During my time in Bitola, I was struck by the number of visiting diasporic Macedonians, whose families had emigrated to other countries for work but who returned when funds and visas permitted. They came, most often, from Australia and Canada. Although there are also sizable Macedonian communities in various Western European countries and, apparently, in New Jersey and in Detroit, the only people I encountered from those places had moved back to Macedonia. I was left with the impression that one would be challenged to throw a pebble without hitting someone visiting from another country. I don't know what the relations between the holidaying diasporans and the locals generally are, although I imagine that the visits inject sizable amounts of capital (in addition to the around 18% of the country's GDP that a 2006 study estimated migrant remittances account for). Nonetheless, I spoke with several visitors who observed that whenever possible, most of the locals chose to speak with them in English rather than in Macedonian. Despite this, and somewhat oddly, many of them still complained at length about how 'no one here speaks English.' Given that I, myself, had been able to successfully conduct a number of interviews, as well as meet locals socially and converse with them, I knew this to be false. Although the linguistic capacity was often somewhat lacking (as would generally be the case in circumstances where people were not regularly exposed to conversational English), it was generally entirely surmountable, with a bit of patience and determination.
The diasporans generally talked about the beautiful places in Macedonia, and the low costs, but were underwhelmed by the nightlife (or perceived lack thereof) in Bitola and the Roma. In fact, several people asked me if the Roma had bothered me, and were surprised when I pointed out how one quickly becomes accustomed to being approached in outdoor cafes by small children with outstretched hands, especially given that this is hardly something unique to Bitola or even Macedonia, as it occurs all over the region. [In Bitola, I actually borrowed and read Isabel Fonseca's 'Bury Me Standing', which is a sweeping account of the Gypsies' history. It does leave some technical gaps, presumably as it was researched during the wars in Yugoslavia and therefore does not cover Gypsy life in the former republics, but rather focuses mostly on Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. Also, while Fonseca largely manages to avoid imbuing the text with romanticization or pity, she tends to focus on World War II camp atrocities, attacks in transitional Romania, and historical biases against and current misunderstandings of Gypsies, contrasting these with the welcoming or fleeing or educated or activist Gypsies she encountered. Although I enjoyed having the opportunity to learn a bit more about the various groups and their experiences, and I have the greatest respect for Fonseca's attempt to learn Romany and to actually stay with one family and to visit others, I did get the sense that she was to some extent presenting the best of the Gypsies and the worst of the 'others', and I'm not sure what reception this book would have in, for instance, parts of Romania. My colleagues in Serbia discuss how children are sent out to beg or to clean windshields, and must submit all earnings to something like a Mafia, by which I think they mean that the parents exploit the children for money rather than to imply that there actually is a Gypsy Mafia, but Fonseca doesn't even mention the numerous begging children that are inevitable sights in every Southeast European country I've visited. I also was speaking with a colleague in Macedonia who previously worked with an organization that tried to persuade Roma parents of the importance of sending their children to school, rather than to the streets to beg, which met with resistance because it is counter to the Gypsy culture; although this seems to be a key point of misunderstanding, it, also, is not mentioned in the book, beyond some attention paid to Bulgaria's attempt to eradicate all Gypsy culture by a series of stifling regulations, including mandatory education. Regardless, I'd still recommend the book, just so long as one bears in mind that some of the areas that seem to be most visible or of most concern to non-Gypsies here are not addressed.]
On Monday evening, I went in search of a new and good place to eat dinner. I'd passed a reputable-looking restaurant while out walking the day before, and had even seen a girl eating alone there-- an unusual enough sight that I thought it might bode well. The restaurant was called 'Twins', and although it is reportedly owned by an Australian returnee, the menu was entirely in Cyrillic and the man working the espresso machine responded to my query of 'Engleski?' with 'Ne... Deutsch?' I answered 'Da,' and explained that I wanted something that tasted good but wasn't too expensive. He proceeded to make some attempt to verbally translate the menu into German, or to describe the dishes, and then asked me what part of Germany I was from and what I was doing in Bitola. When he brought the food-- a ground meat cutlet with pieces of embedded melted cheese, with tomatoes and pommes frites-- he also insisted that I move to a nicer table. I basked in my solitude, read, and ate -- apparently too slowly for the waiter, who came back over and said, with great concern, that I should eat faster because the meat was best when hot, but it would be cold soon and not as good.
