Section A · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, January 13. 1998
MISSION TO THE WORLD
Countries with Peace Corps
programs:
Currently Activ
IN BLUE
Armenia
Belize
Benin
Bolivia
Botswana
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Chad
Chile
China
Costa Rica
Cote d'Ivoire
Czech Republic
Dominican
Republic
Eastern
Caribbean
Ecuador
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Jamaica
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Lesotho
Lithuania
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Macedonia
Mauritania
Micronesia
Palau
Moldova
Mongolia
Morocco
Namibia
Nepal
Nicaragua
Niger
Niue
Panama
Papua New
Guinea
Paraguay
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Russia
Senegal
Slovak Republic
Solomon Island
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tonga
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Western Samoa
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Formerly Active IN RED
Afghanistan
Albania
Argentina
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Brazil
Burundi
Central African Republic
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Cook Islands
Cyprus
Equatorial Guinea
India
Indonesia
Iran
Liberia
Libya
Malaysia
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritius
Nigeria
Oman
Pakistan
Peru
Rwanda
Sao Tome & Principe
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
South Korea
Sudan
Swaziland
Tunisia
Turkey
Uruguay
Venezuela
Yemen
Zaire
By Kathleen Stolle
Former Kansan staff writer, Peace Corps volunteer
I stood just inside the door of my host family's concrete ground floor apartment, sobbing as my 15-year-old host sister softly dabbed my eyes with toilet tissue.
"You'll be back. Don't cry, Ketlin.
You'll be back." she assured me.
I remember being struck by her calm. I wouldn't be back — why didn't she see that? Did she not understand the extent to which her country was imploding this awful spring day? Did she not realize the implications of a full-scale evacuation of all U.S. citizens, including the 80some Peace Corps volunteers?
Perhaps not. Confusion and denial were clouding all of our minds in those days and weeks of early spring 1997 in Albania. Throughout late March and April, the unstoppable anarchy, sparked by civilian riots against the government, would result in thousands of deaths and forever alter the lives of those who survived.
But on that mid-March morning everything was relatively normal throughout most Tirana neighborhoods and seemingly completely routine in the Sinani household.
As I came to the end of the line, I noticed a commotion growing at a bread kiosk up ahead. Shortages had been predicted for weeks. I watched as two dozen or so customers crushed at the kiosk window, waving their Leks at the vendor, who hid behind a grill of iron, between his precious few loaves
Having been officially notified of our impending evacuation earlier that morning, I rushed from the Peace Corps compound across town to my host family's house to say goodbye. Tatjana and Eqarem, my host mom and dad, had just left for the outdoor market. I walked quickly and anxiously up the garbage-littered path, past the fruit and vegetable sellers and their make-shift stands, my eyes scanning the shoppers for Eqarem's shiny, bald head.
and the impatient pack. From the back of the crowd, a trio of hooligans lifted a small, leather-jacketed kid up over the mob, launching the boy to the front of the line. Boots first, he crashed down upon the heads of two older women at the front. Shoving and shouting ensued, with the young thugs at the back drinking it in with yelps and laughter.
My throat caught as I watched this, imagining Tatjana somewhere in that hoard, being bustled and shoved about. I turned away, troubled
and scared, to resume my search. But as I walked I grew aware of an eerie tension in the faces of the people I met and decided to head back across town to the safety of the PC compound.
Within 24 hours I sat strapped into a Chinook helicopter, U.S. gunmen hanging from their perches on either side, their automatic weapons training on the terrain below, reptilian tails of ready ammunition ominously snaking around their booted feet.
As the chopper swept us away, headed for an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic, we all watched numbly through the small bubbled windows as those magnificent, treacherous Albanian mountains disappeared below us. I glanced across the aisle and my eyes froze on the face of a fellow PC volunteer — a trash-talking guy from New York. Giant kindergarten tears were wetting his unshaven cheeks and his deep sobs were drowning in the chopper's din. The fading site of those damn mountains was killing us all.
I was too confused to cry then. In that moment — and other people guiltily admitted this later — excitement was coursing through my veins. It had been an exciting day.
Grief didn't wait long, though. For me the dam cracked our second night in Romania, where we'd been flown to do the necessary paperwork to close our service with PC or transfer to another PC program. We were all gathered in a small auditorium of an old, decadent, communist-era hotel on the skirts of Bucharest. Our country director, Nelson Chase, was leading the community meeting, with most of our questions focused on our chances of returning to Albania
(zilch), and our options for the future.
buture.
