This blog was written by volunteer Tippe Kok at the end of her 4-month volunteering in Bitola, North Macedonia.
We are sitting outside of a café on Shirok Sokak while we are sipping on our coffee and tea. It seems like a normal situation, the many cafés are the beating heart of Bitola, but this coffee is different than all the ones we had before. After days of temperatures above 30 degrees, the sky explodes as soon as we sit down under the canopy of the café. The heavy raindrops are making music on the roofs and the dark sky lights up every now and then. This unusual weather matches the vibe. The end of my stay and the stay of my two housemates has come and we are about to say goodbye to the first person.
I arrived in Bitola on an evening at the end of February. It was too dark to get a first impression of the city by her looks, but I got a good impression of her in another way. I was not even ten minutes in the apartment, where I would stay for the next four months, the first month with a Turkish volunteer, the other three months with two German volunteers, when my housemate invited me to the movie with her friends for that same evening. I was too tired to really focus on the movie, so I probably won’t be able to tell you the storyline of ‘The Big Lebowski’, but I can tell you that evening, with the unexpected last-minute event, but also with interesting and warming people, was an example of how the rest of my stay in Bitola would look like.
The summer before I came to Macedonia, I graduated high school. I took a gap year to step out of my comfort zone and to gain more experiences and knowledge outside of those musty classrooms and long-winded books. I definitely found new challenges and wonderful experiences during my time as a volunteer with Sfera International. Together with my fellow volunteers I organised events at the Youth Center, I hosted an Eco Club and a Poetry Class. Together with Tina and Nele, two German volunteers, I set up some projects to improve the Youth Center. We built a cupboard for the swap ’n share station, an exchange corner for books and clothing. We also came up with the Period Protection Pack, a box with menstruation products in the bathroom of the Youth Center. We even made our hands dirty to plant some plants and flowers in front of the Youth Center, which are hopefully still alive. If we were not working on those events and projects, something unexpected would come on our path, we would end up cleaning the whole kitchen of the Youth Center or attending a two-hour event fully in Macedonian, the day-to-day work life with Sfera International was (almost) never boring. 🙂
The life outside of the Youth Centre was also never boring, from drinking many coffees in cafés to attending Latin dance classes. Playing card games, almost getting attacked by a wild boar in the hills outside of Bitola, swimming in the ice-cold water of Matka, dancing at Skopje Pride, making marshmallows above a campfire, standing on top of Pelister… And those are just a few from all the wonderful memories I have from my time in Macedonia, most of them are formed by people. Local people showed me Macedonia from inside, the culture, the history and the struggles. With them and international volunteers we exchanged customs from our culture and had many, many conversations. We discussed our views on big (life)topics, and we discussed the most meaningless things. We spoke about food traditions and how aliens are the solution to world peace, but most of all we had a lot of fun. The people made my four months in Macedonia feel like a warm hug.
While its pouring, I’m drinking coffee with four wonderful people, who mostly formed my stay in Bitola. We are talking about core memories from our childhood. After we finished our drinks, we step into the heavy rain. We’re all soaked when we arrive at the bus station. Where the rain covers up the tears from our first goodbye in Macedonia.
A few days later the weather is the opposite, the sun shines bright as we, Tina, Nele and I, are putting our suitcases in the boot of the car. With the beautiful weather Macedonia lives up to her name. As we are driving out of the country of the sun, we are getting a last goodbye from the many fields of sunflowers.
се гледаме Македонија
