Community Project Day

So I know I haven’t written in a while, but I will try to update you by the order of events that have happened. A few weeks ago the other volunteers at my site and I did the third part of our community project in our village. We had been playing games with the kids in our village every Sunday at the church as a way of meeting kids and forming relationships. …we spent much time trying to explain Ultimate Frisbee and found out that apparently Albanians LOVE freeze tag! (just for future reference in case any of you ever end up working in youth development in Albania in your near future)

The second part of our project was to teach typing classes at the local high school. We went in 3 days a week and took the kids through a typing course that actually got them in the computer lab and typing on an actual computer (instead of the “keyboarding” class they’d been using out of a textbook). We had been forewarned that it’d be impossible to hold the attention of Albanian students in a classroom, but I think they were so fascinated with actually using a computer that we didn’t have any problems. Our biggest problem was trying to translate random words like “home row” and “space bar” and “index finger” into Albanian. Luckily the teachers at the school were super helpful and helped us the first few classes with the Shqip translations. We were also able to teach the teachers how to use the program since it was in English.

After hearing various good and bad things about working at/with schools in this country, I have to say that our overall experience was great! The director was super supportive and willing to help in any way he could, the teachers were great and would take turns stopping in to make sure that we weren’t having any translation problems, and the students were super focused and really excited to have class with the Americans.

A side note on Albanian schools—students in this country are required to attend the 8-year school [the government actually just changed this law to require that students attend school until the 9th year]. After this students may or may not attend the gymnasium (equivalent of high school in the US). Many of the boys in the country leave after the 8-year school to work in either Greece or Italy (usually in the construction or restaurant industry). And occasionally, girls don’t attend the gymnaz because they stay at home and do housework (though this is VERY rare…though one of the other volunteer’s had a host sister that wasn’t allowed to attend high school). Sometimes the directors of different schools in a village might be of a different political party from each other or the mayor. This causes tension if a school wants to do something and has to get approval from the mayor…or if you’re a naïve volunteer and don’t follow the hierarchy in who to ask to get a project started/completed.

Anyways…long side note…but we luckily didn’t run into any of these problems and our interactions with the schools in our village were great!

So after meeting kids through play days on Sundays, teaching at the high school, and attending school at the 8-year school for our language classes, we knew a TON of kids in our village. So our final community event that we decided to do was a digital photo scavenger hunt around our village that ended in a viewing of the pictures from the day and a dance party! …my former InterVarsity kids out there, I am sure you will be happy to know that the digital photo scavenger hunt we always did with Freshman around William and Mary campus was a success across cultures!! Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it, but people here LOVE photos! They love taking and looking at pictures and one of the first things I did the first day I was here with my host sister was to look at all of her pictures of her and her friends and she of course wanted to see all of mine.

We probably had about 70 kids under the age of 12 show up to participate and about 70 more that were teenagers. However, the teenagers weren’t too interested in participating in a scavenger hunt, so they started the dance party while the rest of us ran around the village taking ridiculous pictures. Some of the highlights included taking pictures while milking a cow, of your team doing wheelbarrow races, jumping in potato sacks, dressed in traditional attire, of the entire team on a concrete bunker, doing a pyramid, doing cartwheels in front of the school, of the entire team in a donkey cart, and of course, someone on the team riding a motorcycle with an umbrella. I ended up on a team with about 10 10-year old boys who wanted to run everywhere. It was kind of ridiculous and all of the older people and parents in the village were wondering what was going on with a bunch of kids running everywhere.

It ended up being a FABulous day and after that weekend I literally couldn’t walk down the streets of Gostime without recognizing every kid that passed me. Good times had by all!