Machismo Madness.

I don't just dislike the car, I actually hate driving here. I think it's much worse than Sri Lanka. True there aren't buffalo carts, tutktuks, livestock, bicycles with beds loaded on them, on the roads, but it's so much faster here, so much more dangerous, and more than a little anarchic.

People just don't obey the rules, ( I know I sound ridiculously British about this) or seem to have much road safety awareness. Vehicles shoot red lights, I regularly get hooted at for stopping at them, they jump queues of cars waiting at lights, drive half on pavements and ignore one way systems.

So on my way to school, I meet an average of 10 cars coming towards me up one way streets. This is entirely normal. They are never honked at. Today I even met a police car going the wrong way. These cars always seem to expect me to get out of the way, never mind they shdn't even be there. Grrrrr. it' s not good for the blood pressure driving here.

Decidedly less funny, is the overtaking. On our way back from Monte Negro recently, I was in a constant state of nervous tension as cars overtake at the very last moment, nipping back into their lane with seconds to spare. Sometimes cars just carry on down the middle in a self appointed 'suicide lane' Head on collision dreams are my recurring nightmares now, so the blood pressure doesn't get a break at night either.

On this particular journey, a black Mercedes was coming straight towards us in our lane, even though he was not overtaking any cars. What was he doing, he must have SEEN us? My husband just lent on the horn, slowing down as he did so, whereupon the driver, who was close enough now, to be seen laughing with his mates, swerved back across to his side of the rd and then deliberately swerved in and out of the central white lines as he zoomed past.

The machismo culture in Albania is at its worst in the car. I have come to the conclusion that some of these drivers must be playing chicken, they cut it so fine in overtaking. Mopeds on the dam (a traffic free rd along the lake) play chicken with me all the time, as I bike along it, just drive straight at me, then swerve away at the last moment. Ha ha, what a good joke.

I have heard Albanian women complaining about how scared they are by the way their boyfriends drive here. It just seems that driving a car is a big game here to some men.

A few months ago, Dritan Hoxhes from Top Channel t.v station in Tirana, was killed along with his mistress whilst driving his Ferrari at 210km/h in Downtown Tirana, a built up single lane carriageway. The car was split in two. Machismo at its maddest...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJL3cvbuIRM Just look at how far apart the two halves of the car ended up..... Unbelievable

As antidote to all this road anarchy and machismo, I quite enjoy subverting it by being extra coutreous and solicitous of pedestrians who are used to shooting the rapids of the raging roads. They generally just lace their way, stop-start, some nonchalantly, some apprehensively, all resignedly, between the flowing cars. The only way to get across.

They even do this on Skanderberg Square, a huge old communist parade square where the cars are 5 or 6 deep as they go round.

SO I always stop at zebra crossings (unheard of) and if I meet a pedestrian car-dodger I always stop and wave them across. I have to say it's worth it just for the reaction. There's always a hesitation, sometimes slight bemusement, quickly followed by relief as they catch your eye and invariably give a smile or a wave.

Tiranan Tractor

My daughter, however, loves the car, despite the crack in the entire length of the windscreen, broken a/c, a very dodgy clutch, weak battery, a petrol gauge that moves from half to quarter back up to half again, & then straight down to empty, with no warning.

I'm also terribly ashamed to confess it's a 4x4, which we so vehemently & self-righteously poo-poohed in our UK composting, washable nappy, recycling, seasonal veg box days.

Then we moved to a developing country....

Ah how times change!

We bought it because a.) it was cheap (I wonder why.....?) and b.) it feels a lot safer being in a 4x4 when driving in this country, but that's the subject of my next post & c.) you really, really do need one here if you leave the main roads. Apart from the main roads between major towns, roads are either very potholed or not tarmaced. We were on this road with my In-Laws (see below) for 100 km. It was, according to the map, an A road. A for arduous. This vehicle in the pic, was borrowed, not ours. And this was one of the smoothest bits of the 100 km. Mostly it was more, or less, compacted rocks. It took 3 1/2 hrs.

My 4 yr old calls our car 'the tractor'. (Not a Kensington tractor, more a Tractor tractor. (Rudimentary, poor suspension, slightly smelly etc) She asks me constantly what all the different buttons do, (mentally storing away the information for future use) and practises her steering as we drive along.

She said to me last week:

"When I'm a big girl will I be able to drive?"

