Shqiperi, thou art for me: Familja!

Over Thanksgiving, volunteers either descended upon embassy families and their tables of bounty in Tirana or huddled in small groups over stoves in larger sites. Okay, I exaggerate. I belong to the latter group and met with friends in Pogradec, a lovely European town on Lake Ohrid (divided between Albania and Macedonia). We cooked a feast of entirely unnecessary proportions, attempted to dry a wishbone for snapping, passed various pumpkin-esque desserts, and had a damn good time together. The weekend wrapped up in my apartment with a few cross-culture coffee dates, Albanian lasagna, and A Charlie Brown Christmas on loop. I am unsure as to whether one could possibly ask for more… Perhaps three sisters, parents, and an increasing brood of grandchildren?

The Pog Thanksgiving Crew :)

This is born of a sentimental, Vince Guaraldi Trio-induced mood, but Thanksgiving makes me reflect on how I’ve ironically come to live alone, far from those I love, in a country that celebrates family above all else. My family is exceptionally close by American standards; a great deal of our happiness is tied up in one another. All of my time away from home has been an exercise in easing that dependency and ensuring that I can pursue a life wherever and however I see fit without constantly aching for what I “left behind”.

My two-year commitment to a country with which I have no blood ties approaches the incomprehensible for most of the Albanians in my world. I am constantly asked if I am not yearning for home, for my family. Aren’t I merzit (depressed, melancholy)? I live in a very small mountain town and am the first Peace Corps volunteer to serve here. It follows that mothers here try to compensate for the lack of family in my apartment by urging me into theirs for coffee and preserves with a heaping dose of borderline overwhelming concern and affection. I am surrounded by good intentions and disbelief. Why would someone want to leave their loved ones? Isn’t it akin to desertion? What kind of a life is one without your parents in the next bedroom, a cousin to pluck your eyebrows and trade blouses, an adolescent brother to sell liter bottles of foaming milk, your sisters’ children crawling through walnut shells under your kitchen table, and all of your bills, shoes, toys, and blankets snarled in one tired, happy tangle of love? My money is your money, my problems are your problems, my triumphs are your triumphs, our children are our children. Frankly, a lot of that sounds good to me.

Albanians will lie for family, fight for family, sacrifice for family, die for family. Just reference the Law of Kanun, still operating, though with significantly diminished strength (chalk it up to the EU application process and a decrease in political, geographic, social, and cultural isolation), in northern Albania. We just had a blood feud killing in downtown Shkodër, easily the most cosmopolitan city up north. A German Lutheran missionary who spent four years living in Albania carefully explained to me that Albanian culture is built on loyalty before shame and to expect to find forbidding mouths and crossed arms if ever I offended an Albanian clan. They’ve got each other’s backs.

Eldest sons working abroad commit a significant portion of their income to their parents’ well-being. Youngest sons remain at home with their brides to manage their parents’ households. It's worth pointing out that a lot of Americans walk away from their parents, emotionally and financially, once the last of their student loans are paid off. In Albania, children stick around. No one goes to a nursing home. My counterpart covers her brother's university expenses, handles all the paper work, tests her mother's blood sugar, and never blinks twice over it.

Americans drift away and start their own little pods in isolation. We rely on email, BBM, digital snapshots, and hurried phone calls to check-up on the progeny's progress. Albanian sisters-in-law cook together and share child-rearing responsibilities. Fathers rule, though many wives will remind their children that gruaja është qafa e familjës – the woman/wife is the neck of the family. That is to say, she subtly controls the patriarch. Everyone drinks a coffee together, watches soap operas together, debates politics together. The Albanian family is complexly woven, totally interdependent—quite difficult to mess with. A formidable model of extended family life. Like spider plants!

And the downsides? From my decidedly e huaj (foreign) perspective, few Albanians I know have struck out from home (most likely for economic reasons) without constantly warring against the strong impulse to return to their families—and often do. I also know that some of my Albanian peers resent the inescapable sense of duty binding them to the fate of the entire family and a persistent lack of privacy. Unmarried Albanians my age and well into their late twenties who still live with their parents tend to fall below American cultural standards of maturity, which is sometimes difficult for me to wrap my head around and accept. I do respect my Peace Corps peers for harnessing their adulthood and venturing into the great unknown, to test themselves and see what there’s to see. And I always say that if I try all there is to try, fail miserably or triumph greatly, and, once I have built true self-reliance, still can’t find a better place than home, at least there will be no question in my mind as to where I belong.

So, this Thanksgiving, I say thank you for a family I will always miss terribly, no matter how many months I can spend away from them all without feeling inclined to bury my face in a pillow and cry like a self-pitying, econ-bombing college freshman. I also say thank you for a family that knows how to let me go and puts a foot in strategic areas when I balk. Thank you for the Hoyas who will connect from four (or was it five?) different time zones when we all really ought to be sleeping/working. Thank you for the Peace Corps folk who will always cook with me, willingly bemoan the occasional frustrations of service with me, travel with me, and invite me over to mess with their stoves. And thank you for all of the Albanian mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, and children who offer their unconditional love whenever I am feeling merzit.