Linguist in Peshkopi – Kenji Yamada, Albania 2007-2009

Photos from Kenji’s Service

Kenji Yamada’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

Albania, 2007-2009. I served as an English Education volunteer in Peshkopi, a town in mountainous northeastern Albania. I worked with English teachers at Peshkopi’s elementary schools to improve their English grammar, conversation, and understanding of their assigned curriculum, as well as co-teaching English classes at one of the local high schools, Nazmi Rushiti.

I worked with another PCV to train Nazmi Rushiti’s team for Model UN Albania. Our team represented Burkina Faso. I worked on a side project of trying to start a community radio station for Peshkopi and our local region. There had been attempts at a similar idea before me, and there were several residents and many students very interested in the project, but we did not succeed in getting together a Board of Directors willing and able to stick with it.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

My favorite memory is coming home to Albania from a winter vacation in Macedonia.

Short version: Albania felt like home to me after being in Macedonia.

Long version:

Macedonia is a majority Slavic country and its majority language is a Slavic language, but its western part, closest to the Albanian border, has a majority of ethnic Albanians who speak Albanian (“shqip”). It’s not identical to the Albanian spoken in Albania, but the differences are small enough not to impede understanding very much if you’re a native speaker. I am not, but at this point in my service I could speak Albanian well enough to communicate pretty decently on the other side of the border too – provided I was talking to an ethnic Albanian and not a Slavic Macedonian.

There is a lot of political and cultural tension between the Slavic Macedonians and the ethnic-Albanian Macedonians. As a result, speaking Albanian to a Slavic Macedonian is best avoided. When buying a bus ticket in Skopje, the capital, I made the mistake of referring to my intended destination as “Dibra e Madhe”, the Albanian name of the town whose Macedonian name is “Debar”. The ticket lady scowled and corrected me. But she did sell me the ticket.

I got on my bus and all was well until we reached a small town called Mavrovo. There, I was told, with gestures and a few words I could understand, that I would have to get off the bus. As best I could understand, the bus was turning around to head back to Skopje, and I would have to wait in Mavrovo for another bus to take me the rest of the way to Debar. I figured I had no choice and there would probably be another bus along soon, so I got off. The bus turned around and headed back.

This was winter, so it was getting cold by this point. There was snow on the ground. I got worried.

A minibus (we call them “furgona” in Albania) came along with a “Debar” sign in the window. I flagged it down. It was full. The driver would not let me on, and I could not ask any questions or communicate the urgency of my situation because he was a Slavic Macedonian and I had about five words of Macedonian. He drove on without me.

I waited an hour more and did not see another bus or furgon. Sundown was approaching and it was getting colder. I went into the one cafe-looking place left open to try to get warm. The man in there was nice, even though we could not communicate beyond me asking for a coffee and paying for it. I sat by the window for an hour watching for a bus and did not see one. I saw he was shutting the place down and needed to leave. Told him thank you (one of my five Macedonian words) and went back outside.

By now it was dark and very cold. I was very cold. I was 40 miles and an international border away from home. I began to think, “Maybe I will get hypothermia and die on the side of the road in Macedonia.”

Some time later,