"Yes, if you want to learn." I reply.

"When I'm 5?" came the next query.

"No, older than that," I explain.

"8 then?" She persists. Her brother's age. He seems very grown up.

"No you have to be 17 to drive".

Though she could well be forgiven for assuming children can in fact drive. Kids here do all the time. The youngest candidate, who cut me up on the road to our house, couldn't have been more than 12. This is in the centre of the capital, not out in the country or on the farm.

This is a recurring theme. My daughter is constantly trying to establish how you 'come of age' She often asks me what she 'needs' to be a mummy.

"Apart from babies & a handbag, I mean, Mummy." Not sure where the handbag notion came from.

A while ago she said to me, still fixated on the alluring independence of being able to drive (in a womanly way, of course):

"When I'm a big girl will I have boobies and drive?"

"Yes of course" I reply, thinking, now is not the time to inform her that wearing a bra and being able to do a 3 point turn, no longer seem to be sufficient minimum criteria for entering womanhood. Not in the country's this woman has ended up in anyway....

Little does she know, I thought, that actually she should be able to change a tyre, jump start an engine (I learned that this wk too), mend a clutch, be endlessly resourceful. Maybe she'll even need to use her bra should the fan belt break But then again, maybe she'll just live in the UK, join the AA and learn to chat up mechanics.

Customer Service?

I'm beginning to dislike this car intensely. I have been jump started every morning this week, and drive to school in an angst of apprehension lest I stall. I've been running on empty for 2 days, but I can't stop and fill up with petrol because it wdn't start again.

NO ONE here can recommend anyone. The previous owner used a mechanic who was German in a town 3 hrs over the mountains. He paid his bus fare and brought him to Tirana. Most people tell you they take it out of the country or they use one of the big places which REALLY, REALLY rip you off, and there's no guarantee of good mechanics or service. My husband finally tracked down a mechanic and offered to drive him to our house at the end of the day in order to look at our engine. Even tho we'd been told youcan't get a mechanic to come to your house, ever. More useful advice that has proved wrong... He said we needed a new battery. Reassuring I guess that it wasn't the head gasket. But who knows?

To cut a long story short, by today it started on its own, I even filled up with petrol. Hurrah.

Being a woman here, as well as a foreigner, doesn't help in this macho culture, in the area of cars. In the UK the 'sexism' usually worked in my favour, and I got quite a lot of free help and time from garages. I didn't milk it or ask for it, they obviously just pitied my incompetence. Here it i s absolutely taken as read that you know nothing (about cars) because you're a woman, (a fair assumption in my case, but I can bandy a few terms around, though not in Albanian, so that life skill has gone by the board here) which also means you're rich pickings for being ripped off.

However at the tyre place on Monday, getting my tyre repaired, I got chatted up by a customer, & the mechanic didn't rip me off, but was incredibly helpful. So I shouldn't make generalisations. (Though it was Albanian women who warned me of this). Anyway I was far more concerned about keeping MY eye on another customer who had come in with his moped with a flat tyre, who had a revolver stuck into his jeans, for all to see.


I was amazed, I have met loads of people out in the country carrying shotguns and rifles, & you can hear shooting at night in certain areas at times, but a civilian, in the middle of Tirana with a gun??

My husband shrugged and said:

'Well that's what it's like in America, the right to bear arms' etc. I guess I must be very naive. I had no idea you could just take your gun everywhere with you quite legitimately in America. Is that really true? One way of ensuring you get a good service at the garage I suppose.

Resourcefulness

That's the key to living abroad I think, being resourceful. Practical, handy, calm and collected probably also help too, as does knowing more than a smattering of the local language. I really do feel so helpless. I don't know how long it will be before I can string a whole sentence (with a verb) together, let alone understand the response I get. So I have to ask for help. (from the 4 people I know well enough to ask) It's good for the Western independent spirit I guess. I feel so utterly dependent on others here. Personally I find it quite humiliating at times, but that's probably just my perspective. Perhaps humbling would be a more positive turn of phrase.

The other thing you need is LOTS of equipment, like our landlord having a whole spare car battery, a pump run off the cigarette lighter to pump up tyres, and every tool and gadget under the sun, because basically you need to fix everything yourself. I'm not sure why this is, we're in a capital city. There just seem to be very few service industries. And workmen generally do an incredibly shoddy job (as we have found out, and Albanians have agreed). The other issue is a truism I have heard again and again, that it is very hard to find things out in Tirana, where to buy certain things, where to get a tyre pumped up, where to get a good hair cut, where to buy tickets etc. And believe me I have tried all of these and more.