A little while after that, I heard a male voice asking, "You speak English?" A muscular man, maybe 28 years old, wearing basketball shorts, was standing over me pushing his sunglasses atop his head. He didn't give me time to respond, quickly introducing himself, saying he was from Canada and often came to this restaurant because it was clean, unlike others in the city, and also didn't have as many flies as others did. "I'm a middle-school teacher; my degree was in maths and science but I teach physical education." He sat down. "My brothers teach high-school and they keep telling me that I should, too, but if I go there they'll make me teach maths and science because of my qualifications, and I like teaching phys ed. Why are you in Bitola?"
The waiter came over and made some comment in Macedonian, asked if I wanted coffee, I said yes, hoping that I'd be left alone soon. It was not to be. The man could have talked the ear off of an elephant. After I said, briefly, "Something to do with economic development," he told me that I should be sure to tell Wal-Mart to invest in Macedonia, because they grow enough food for 8 million people but only have 2 million, and people will work for very little money because right now so many don't have jobs. Also, what did I think of Bitola? Had the Gypsies bothered me much? It's really dirty and poor, right? If he got injured, he'd want to go back to Canada to get treatment, he wouldn't want to trust a hospital here, they're dirty. The waiter brought my coffee and said something in to the guy in Macedonian; he translated, "He says you have beautiful eyes." (Several people have said this, which seems strange as blue eyes are not all that uncommon here and mine are by no means outstanding.) Shortly thereafter he started spouting theories of U.S./Russia relations and how Kosovo and Macedonia come right into the middle of it, how the U.S. claims to be building a new embassy in Skopje but is really building a military base under a mountain, how Putin is a brilliant man who is angry because Russia had made arrangements with and paid Serbia for an oil pipeline through Kosovo and when the U.S. recognized Kosovo they cut off the pipeline, how Russia is making so much money now because they can sell oil and the U.S. is bumbling and, also, how a highly-ranked negotiator told him last year that there is an asteroid positioned to hit Earth in 2036 and the only way for us to avoid destruction is for all countries to work together, so Russia and China and the U.S., among others, are all trying to develop a missile that various countries can fire toward the asteroid to alter its course.
He went on at length about his current events expertise, acquired from watching television news and YouTube broadcasts-- "not just from the U.S. and Canada, but from Russia and the Middle East too"-- not seeming to realize that without a filtering mechanism, regardless of how many news sources one accesses, propaganda is still propaganda. He started talking about how the U.S. had made such a strategic mistake with its attempt to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and how it was no wonder that Putin was furious, about how the entire recognition of Kosovo was purely for American self-interest, how it was entirely understandable that the Serbs reacted to Albanian separatists in Kosovo by shooting them, because of course if someone in the U.S. said, 'I want to speak Spanish in the schools,' wouldn't we shoot them too, and not allow it? I mentioned something about bilingual education and sat in shock that the first person I've met who has felt so passionately about Kosovo is a Macedonian-Canadian-- born in Canada, his family would have been Orthodox had they still been in Macedonia but instead, 'We're Canadian,' and, unlike these people (spoken in disparaging tones), we don't have a religion-- and that he was so strongly in favor of ethnic cleansing when his own mother, it later transpired, had been in the northern Greek region near the border and forced to learn Greek, instead of Macedonian, and her entire family had been forced to change to Greek names, and even the Macedonian inscriptions on cemetery headstones had been scratched out and replaced with Greek lettering.