But some of the wagging raised hands wanted to know things like, how much per diem were we getting? Did the hotel provide laundry service? When was breakfast served? I felt my nerves begin to strain. Finally someone asked, could the hotels please provide bottled mineral water instead of carbonated water at our dining tables because the carbonated water tasted funny.
My weary mask of tolerance broke and I cried boiling hot tears into the muffling crook of my sweat shirt sleeve. Where had everyone's priorities gone, I wondered bitterly. That night I used the fword with my mother in a frustrated phone call home, hung up on her, then went and sat in a hot bath and bawled. I hated everyone.
Throughout that week emotions raged. Dissension amongst PC volunteers swelled, with one camp wanting to skip all the touchy-feely stuff and just be cut loose; the
others wanting to hang on to what would be our final days together. Some people hibernated in their hotel rooms all week; others found solace in drunken reverie.
By the end of that week, we'd all taken steps to move on. What other choice was there? Some elected to go home, others to travel. A handful chose to transfer directly to other PC programs. A few brave souls independently ventured back inside Albanian borders.
I was a transferee, having endured a phone interview with Peace Corps-Washington from someone's hotel room one night in Bucharest. Why did I want to transfer? Was I prepared to learn a new language? How did I feel as a woman adjusting to an Arab Islamic country?
I don't recall all of the questions. I just recall promising emphatically that I was ready to commit, meanwhile knowing inside that philanthropy wasn't the motive. It was fear.
I wasn't really interested in Morocco, or in experiencing a new culture, or even in being a humanitarian anymore. I was simply afraid of going home to nothing. I had a vision of getting back to Kansas, receiving rejection letters from graduate programs I'd applied to, and sitting in that big swing in my parents' yard, looking across the fields that stretch till Highway 24, and wondering what the hell I'd do now.
So I took the transfer offer, determined to love my new assignment like I'd loved the old one.
I've finally stopped waiting and have begun accepting this land of
I spent the first six months here in Morocco waiting for a feeling to strike. Waiting for this culturally rich place to capture my heart as it had captured the hearts of other volunteers who had worked here.
camels and mint tea and haunting calls to prayer cannot compete with my memories of Albania.
The streets in Morocco are relatively clean. The busses run on schedule. My classroom windows have glass. It's just not the same at all.
But I'll still go — my best friend there is getting married.
Ana started out as my language tutor. She was the assistant director of a new English library in town. In three years, she and a handful of other ambitious student volunteers had organized and were running the library, which was supported by a U.S. organization.
In May, I read with sickness and horror Ana's letter describing how the library's custodian had refused Ana's pleas for help to guard the library against vandalism during the riots, and how, consequently, it was raided, wrecked and finally burned by a mob of rufians.
Ana will receive her university degree in elementary education next month. She has abandoned her dream of pursuing library science in the United States. She's waiting for the government to notify her of an open teaching position somewhere. Meanwhile, she writes letters to her fiance, who like a lot of Albanian men, works in Greece. They hope to settle there to start their new life together.
While visiting Albania, I also plan to visit some of my former students, both those from the village high school where I taught my first year and those I worked with my second year at the university. My anticipation is not dampened by the knowledge that amongst their eager faces I will not find that of Johan, surely one of the greatest young hopes his beleaguered country has known in recent years.
Johan was a vibrant, hard-working English student, co-editor of his provincial university's first student newspaper and an unofficial student leader. He was popular and admired — characteristics which undoubtedly made him an even bigger target for the ignorant cowards whose violence extinguished one of Albania's few remaining bright lights.
His badly beaten body was found in a concrete bunker in a nearby village the day after fighting broke out in his city, the day Americans were being airlifted to safety. His family estimates that Johan was murdered sometime after leaving home that morning to buy bread. By nightfall, anarchy was shaking the normally quiet streets of Korce. Johan was last seen around noon, spotted by a friend near the downtown tourist hotel. His family launched a search for him that night, and by morning his brother had found him. His friends say his killers still walk amongst them, though they can't say with certainty who they are.
I'll visit Johan when I'm back, and in the Albanian tradition take the prettiest plastic flowers I can find to his grave.
Finally, I will stop and see my host family. I have so much to ask them.
University Christian Fellowship
Tuesdays, 7:30 pm Burge Union Sunflower Room 841-3148