The other problem is when you have been married for donkeys years, well 17, you do get used to your spouse doing certain things. Or you may never have even done them. I have never done the DIY, M has never done the cooking. I am resourceful in my areas of expertise, I can make curtains, mend clothes, dress-make, cook, decorate, cut my husband's and children's hair; but when it comes to mending bikes, radios, kitchen appliances, cars, using a power drill, then I'm not your woman. Clearly I need to become so though.

Since moving abroad, my husband has made it clear, that sorting any issue with the car, dealing with our U.K house or tenants back home, etc are all my babies now, and he doesn't even want to hear about them because it 's an added stress. Tell me about it.... So if I begin to talk about it he won't listen because he thinks I'm off-loading the problem onto him. Which I guess I am in a way. I'm a desperate woman, totally at sea, in a boat I can't sail.

I was though, feeling quite pleased with my progress and resourcefulness, but living here has a nasty habit of reminding me just how far I still have to go....

My list of acheivements so far:

1. Removed old door lock from door, Went to electrical market (no English speakers) and bought new door lock. Fitted it. It worked! I had to do this becasue the landlord had still not done anything about it in 3 months.


2. Broken fridge handle. Unscrewed it, and fitted it to freezer door which is used less often. Put good freezer handle on fridge. Small, but pleasing achievement because it made me realise I could be practical.


3. Sorted sink U bend problem. Our bendy soft plastic U bend under the sink was too long. The plumber refused to change it saying it was fine. The problem was it draped down into the drawer below and so the drawer couldn't be opened. So I crawled under the sink on my back, 'car mechanic' style (except I didn't have one of those little wheelie boards), clutching a pair of my son's age 6 underpants, and a few safety pins. I cut them and slung them under the U bend, hammock-style, so the pipe was wearing a pair of mini support pants. A few safety pins and 'Bob's your uncle'. It has held the drooping tube in place so the drawer can be opened. That one is my favourite achievement I must admit. Resourceful, practical, thinking outside the box, even involved recycling.


4. I mended my bike brakes. I have always been able to remove the wheel, mend a puncture, put a chain back on etc, but I know all that's child's play. Beyond a flat tyre is a world of unknown ball bearings, confusing componentry and an uncrossable sea of technical expertise. So was more than a little THRILLED to have mended my bike brakes. This was pre-car, when I had to ride 20 mins to go and fetch my daughter from nursery. Too far (for her) to walk. I was getting desperate and the only way I achieved it was to stare VERY hard at the functioning brake, and to keep comparing it with the other brake until I could see what had gone wrong. It took ages. But, reader, I fixed it.


5. Changed & rewired numerous dodgy plugs. Ok really scraping the barrel now.

It's not a very long or impressive list is it

When it comes to the car though, I am not just way out of my depth, I'm treading water over the Mariana Trench, terrified at the thought of what lies beneath. I just about coped with the flat battery and flat tyre (clearly my expertise lies in one dimensional problems) but when 3 days ago at 7.30 a.m the clutch had no hydraulic pressure in it or whatever teh expression is I turned to my husband for help. who was just about to take daughter on his bike to nursery. He shrugged and said 'what can I do?' Not his finest hour, he later had the grace to admit. He told me he had a very full day (he's been away on business for nearly 3 wks) and that at least I had got the bonnet open which would help me when I had got someone to come out and look at it.

But that was the problem. In the UK I would make a phone call, maybe called out the AA. In Albania, how was I supposed to phone up a garage when no one speaks English, I dont speak Albanian, and anyway there's no Green Flag Recovery service? I wd just have to agree to pay enough to get someone to come to my house. Not easy to explain that over the phone when my communication skills rely on the odd Albanian word and a LOT of hand gestures.

