pretty good english, but does not understand why i bother working an NGO for the disabled when there are only, quote, "10, maybe 20" people with disabilities around here. why don't i help other people since everyone here is poor? besides his strong opinion about my work here, he's cool. today, i met a new lady.
when she saw me coming close to her stand, she bolted up from her wooden crate box doubling as a chair and started in with an endless serving of povelete's. i hadn't even figured out what i wanted yet, so i said broccoli since i hadnt seen any yet and i figured she would just say she didnt have it and sit back down and leave me be to peruse.

nope.

she tells me she doesn't have any. its not in season yet. don't i want some lovely onions? and then starts telling me i have to go to vero if i want some broccoli and i say thats fine, i know where it is, thank you. she keeps telling me directions to vero, even though i tell her i live right by it and yes, i still know where it is. then she asks me if i am bulgarian. when i say no, i am american, she throws her hands up as if i was a lost cause, EVEN THOUGH WE WERE HAVING A CONVERSATION IN MACEDONIAN ALREADY FOR 5 MINUTES. then she puts her hand on my shoulder and starts leading me away from her stand and towards the way to leave the pazar. i start worrying that she is really going to walk me to vero! then i hear her muttering that she must show me to the man who speaks english, who happens to be my fruit selling friend. when she comes over with me, we shake hands and she tries explaining to him that i do not know where vero is and that i am in deep need of broccoli. luckily fruit man has my back. we shake hands and he explains to her that im going to be here for a while and that i work here. aha. we start talking in macedonian again, suddenly i am intelligible again. so my other pazar lady friend comes over, and she happens to have two small bunches of broccoli. sigh. after all that... i buy the broccoli.

Lessons Learned:
DO NOT enter the pazar without a slight clue to what exactly you want.
DO NOT try to outfox pazar ladies.

the little things

i had the best (privaten) bus 19 ride last night. the bus itself was roomy and immaculate (not only by general Skopje bus standards) there was a working radio and sound system, and the bus driver was playing classical and opera. i really wanted to go up to the guy and just shake his hand for a job well done.

it did make up for the 'how to keep an american idiot busy for at least an hour' game that the komerzialna banka employees were playing earlier in the afternoon. i have to open a bank account to get my SPA project in motion. easier said than done. i went to the branch in the trgovski center, they said no, i have to go on the other side of the vardar to the main branch. ok. there are about 4 different entrances, i pick door #2. i explain in broken macedonian: треба да отворам нересидентна денарска сметка, or i need to open a non-resident denar account. one person said its not possible, i refused to leave so she asked someone else, who then said i cant have a denar account, but a foreign currency account and gave me a form, but said i needed to go to one of the other 3 entrances to actually get an account. i am familiar with this game after trying to send packages with ajvar to the US at various post offices in skopje. needless to say, when the employees at the other entrance gave me the same spiel and told me to go back to where i just was, i walked out, shaking my umbrella vigorously in frustration.

today i returned, armed with a native speaker who did not know english but knew my plight. after some more labyrinthine games, i now hold a non resident denar account and our SPA project can move right along.

at least my bus ride yesterday was nice right?

I've found my peeps.

Most of my life prior to er...sophmore year of college was spent as the weird kid looking in on everything that seemed not awkward. I watched other friends and acquaintances flit through public school like it was the Best Thing Ever while I felt uncomfortable and out of place for about 90% of my waking life. I think I gave up early on trying to fit in and just made the most out of being as nonconformist as possible (and in the process, becoming an attention whore). If you asked me then, I would never never have admitted it.

College was great because I made a few close friends and with those people, I could do anything and everything that was interesting to me and it wasn't awkward (chinese checkers). it didn't make me feel like an outsider. Of course, in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog that was Marist college, I can't say we were really in our element overall, but we were insulated enough with other people with similar interests that it didn't matter. At least, it didn't matter to me as much as it did in high school.

Grad school further pushed me into a group of people who were so similarly minded, intelligent, driven and dynamic that I don't even remember wondering what the rest of Rutgers Camden was like, in hind sight, this might be better.

My experience thus far in the Peace Corps has been like grad school x 20. There must be a certain pattern of experiences, qualities, interests etc that tend to draw people into the peace corps, making this small cache of about 70 Americans the largest pool of people that I feel totally comfortable around. It feels to me what I always imagined public school being like for all the people that seemed popular. Only in this case, there is significant meaning behind what drives us, attracts us to this work and bonds us together.

(I was trying to get to a point where I could rationalize why I played 3 games of risk over the course of 5 nights of IST rather then go out on the town in Ohrid or do other less nerdy activities.)