The Town of Cerrik

Community map drawn by Chris (with input and coloring from Karen, Leslie, Becca and Courtney)

I live in Cerrik. It is a small town, but defiantly not a village. It has two elementary schools, a high school (which they call a gymnasium- this created a lot of confusion for us in the first few days. High school students are also called gymnasts, which was hilarious to me when I figured that out) and a college. We have our language classes in the elementary schools that is right off of the main square. What we have been able to guess about the town from various conversations we have had is that it was a communist planned town and therefore has a main square and is laid out in a rather organized way around the square. I live in an apartment building that I thought must have been built in the communist era, but someone told us was actually built rather recently. Most of the streets have stone sidewalks and trees, although many of the trees are young, as if they were planted only in the past few years, making me think that at some point the trees were cut down or pulled up and that these are replacements.

When you walk through the park during the day, you see many men sitting on the benches loudly playing dominos or chess. From about 5pm to dark the streets fill with men walking. They come from the villages and the town and walk up and down the streets in groups. Women walk too, but away from the main square. By dark, you don’t see many women out in the streets.

On one side of the park there is a pazar set up every morning that sells household products and clothes, although most anything that you need can be purchased any time from any one of several local duqans (pronounced duchan- the q makes a soft ch sound) or corner stores. There are many restaurants and cafes, some that only serve drinks and no food. The locals seem to know by unspoken rule which cafes are open to both men and women and which cafes only cater to the men. As a stranger in the town, it is hard to know which places it is acceptable for me to go. Mostly, we stick to the internet café- the staff is friendly, the coffee is cheap and the chairs are comfy. The places that it is clear that no women ever go are the billard halls and the bingo parlor. In the US, bingo is a game played mostly by little old ladies- here it is the opposite. There is a cinema, but it doesn’t appear that it has been in use for years.

When the weather is nice, the streets are full of children playing. Jump rope, hide and seek and whatever games that kids make up. When we walk through the street as a group, children run up to us to ask our names and say hello. We had one incident with a little boy that ran up and started to kick several of us when we were sitting in the park. The other children around us chased him off and called him keq (bad- once again the q is a ch so pronounce kech).

There are a lot of things that we can identify as assets in the community, but also a lot of needs. There is a lot of pollution (much like all of Albania), but at least in the city limits there are not many unfinished or half-built abandoned buildings that can be found in the surrounding area. There are a lot of kids, but they don't seem to have a lot of activities outside of school, especially for the girls. The local government seems to be well organized, but there is not much communication between the town and the people. We will only be in this site for three months, but I hope that we can accomplish some good here. . .

Me in front of my apartment building (I live on the top floor)

View from my window


Next installment- cooking: Albania style.