In his favour M did agree he needed to take our son to school, (in the NGO's vehicle only he is allowed to drive) whilst I biked our daughter to nursery, solving the immediate crisis, but my normally calm, chilled husband was having another of his stress episodes (queue bad memories of overwork in Sri Lanka) he was not a happy bunny, he had had to cancel 2 meetings already. Still, even more in his favour he obviously relented enough to come back and consult the car manual with me, and then pour some Dot 3 clutch fluid into what we thought was the right receptacle in the engine. (I was, secretly, rather pleased, in a way to see he had no more idea than I had, though of cours ethat didn't help me out of my I/C car role )Rather ominously a bottle of clutch fluid was sitting handily in the driver's door when we bought the car. Coincidence? I think not.. This took nearly an hour. And the school round trip had already taken well over an hour.

Anyway it didn't work, so he called out a driver from his organisation and then went off to work. The driver pitched up with a translator, neither of whom had any idea, and, as it was raining heavily, were rather reluctant to do more than stand under the porch and ask me a few questions. They then said they had called a service place for me who were going to tow it away on Mon. I am relieved, but worried about how much this will cost as no one gets towed in this country. Except by a neighbour........

SO on Friday, determined to prove my resourcefulness, & shake off this paralysis of helplessness, I got in the car, fiddled about and yup, I FIXED THE CLUTCH. All by myself. Blonde Bimbo goes large. My Mariana trench had turned into my Everest. I had conquered the mountain.

I sat in the driver's seat, with my daughter beside me in the passenger seat, laughing and crying as I pumped the clutch. How my daughter has a hope of growing up normal with such an unhinged mother, I really don't know.

Ok, so confession time. My dear other half, had very practically, once he had calmed down that 1st night, emailed the owner of the vehicle, the kind missionary Dutch man (whom I was rapidly relabelling as 'cowboy missionary', should such a category exist) He replied instantly (so he remains the Kind Dutch Missionary. For now...), saying it had happened to him once before. evidently if there is a leak, (which there is, a small one), when the clutch fluid drops too low, air gets in the system and the hydraulic pressure is lost (clutch goes all loose and floppy).

Are you still with me? So what you do is pump on the clutch until traction comes back. It took 5 mins of pumping with alternate legs, but it flipping worked! Chuffed, I was ecstatic. I almost feel ready to change the brake pads and fix the petrol filter now.

Much as I would like to end this blog on a positive note, on our way out for tea with friends this afternoon, we discovered the battery was completely flat. Again. In fact it's our landlord's battery, still. So we now have two flat batteries. I wonder what chance he has a spare spare battery......?

Irritable Hip

And then there was Wednesday...

My daugher started complaining of a sore leg (which 1st hurt when playing football on Sat). She was hobbling around, and by evening in a lot of pain.

So I did what all good mothers do at this point, administered large doses of Calpol and put her to bed.

By morning, she couldn't walk at all. She was in a lot of discomfort, couldn't put any weight on it, or even walk, and the hip joint was very painful whenever she moved it.

So for the second time this week I took her out of nursery and we went to the clinic. The Dr was perplexed and sent her for an x-ray at another private clinic where they fortunately ruled out tumours, cysts and infection in the bone. However he told me all the things he was considering, slipped growth plate, rheumatoid arthritis, early onset arthritis

He also said you can sometimes get a virus going to a joint. However, he said he was concerned by her degree of pain and lack of mobility and said it certainly wasn't subtle, the discomfort she was in.

I carried her the 15 min walk from 1 clinic to the other, and then back again, which my back didn't enjoy greatly. Living up 3 flights of stairs didn't help either. I spent the day carrying her to the loo, and fetching and carrying things she requested from the sofa. I think she rather enjoyed that part.

My sister, a physio, helpfully suggested a tip; put her on a blanket and pull her along, (which would save my back), but knowing her cries of 'faster, faster' and 'ride like the wind, cowboy' when on the back of my bike, I rather feared this would further encourage her view of me as general lackey and whipping boy.

The Dr had admitted he was worried by her symptoms but said we could see how it goes over the next few days, and if not better, he said we would need to progress to MRI and ultrasound, which he recommended doing 'in another country' because of the orthopedic and paediatric expertise and experience needed.

M says they would fly us back to the UK. I hope our health insurance would cover us for that; I had visions of driving alone across the mountains into Macedonia being the only 'abroad' the insurance would cover us for....

She remained immobile, very tearful and in a lot of pain for the rest of the day.

Friday morning I am awoken by my daughter coming into my room saying: "I can walk Mummy."

And sure enough she could. She was hobbling around, but definitely walking. My son had even been putting her through her paces in their room before coming in, with a rigorous programme of hopping, skipping and even running. Throughout the day she got more and more mobile and was completely pain free.

