Macedonia

1997 to 1998

Outside the classroom life in Macedonia was wonderful

Outside Skopje, Macedonia, 1998

While I was in Cambridge Bay the Federal Government decided to give the Inuit autonomy over the land they occupy. It became known as Nunavut, which means “Our Land”. We teachers were told we had to buy the homes we were renting from the government, so I decided my time was up and I should move on. Back in the south, I based at the Bocock farm and helped with the milking, gardening etc., but I finally decided I needed to do something more constructive, and so I volunteered to work in special education in Macedonia. It was a programme funded by the European Union and I was accepted because of still having British citizenship.

It was quite a year. Macedonia hadn’t been independent for long and so a lot of socialist thought went into education. The regular school system was excellent but schools for children with special needs were often appalling. We were supposed to do surprise checks on the schools but invariably someone told the staff we were coming and so they performed for us. One “school” we visited was attached to a home for severely mentally challenged adults. The “headmistress” was a nurse and wouldn’t allow us to stick posters on the wall for our workshop - she said it wasn’t clean. The children we dealt with were physically handicapped and would have been in a regular school in any other country. How they put up with the constant howling and shouting from the adults I will never know. We never saw a handicapped person on the street as they were all kept in institutions.

Outside the classroom life in Macedonia was wonderful. Every week we volunteers went to a symphony concert; the hall was old and run down but the music was wonderful. Every year there was a film festival and also a jazz festival. Skopje was an ancient city with Muslim and Christian influences so it was fun roaming around the old streets. Outside the city we were able to go on hikes into the mountains and to visit ancient locations with Roman ruins.

Travelling to Greece was a challenge because Greece did not accept the name “Republic of Macedonia”. People born in northern Greece used to speak a Slavic language, had Slavic names and belonged to the Russian Orthodox church. The Greek government told them to change their names, language and religion to become “truly” Greek and, if they refused, they had to leave the country. Many moved to Canada and Australia but some moved across the border into what was then Yugoslavia; those people were never allowed to return to their homeland. When we visited Greece, in a Macedonian vehicle, the border officials would come out of their office with a strip of sticky tape with the letters FYROM written on them. This was stuck over the MK on the car. For them, we came from the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”.

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My Macedonian Diary

All my diary entries about my time in Macedonia will eventually be uploaded to this blog and will be found by clicking on the location labels on the right, or on the links of archived posts for 1997 to 1998. I am still in the process of transferring my diary to this blog, so more will appear over time.

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