His father came to the restaurant to meet him and dashed my hopes that they would go somewhere else by pulling up a chair to my table and ordering rakija, which I opted out of, and salads for them. His wife had died last year-- and she had property in Greece which had been handed down through their families, and was supposed to come to this son, next, but when they went to the Greek Embassy in Canada to claim it, the Embassy insisted that they have the deed and the rest of the documentation translated from Macedonian into Greek, and this son should also have a Greek name, because Greek land can't be given to a Macedonian. It sounded like a hassle that I did not envy them in the least. The father beamed at me and asked whether I spoke Macedonian and which of my relatives came from the country and, horrified, I heard the son relate our one-sided conversation to him, practically panting for paternal approval of his comments praising the country ('I told her that Ochrid was beautiful and she had to see it'), and the father smiled in my direction and said that his son was so smart, he knew so much because he was a professor, and the son had at least the decency to blush and correct his father to say 'middle-school teacher,' and finally I made good my escape, heading back to my room where I brewed some tea and reflected.
The food had been good at Twins, but on Tuesday I nonetheless went somewhere else to eat, in the interests of avoiding the pair, and ultimately scrambled three brown eggs on a microwave-size stovetop, and realized how much I'd missed cooking for myself and nights in.
Wednesday was a very busy day at the office, with interviews sandwiched around a midday work event. In the evening, I met with one of my colleagues and a friend of hers, and after sipping iced coffees at a cafe, we joined some other of her friends at an apartment. The six of us gathered around a dining table, where we had white wine spritzers and paprika-dusted potato crisps, while three people chain-smoked, four people conversed in Macedonian, a Yugoslav soap opera from the 1980's played on the television, and the friend told me about studying reiki massage in Skopje, because he had special energy in his hands, and had I heard of chakra? At intervals, he would arise and give someone a neck rub, and then sit back down and tell me about cosmic/universal energy.
Thursday was my last day at the office, which the hotel called at noon to announce that I'd need to be out of my room by 1pm, due to the impending arrival of another guest. My minibus to Montenegro was not scheduled to leave until 9.30, so after showering, packing, and finishing up some work, I anticipated spending an afternoon in a cafe. I had very much wanted to visit Heraclea, the partially-excavated ancient Roman city a stone's throw from Bitola, but was daunted at the prospect of not knowing precisely where or how long of a walk it would be, and not trusting the taxis (there are many, many taxis in the cities here and, while the majority of them are probably entirely reliable, I can't shake a certain level of concern that they may try to take advantage of my lack of language-- so no matter how unrealistic this may be, I try to avoid taxis unless I am with a native speaker). Fortunately, a native speaker was revealed in the form of Zani, a Macedonian-Australian computer programmer who was a dead ringer for a taller Rowan Atkinson, and who offered to accompany me. At Heraclea, the tour guide spoke only Macedonian, and admission was 200 denari per person, unless that person wanted to take photographs, in which case it was 300 denari per person-- and anyone who wanted to make video recordings had to pay 500 denari. There were narrow metal ramps spanning gaps in the walls, which we clambered over and around in order to see some stunning mosaics (including one that depicted peacocks, fig trees, herons, octopuses, lions, and a doe and a buck on each side of the 'Holy Grail'), before climbing to the top of the amphitheatre and surveying the mountainous horizon. When we returned to Bitola, Zani showed me the interior of the Orthodox church there. The previous weekend, I had seen no fewer than three bridal parties, one of them exiting this church and boarding a horse-drawn coach, but I hadn't yet been inside the church. It had some nicely painted icons, but the most interesting part was the supposed story of its being built. Zani said that the Ottoman ruler at the time had allowed the Orthodox community to build a church only if they could finish it within five months, and if they were unable to do so, then they would have to go without-- and so the entire church was built, icons painted, decorations carved, within a five-month period.
Suzana and I had made arrangements to meet for coffee that evening, and so we all went first to a cafe, and later to get ice cream. The rest of my evening was spent making comparisons between Australian and American culture, pacing the street, eventually meeting Zani's ponytailed, chain-draped brother who showed me a series of photos and videos he'd taken of some of the 365 churches in Ochrid and, eventually, retrieving my bag from the hotel (and the laundry that had been washed that afternoon and at some point hung on the balcony, which caused me some last-minute consternation as it included my only pair of jeans and two of my shirts for a trip for which I'd packed 'light'), and waiting for forty-five minutes for the autobus, which was supposed to leave at 9.30 but did not arrive until almost an hour late.
Next stop: Montenegro.
No comments:
Post a Comment