Counterpart

Yesterday I went to the beautiful town of Pogradec (pronounced Po-gra-detz) for a Cross Border Institution Building seminar. The CBIB is an EU-funded project designed to help fund cross-border developmental projects in the areas of economic development, tourism promotion, environmental protection/promotion, and social interactions. This seminar provided the opportunity for organizations in Albania and Macedonia to meet and discuss potential projects. As it relates to this example, my role as a volunteer is to work with Ervini (my counterpart at the Bashkia – more about him later!) to build capacity in the area of project proposal writing. This would include methods of communication with the outside partner, collaborating for project ideas, preparing the proposal strategy and goals/objectives, identifying what financial needs are necessary, and analyzing how the project will be sustainable and provide added value to both countries. There also has to be capacity to manage the project if it is approved for funding.


When I first walked in and saw the translator at the head table I was relieved – until he started translating from Albanian – Macedonian and vice versa ☺ It’s a great exercise to listen to people speak Albanian, but with 2 foreign languages for a whole day it gets just a little overwhelming. During lunch we went across to the lake and took some photos (some you see here).

That brings me to my counterpart – who upon looking at my blog was shocked to see there were no photos of him. Ervini is my second brother here – he is a language teacher for the Peace Corps so I had a bit of an advantage in that I knew him in the 2 months of pre-service training. Since we started working together, he has started running with me in the mornings, we have our morning coffee ritual, he has helped me deal with my landlords and go to stores to translate, and he even brought me to the “coach” that is going to help me train for the Athens marathon. As a sidenote, when I had lunch with the mayor on my first day of work, we talked about the marathon and then he told Ervini to bring me to this coach that works out with a group at the futbol stadium. Well, Monday was my first day, and the coach runs a session with kids ages 7-16 (plus me, the 32 year old American girl) consisting of sprints and other variations of running drills. They do this 3x a week for an hour. Next week it looks like Ervini will be joining us (and I’m secretly hoping to convince him to run the marathon with me).

One of Ervini’s goals is to get a MacBook – he LOVES computers and anything technological – and is addicted to facebook and youtube. We talk about computers, music, movies, culture, and of course I try to speak Albanian with him as much as possible – even though sometimes he will only speak English – I don’t blame him since I can’t understand a lot of what he says! In the next two years I’m sure we will be able to learn a lot from each other – one thing that is so nice is that he comes into work every day with a smile on his face no matter what the situation. It is a refreshing feeling to get to work with someone so positive that really loves life and embraces every opportunity presented to him. Here’s to a great two years Ervini – but if you play that Michael Buble song one more time…Unë jam duke shkuar për të goditur ju!