Direction-turned

I had a breakthrough today. It had nothing to do with language, culture, or my work. It was about cardinal directions.

When we arrived in Sarajevo, we were told not to worry about cardinal directions or even street names--directions are given using buildings and other distinctives like large advertisements. No problem, I can learn to navigate that way. But I grew up on the prairie where land is marked out in an orderly grid mile after mile, each intersection its own compass rose. That compass is buried deep in my understanding of the world--in most places I know east and west better than left and right--so even if I live in a place of mountains and winding streets, I still want to know where the sun will come up and how to find Polaris. 

The problem is that I intuitively assigned cardinal directions 180° off from what they ought to be; the direction that feels so very north is actually south. The stubbornness of my sense of direction that is usually a blessing became a curse--it doesn't matter how often I look at a map or track the sun across the sky, in two and a half months I have been unable to shake this sense that Mt. Trebević looms to our north. (I couldn't be more wrong.)

The sun sets early here, so as I walked home this evening I caught glimpses through the trees of stars, making me wish for a back yard, an accessible roof, or a comfortable park bench from which to stargaze. The city itself is shifting into the season of smog, courtesy of all of the wood- and coal-burning furnaces, so stargazing in the city won't be great anyhow. Maybe up on Trebević the stars are clearer, the way they were when I was living in Tucson and we camped a few nights up on Mt. Lemmon...

And there it was. I don't know why I didn't realized it earlier: I had subconsciously conflated the map of Tucson with the map of Sarajevo. Not only does this work remarkably well, it may help explain that unshakable 180° disorientation.

Tucson--you didn't know you were that deep in my subconscious, did you? Yeah, neither did I. 


Check it out:

White arrow: North
Red dot: Old Town/Baščaršija / Old Town/4th Ave
Orange arrow: toward Mt. Trebević / Mt. Lemmon
Yellow dot: my Sarajevo neighborhood / my Tucson neighborhood
Green arrow: toward Mt. Igman / the Rincons
Blue line: the Miljacka River / the Santa Cruz River (bonus points for both being dubious holders of the title "river," depending on one's definition and expectations)

(Mis)communicating

My attempts at communication these days reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

Long, long ago, in a valley far, far away, there lived a group of Catholics and a group of Mennonites. They had coexisted since time immemorial and were happy to be neighbors, but eventually it became clear that with generation after generation of large families, they were outgrowing the valley. So they decided that one group would stay and the other would leave, as determined by a public debate between their leaders, the pope and Menno Simons. The one constraint: no words would be spoken during this debate. 

The morning of the debate, the crowd gathered around the pair. After thinking for a minute, the pope started it off by holding up three fingers. In response, Menno Simons held up one. Then the pope waved one finger around his head. Menno Simons pointed to the ground where he sat. The pope took out a chalice of wine and a communion wafer. Menno Simons pulled out an apple. And with that, the pope stood up and declared that Menno Simons had won and that the Catholics would find another place to live. 

As they were packing up, the Catholics asked the pope what had been said in the debate. 

"Well, I held up three fingers to represent the holy trinity, but he held up one finger to remind me that God is still one. Then I gestured around me to indicate that God is all around us, but he pointed to the ground to say that God is also here. Finally I brought out the bread and cup to show that God absolves us of our sins, but he pulled out the apple to remind me of original sin. He had me beat."

As the Mennonites celebrated their good fortune across the valley, one asked Menno Simons to explain the debate.

"So, first he held up three fingers to say that we have three days to leave, and I held up one finger to say that not one of us is going. He gestured around himself to suggest that there is plenty of other good land elsewhere, but I pointed to the ground to say that we're staying right here!"

"And then what?" someone asked.

"Who knows. He pulled out his lunch, so I pulled out mine."

Oh, miscommunication. The other cooks and I do pretty well when we're communicating about the foods and tasks in front of us. But saying anything with more nuance than “cut the potatoes this way,” or “eat another piece of cake,” takes at least some serious planning if not an actual translator. A few weeks ago two of the cooks and one of the sisters who frequently stops by were talking, first about me, then to me. That much was clear. I picked out a word here and there but nothing cohesive, and as they realized that their question wasn't getting through they stopped, thought for a moment, shook their heads, and moved on to a different topic. Several days later a coworker who's fluent in English translated for the cooks—the sister had been asking if there are many nuns where I come from. Yeah, I wasn't going to guess that from the bits I had caught.

Some of the misunderstandings are cultural. The other cooks arrive at the kitchen relatively early, between 6:30 and 7, and stop to eat some bread and jam around 9, probably their first food of the day. (Coffee and cigarettes don't count.) At that point, I'm still full from the granola and yogurt I ate at home, but if I don't eat at least a kifla, a crescent-shaped yeast roll, they invariably comment on how little I eat. (A note: I eat well here, especially at the kitchen, and I'm an average size for a Bosnian woman. I'm not wasting away!)