A Dr friend had written to me, saying there is a complaint called 'Irritable Hip' caused by a viurus I think, which is very common, and is self limiting.

By the end of the day you wouldn't have believed there had been anything wrong. It was the most bizarre, brief 'illness' I have encountered.

(Except perhaps for that time when I was 10 I had had a thing called 'post-viral rheumatism' when I had sore joints & couldn't walk and was bed-ridden for 6 weeks.) Nasty things viruses, whatever country you're in.

So on Friday morning (after the school run) when I noticed I had a flat tyre, I felt positively blase. I thought: 'Yup, I can do this. Flat tyre. No problem'

Never mind that I have little working knowledge of the language, am female and foreign and therefore ripe for ripping off. And have no idea where to go. Still, one more day of the w/e before I need the car again.

Resilience that's what it's all about.

Still it's been a VERY long week.

Bad Hair Days & The Kindness of Strangers.

Ok, so the Pollanna smile has slipped a bit.

Turns out that was only the beginning.

On Sunday night, just as I had finished putting the children to bed, washed up, made sandwiches for the next day, I sat down at the computer (still get a little frisson, being able to say that, after 8 mths without) And the power went off. Probably just as well, or I'd have seen photos of my husband posing outside the temples at Angkor Wat. Looking very happy. And curiously relaxed.

The power stayed off till 11 a.m on Monday: which meant I cdn't shower and wash my hair (again) The water works on an electric pump. We have a reserve tank on the roof, but too much of a trickle to power the shower.

Oh, but then there was Sunday night, I almost forgot. It went like this:
Midnight: My son wakes me up crying because he's scared of the dark (no lights , power cut remember?) So he climbs into my bed (I know, plse don't quote the 'Mores of Successful Child Rearing' to me)

1a.m Daughter wakes me up saying she's had a bad dream. So she climbs into my bed.

3 a.m Daughter falls out of bed. Manages to stay securely in her single bed, night after night. However, the night she decides to join me in the king size bed, she falls out.

4.30 a.m Woken again. Daughter thirsty this time.

5.30 a.m Thunder and lightning begin again, in earnest, waking me up.

Daughter still has a fever and has added diarrhoea into the equation, so no school, but she still has to come with me to the Government Car Registration Bureau. this is not all bad, as a friend told me being female and blonde might speed my application process, so I figure a sick, sniffling child might swing it further in my favour. It's a tried and tested method in many countries.

It starts off surprisingly well, I mean we are offered a chair to sit on, there are not too many sharpened elbows in action. It seems almost civilised, there's even a system of sorts. We have a booth number and wait for it to vacate. A man is even keeping watch on who's where in the queue.

I have all 7 documents the previous official said we needed to register the car in our name, plus all the documents notarised by a lawyer, even power of attorney given me by my kind husband so I can collect the documents for him. And be allowed to drive it. However once speaking to the (new) official, we are told the car needs a 'physical' and we don't have it. Essentially the same as a human physical. The MOT certificate was not good enough.

I tried to argue that we had been told all the documents were in place and I had everything I needed. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread...

The Albanian who took me said this is quite normal, the drip feeding of information, so that you have to go away, get whatever else is needed, and then return and begin again. . I'm told it's no good trying to be clever and asking exactly what each and every document you need is, before you go, or even whilst there.

This seems to happen in so many bureaucratically constipated developing nations. Happened to us all the time in Sri Lanka. Also what you need seems to change between visits, sometimes originals, sometimes photocopies. In Albania, every photocopy has to be taken to a lawyer to be notarised.

So we went away. As my daughter really wasn't very well, my husband's Albanian work colleague, bless her, took my car, got its physical done, it was given a clean bill of health, and she took the papers back again alone. I won't go into what we had to do to get THAT arrangement accepted by the official. Suffice to say NO money passed hands.... She brought the car back, and was going to collect the document for me the next day. So actually it wasn't that bad. I went once, this colleague will have been 4 times in total on our behalf. for which I am truly grateful. And she does this stuff every day as part of her admin job for M's NGO. Poor woman.

This morning. I was teaching at my son's school, so had to drop my daughter off, then drive to school with my son. The power was still off. Managed a chilly wash in shower dribble. Still haven't washed hair though. Government official probably wouldn't even acknowledge me as a blonde in my current state.

