Part III

PART III:

"The Village"

On the first day that I went on patrol with the 82nd guys, we found ourselves in one of the local villages at the bottom of our hill. At first, we were a curiosity to the local villagers, but once they realized we were NATO, they made us stop and come into one of the houses. We obliged - leaving one guy with the truck of course. They brought us into the big living room and made us sit on the couches against the far wall. None of them spoke any English, and none of us spoke any Albanian, which led to a few tense moments. But it didn't last long - they all seemed content to just stare at us with big smiles, which told us more than any words could have conveyed. We were like rock stars to them. They gave us strong Turkish coffee, which tasted like heaven, and scraped together some food for us. We actually felt a little guilty - they were poor and had nothing, but they just couldn't do enough for us. They would have given us everything they had if we had let them. We went through the usual motions of trying to "mime" your conversation when nobody speaks a common language, but eventually, things were made easier when they found out that I spoke a little German. Apparantly there was an adorable little 8 year old girl in the village who had taken some German lessons in school and spoke it pretty well. So, if you can appreciate the beauty of the scene, picture it - a group of Americans carrying on a conversation with a group of Albanians through two people who spoke a little bit of German. It wasn't perfect, but it worked fine for us. Through our little linguistic arrangement, we were able to learn alot about the local culture and customs. The younger ones were anxious to show us what they knew of America, which was pretty standard - the Backstreet Boys and Michael Jordan. When I told them my name was Rik, they all got very excited and started yelling "Ricky! Ricky Mar-tin!", which was a very amusing moment.

We ended going back to the village everyday for about a week and got to know the villagers very well. They sort of adopted us, and we established a ritual - we would show up, they would usher us into the living room, and the oldest single girls would make us coffee and wait on us. Apparantly, this is the custom. When guests come to visit, the oldest single girls did all the "hostess" work - it was their way of trying to marry them off.

Here's a few pictures of some of the villagers. The little girl who spoke German, Arietta, is in the first picture, in the front row with the light blue shirt.

This is the gentleman who's house we were in. Only two people were allowed to sit on the couch with us - this man and his father. Everyone else had to sit on the floor.

This is his father, he was sort of the Patriarch of the village. They treat their elders with tremendous respect. When he entered the room, it would get quiet and they would wait on him hand and foot. He would sit for a little while with us, never saying much. After a while, he would get up and return to his room to rest.

This man really wanted me to take a picture with his child, I have no idea why.

On our last visit to the village, they invited us to join them in a game of volleyball. We agreed, thinking we would impress them with our athletic prowess. We were wrong. Their volleyball court was a little piece of land cleared and marked with dirt and sand. For a net, they pounded a couple tree trunks into the ground and connected them with a cut up piece of nylon mesh that probably came from a big sack of grain or wheat or something. It was rudimentary at best, but it didn't matter - these people had skills.

As we prepared to leave and said our goodbyes, the villagers were visibly sad to see us go. I had read in an Albanian culture/customs book that when an Albanian kisses you on alternating cheeks three times in a row, it means that they have accepted you into their family, or as their lifelong friend. So you can imagine what it meant to me when one of the elder men in the village who had befriended us, named Hyram, did that to me as he said goodbye. He put a hand on each shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, in the best broken English he could manage, "Ricky...come..back...". I knew I'd never see them again, because were being moved back onto the base, but I didn't want to spoil what, for him, was a very special moment. So I told him yes, I would, and said goodbye to the villagers. With that, we went back, packed up our site, and prepared to relocate to Camp Monteith, where I would spend the bulk of my deployment. It was now early August; we had been in Kosovo only about a month, and I already felt a connection to the place and it's people.