I'm quite sure that I've spoken the right words in the right order to communicate that I ate muesli and yogurt at home, so this is not about translation. The explanation for this one falls somewhere around culture, hospitality, and motherliness. In my understanding, the word for breakfast, doručak, actually refers to any food you eat before you eat lunch, ručak, which could be as late as 5 pm, and according to another English-speaking co-worker, muesli is to be eaten while watching TV, not for doručak and not with yogurt. Thus a little granola at home is no excuse for not eating a kifla for doručak at work, and since I am still treated as a guest in the kitchen in some ways, they would probably be remiss if they did not try to persuade me to eat something.

But my favorite miscommunication so far was when my attempt at a comment in Bosnian on how it looked like it would rain all day was interpreted—I think—as a question of how many staff had eaten lunch. At least we know how to laugh together. 

Hey look, a new post!

Ćao! Greetings from BiH! If you read the article in the church newsletter, this will look familiar, though a little more up-to-date. Sorry! There will be other blog posts coming.

I have been in Sarajevo for more than a month but I am still unaccustomed to living in a city with a well-known name, let alone one where there are daily reminders of events in world history. There is the Latin Bridge where World War I began, on my way to language lessons I pass a venue from the 1984 Olympics, and everywhere there reminders of the war twenty years ago—scars on apartment buildings, scars in the sidewalks from mortars (called “Sarajevo roses”), and scars, visible or not, on the people of this place.

So, what am I doing here? Mostly I'm peeling potatoes, washing dishes, and building relationships. I work with one of MCC's partners, Bread of St. Anthony, a Franciscan nonprofit that addresses a vast scope of needs on a limited budget. Right now I work mornings in the soup kitchen in BSA's main building and study Bosnian with a tutor in the afternoons.

Due to circumstances at work, I won't start working at the therapeutic community in Plehan until sometime in November or December, instead of October as I had initially anticipated. So I'll continue to work in the soup kitchen and begin work with housekeeping in the dormitory, as well as possibly working with students in some capacity, possibly teaching conversational English. And maybe teaching conversational English to some other staff? We'll see.

The soup kitchen is similar to many soup kitchens in North America; people come five days a week for bread and a hot meal of stew, pasta, or polenta. Many bring soup pots or plastic containers and take their family's portion home with them. We receive fresh bread every morning—250 loaves Monday through Thursday and 500 on Friday—and the kettle we use for cooking the stew is enormous, at least as big as the rendering kettle my family uses for rendering lard, and stirred with a similar large wooden paddle. I am consistently amazed by how much food we make and how little is left at the end of the day. The cooks seem to know most people who come through by name; there isn't the same culture of mobility that you find in North America since families tend to live in the same house or apartment for generations, and though many live in poverty, there is a very low rate of homelessness.

I live in an apartment on my own about a twenty-minute walk from Bread of St. Anthony. It has been a blessing to have a well-furnished apartment with a good kitchen and enough space to host a few other MCCers who have come through Sarajevo. One of the ongoing challenges of living on my own rather than with a host family, as most SALTers do, is feeling connected to Bosnians outside of the workplace, but I live close to the other MCCers and often spend time with them, which has been both life-giving and a lot of fun. Learning Bosnian has been another challenge, but it is encouraging to realize how much I have learned in the last six weeks, and it has given me a fresh appreciation for anyone who has taken the time and effort to become proficient in a second or third language.

Reflections on Alfalfa

A few days before I left home to start my SALT term I cleaned up my plot in the community garden. As I pulled up the rampant velvetleaf and crabgrass and thinned the kale, it came to me that I was uprooting not just weeds and unwanted plants, but in some ways my own life as I step out to start a year-long term in Bosnia. I surveyed the vegetative carnage around me and wondered what in my life is weedy, what is good and productive, and what is simply planted too thickly and needs a little more space to live and breathe and become what it is intended to be.

The community garden relocated last winter to a corner of an alfalfa field; the ground was tilled and prepared for vegetable gardening, but it must have been a well-established field, judging by the alfalfa that regrew as many times as I pulled it. (My apologies to the ones who next tend our plot—you will have to either battle or embrace the alfalfa.) As I contemplated the plants I uprooted and the ones I left standing, there clearly was another category: the alfalfa, which was gone, but going to rise again from well-established root systems.

I take some comfort in this image of the alfalfa plant; its roots are deep and established, and though you feel that it is dead, again it springs forth, resilient, not uprooted at all. Leaving home for a year doesn’t cut off friendships or kinships or end the life I was leading there. And though what next grows from those roots may look a little different, it will still be alfalfa—or my life.

As for what in my life may prove to be weedy, productive, or in need of some air and sun to thrive…we shall see.