7.31a.m Pouring with rain STILL. We all jump in the car, I switch on. Nothing. our car which passed its medical with flying colours, only yesterday afternoon, has died.

I immediately call the school, and say that, although yes, we have bought a car which we've had for 4 whole days, it has, in fact, snuffed it, and could I have a lift from the caretaker after all? (our previous arrangement) I am teaching there for free, so I don't feel too bad.

Then I call my husband's work, and ask the colleague (who in fact killed my car) if she could send one of the drivers over to help me.

Meanwhile, unnoticed in this organisational flurry, my landlord steps out of his door, staggering under the weight of a car battery, asks me to open the bonnet, armed with spanner, unscrews my battery, a few sparks fly, puts his spare in and says "off you go, you'll be fine now". All well and good. Mini-crisis over. Car risen from the dead.

Now all I had to do was undo all the contingency plans I had just made.

I arrived at school 45 mins late for my son, and 1 min before my 1st lesson began. However, it was fine, as I had that tried and tested method of all experienced teachers, firmly in my grasp. Winging it.

The power stayed off most of the day, but hey it's on now, I've had my computer fix, and now I must go and make use of the oven whilst I have electricity and make some chocolate brownies for my landlord. And then of course, I MUST wash my hair.

Earache and Electrical Storms

M has just left for a two-week trip to Cambodia. For work, though he is managing to squeeze in some sight seeing too. I should really have been better prepared. ‘Something’ always happens when he goes away, especially when he goes away to another country.

Sure enough my 4 yo developed earache and a temperature over 100’. So I had a very broken night followed by a huge electrical storm which began at 5.30 a.m (waking me up again). The storm lasted all day until 5 p.m coupled with an all day power cut too. We couldn’t go out, it was chucking it down, my daughter was ill, the flat was very dark, we couldn’t cook, wash, eat toast, or watch DVDs. The washing and ironing I was less concerned about. Situations like this make you resourceful (as well as slightly unhinged)

I was also aware that earache can suddenly get very bad, and one needs antibiotics. The clinic is closed today, and even Albanians tell you to steer clear of the hospital.

I had my “Your Child’s Health Abroad” book and, as you can buy antibiotics from pharmacies I decided I wd self-prescribe if I had to. (And check with my long-suffering brother of course).

Tomorrow is also complicated: I have to go to a government office to get our car insurance verified etc. It took M 2 ½ hrs last week, with all the correct documentation, and he still didn’t get very far. I have a number in the queue and a date, Monday 15th but no appointment. If I don’t go tomorrow I start all over again. So I need A to be well, and I need to NOT need to go to a pharmacy until I get back from there.

So far not so very bad, but when I look back, it is uncanny, or unlucky, how often my other half is away when I have a crisis. First there was the time I went, in the space of a week, from a visit to the dr, to a diagnosis in hospital of grapefruit sized ovarian cysts on my ovaries, (suspected ovarian cancer) to being whisked in for surgery. And yes you guessed it, M was away. In China. He also had no mobile phone then, and I had no way of contacting him. (For the record he was back before the surgery and it turned out to be endometriosis)

Then there was the time my daughter, aged 360 days, turned blue and couldn’t breathe and was hospitalised for a week with bronchiolitis. The Good Man? Philippines this time. With a mobile phone. It was broken, he’d typed in one too many wrong pin codes and it shut down on him. No contact for 9 days. It’s quite hard to explain, in hind sight, to a blissfully ignorant husband, just exactly what has gone on the previous week, and just how isolated and tough it was, when we are there back in the house where he left us, a little pale but otherwise ok, as if nothing had happened. On that occasion at least, we were in Oxford with our support network around us.

Oh and one week after arriving in Sri Lanka on our 1st overseas posting, me feeling more wobbly than a tightrope walker in stilettos, our daughter is hospitalised again, this time with Pneumonia (we later got the diagnosis of a genetic defect Left Pulmonary Sling) On this occasion, only 8 days after arriving in the country, My Good Man was in Kandy 6 hrs away. This time it took me an hr to track him down there and tell him to come home. Being very new in the country we didn’t have mobile phones,

I guess I should count myself lucky he was in the country for the births of our two children. Although considering how long number 1 took to arrive, he would have had more than enough time to get home, even from Australia shd he have needed to. But that’s another story…

Despite being married for 17 yrs, I often feel like a single parent. I go to school event s alone, parents’ evenings, performances. Summers I spend back in the UK with the children (that’s our choice I know, but it’s important to us that we create memories for the children, reconnect friendships, and a sense of where they are from) M only gets 20 days so it’s spread quite thinly over the yr; something you notice more when you are trying to factor in catching up with family and friends (which in normal circumstances you’d do at w/es) as well as being with your family on holiday.

