Week 1 - Landing in Lepushe

Hanging out on the Porch

With a little over a month of retrospective, I can say that I was entirely unprepared for what awaited me in the Vermosh valley. That's not to say that it was a difficult experience, but rather that all of the craziness of the first week needs to be understood in that context. I had some kind of idea that I was going to come to this mountain village and teach English, but I didn't know what the comprehension level of the students or how old they would be, or very much about the village or its culture beyond the minimal information I was able to scrape together via the vanishingly small number of websites that mention the area.

Friday Night in Lepushe

I spent most of the trip to Vermosh in a semi-conscious state due to the effects of food poisoning, which led one of my fellow travelers at one point to cajole me off the bus, using hand signals due to the lack of a mutually intelligible language between us, and force me to drink some water after he noticed that my own supply had run out and I was starting to overheat in the afternoon Albanian sun.

On the Road to Lepushe


After hours of travel, we pulled up in a small village, and when I looked outside, I recognized a girl who'd been running a fundraising site on the same platform that I'd been using. Waves of relief washed over me as I grabbed my bag and made my way unsteadily off the bus. As I made for the door, a man put up his hand and explained that this was in fact Lepushe, a village 30 minutes away from Vermosh, and that I was to stay on the bus. Being off that bus was the only thing on my mind at that moment, so when I turned away, crestfallen, and made my way slowly back to my seat, I tried my best to accept my fate, knowing that relief from both the ride and my illness was only a half hour away. Those last thirty minutes, though, were an eternity, and I ended up spending the next few days out of commission. But despite this, after I decided I was sufficiently healed, I volunteered to take that trip every day to teach in Lepushe, where I taught the teenager/adult class (14-43) for the next two and a half weeks.

 

Lepushe, Albania

The majority of the village of Lepushe lies in a valley off the main road, with a small center at the crest, consisting of a few restaurants, a shop, church, and the school. If not for a few signs alerting the observant traveler to the existence of the village in the valley, it's unlikely that anyone would actually notice it. Even from the crest, most of the homesteads blend into the surrounding forest, especially because, like most of the villages in the area, it isn't organized into well-planned and orderly rows of houses but instead consists of a random assortment of homes haphazardly arranged throughout the area.

Alpini Guesthouse, Lepushe

This was the second year of classes in Lepushe, and the third in Vermosh, of which Lepushe is something of a suburb, so far as I could gather. It was originally unclear whether or not we'd be spending any time in the village, but the outpouring of interest in classes, with more than 30 students showing up for the first day of classes, led the organizers at B3P to decide to send two teachers out every day. I ended up with the adults and one of the Albanian teachers, a woman who'd studied in Germany and teaches at a high school in Shkoder, ended up with the children. For some reason, the program organizers had also created a system where each teacher is paired with a translator. Now, I can see how this makes sense, since a lot of the volunteers have little to no teaching experience, but I've taught quite a few beginner classes in my time, and the translator actually made it more difficult for me, because I started using her as a bit of a crutch to explain things that the students wouldn't really need to know until they were at a higher level.

Recess

Overall, though, the classroom experience that first week was fantastic. I had a wide variety of students in my class, from the village nurse and guesthouse proprietor and two local beauty pageant winners. This variety also came with some difficulty, though, because that wide variety also meant a wide gap in comprehension, and from the start it was a struggle to keep all of the students engaged when some were nearly fluent and some struggled to introduce themselves or pronounce simple English phrases.

Traditional Kelmendi Garb in Lepushe

Because I had to sit out class for the first three days, week one came to an end quickly. Fortunately, we had plenty to occupy ourselves with that first weekend. Ironically, as soon as my work-week ended, though, I found myself back on the bumpy road to Lepushe, as we spent both Friday and Saturday in the village. It just happened that we were in the area during a very festive time in the Kelmendi season, and the first weekend of my time in Vermosh coincided with the Logu i Bjeshkëve Festival, a cultural event hosted every year since 1998 in Lepushe by the broader Kelmendi community, which this year was attended by the President of Albania. I didn't get to meet him, but maybe next year (I also don't think he speaks English, so that could be a problem).

The President of Albania, Bujar Nishani

The festival was a celebration of all things cultural in the region, from music and poetry to costumes and comedy. The President was on hand to present the Kelmendi people with a citation from the national government:

 “For the distinguished contribution provided to the national identity; for the bravery and heroism demonstrated in the uprisings for independence against Ottomans; for the heroic resistance to preserve the national borders from chauvinist partition; for the first anti-communist uprising (in 1945) where the blood of martyrs was transformed into a memory and willingness to seek democracy; for its distinguished leaders and sons that it has produced throughout the centuries.” 

I was lucky to be there for this event this year, as it had this extra dimension of celebrating the Kelmend nation's traditional contributions to regional culture and resistance to authoritarianism. The event itself was also very entertaining, if you're wondering what Kelmedi sketch comedy is like, plan a trip to northern Albania for next year, because you can see it at this festival.

Dancing Competition at the Festival



Unfortunately for us, the event got rained out about halfway through, but we did get a nice taste of the local flavor. The previous night had also ended in similar fashion, not because of rain, but rather because a sudden explosion of shoves, shouts and one particularly drunken reveler forced us to abandon what had prior been a very enjoyable evening of tradition dancing for our car and the relative safety of the road back to Vermosh.

Standup at the Logu Festival

To cap off the week, we headed out to Plav, a proper town on the other side of the Montenegrin border. Crossing the border feels like re-entering civilization in a lot of ways, at least after the 10 or so miles it takes to get into the town.

 

Re-entering Albania

 

Plav was a resort town back in Yugoslav times, so it still maintains some of the polish of those days, and the hotel where we ate lunch was actually quite luxurious.

Pigging out in Plav

After seeing all the mountain bikers ride through Lepushe in the previous days, I kind of felt like I was in some bizarro world version of the rides we used to take through the skyline drive in Virginia. Our stay in Plav was unfortunately short, because its a place I would have liked to spend a bit more time in, but although the food was delicious, and the surroundings gorgeous, they were only nominally in my opinion than what we left back in Albania, and I was happy to get back and prepare for week two.

 

Plav, Montenegro