I don’t resent him being away exactly, I think it’s made me very resourceful, though his description of nosing round markets, eating a Khmer chicken curry, visiting Angkor Wat before his conference, did hold a certain allure for me I must confess this w/e), it’s just that I feel so vulnerable with the children, and also weary of dealing with crises alone. After all isn’t that what marriage is about, sharing the crises, and riding the storms together? Somehow regaling him with the edited highlight s after the event isn’t quite the same.

The vulnerability comes particularly, again, from being away from home and support networks and known procedures too, not speaking the language, not having gd medical facilities, being alone often, and having no transport in a city where biking is dangerous, buses are very complex and taxi drivers don't speak English. And roads aren't referred to by names, or indeed rarely have a name. The address of our flat, for example, is a description, not an address, on our rental contract.

For 8 mths. I have been biking everywhere, with my 4 yo on the back of my bike, and my 8 yo on his little bike, dodging the very real hazards of the Tirana roads. Many cars here are stolen, insurance write offs, been in an accident or have inadequate papers. Trying to buy a vehicle is a minefield.

On another occasion back in June M was actually with us. We were coming back from a 4 day camping trip to Macedonia, and our son, who gets hay fever, was getting progressively worse and started wheezing. By the next day he was in a very bad way. The Dr's is too far to bike to with children so M took us in a work vehicle. Our 8 yo was given subutanol syrup which made not a jot of difference, and by late that day he was in a real state and really struggling to breathe.
We asked work colleagues what hospital to take him to, they said ‘you don’t want to go to hospital here’. We also discovered my husband’s NGO had not registered us with the clinic (we are only their 2nd ex-pat so induction has been largely non-existent) so we didn't have access to the emergency number. I tried to find out the number, available only to ‘members’, from the 6 people I knew well enough to have their numbers. 5 had left the country for the summer, and one was teaching & her phone was switched off.

In the end, in desperation, I called our son’s Headmaster because his number was on a school letter. I really didn’t know who to turn to. As it happened he was at that moment going to the Dr's for supper, so he called him, he opened the clinic and spent an hr with our son giving him steroids, teaching him to use a spacer and calming him down.

But maybe actually I just have a too Western, 21st century woman’s expectation of how much a husband should be around and helping.

I do know many, many countries, where people work far away or even in other countries just to have a job and feed their families. They may see their families once a yr if they are lucky.

And these medical situations I’ve been in make me realise how vulnerable the poor are, ALL the time. Imagine the stress of knowing you simply can’t be ill, because you have to show up at work to get paid in order to eat, and you literally couldn’t afford the fees of being ill.

The Roma live in leaking corrugated shanty towns, they pick through the bins to find stuff to recycle which they get money for, the Poor Albanians live next to them, and dig for iron on an old factory site to eek out an existence.

I don’t have to consider selling a child, in order to feed my other children. We are warm and secure and eat three times a day.

And then I remind myself that it is actually for these people that we’re here, doing what we’re doing. We didn’t move overseas for a better or easier life but to help those who are in far worse a position than us.

So instead of thinking about the exotic sights, the lie-ins, the buffet breakfasts, stimulating lectures etc my husband is enjoying, I remind myself that this morning my 8 yo mopped up the outside table and chairs from the rain, laid breakfast, got everything ready whilst my daughter and I slept in. He even offered her breakfast in bed and brought her her Dora magazines to read.
After 8 mths we have a car, a solid, old, battered but reliable 4x4, which cost less than half anything else we’d seen. bought from an old missionary who’d lived here for 10 yrs. The day he flew out, he phoned with a few more bits of info about the car and said he & his wife were 'praying it would serve us well and be great for our family'. I mean, how nice is that?

The power came back on after 6 hrs, we watched a DVD together, had sausages and mash, a hot bath and went to bed.

Oh and my daughter’s earache has gone.

So now all I have to do is tackle the government bureau tomorrow. Life's really not so bad.