Kosovar Death Visit

What do you get when you cram three Americans, three Kosovar, and an Australian in a Subaru Forester?

A funeral!

Here in Kosovo, when someone passes away the members of the community visit the house of that person's family members in what is called a death visit. It was super interesting from a cultural standpoint, and totally intimidating from an "I-am-an-American-and-we-do-things-SOSOSOSOSO-much-differently-where-I-am-from" standpoint.

Here's how a death visit works:

You cram as many people into a car as possible (we did). Then you drive off toward the village of the deceased person. Generally you only know the village and the family name of the person who has died, but not which house they live on (and certainly not what street; roads here don't have names, or if they do they aren't marked. Pretty much as a rule neighborhood roads aren't even paved, much less named). When you get to the village, you drive around until you find the house with a chair sitting in front of it. Sometimes there are flowers on the chair, and sometimes not.

Men and women don't do death visits in the same house here, so you park the car and walk to your respective houses. People here are super, super weird about feet, so you take your shoes off at the door (and you MUST remember to wear socks, because you NEVER EVER go into someone's house barefooted. I guess you could, but they would look at you super weird and possibly would never invite you back).

Once inside, you must endure these looks:

The foreigners are here! 

Staring is the national pastime (along with whistling at women in the street, but more on that later!) so these kinds of looks are pretty common. EVERYONE stares at me. Especially once they hear me speak in my broken Albanian and realize that I really am not from around here. I don't have the same skin tone or hair color as my Albanian friends, so it's pretty easy to pick me out of a crowd, keq Shqip (bad Albanian) notwithstanding. 

Then you must shake everyone's hand. This is crucial. Albanians (if you're wondering why I switch back and forth between "Albanians" and "Kosovar," it's because the people here are ethnically Albanian but are from Kosovo. Ethnically I am Caucasian; by country I am American. Capiche?) Albanians are HUGE hand shakers. When an Albanian walks into a room, the first thing they will do is shake everyone's hand (and I mean EVERYONE. When I go to church, I probably shake fifty hands. I try to beat everyone there so I don't have to find people). SO. You shake the hand of everyone in the room, but there's an important order to follow, starting with the closest family member of the deceased and then on down the line.

Then you sit for ten or fifteen minutes, sipping on Coke or water or tea or whatever else they hand you. You get some more stares. Like this one:

 Or this one! 

Then you shake everyone's hand again and make your getaway. You cram all your friends back into the car and head for home. Good times.

All the women were wearing white headcoverings, but Google didn't know what I was talking about when I tried to find an example so I have no pictures to show y'all what I mean. We (Wrenn, Lisa, and I) were the only ones without our heads covered, and at first I thought we had committed some huge cultural faux pas, but then I learned that only blood relatives and close friends of the deceased cover their heads.

It really was an experience! It's so interesting to see what things are done differently in America (like dating, but that's another post for another day). Being here has really made me realize what a little bubble I live in, and it's also made me a whole lot more aware of the other SEVEN BILLION people on this planet. They don't all live in America! They don't all go to funeral homes when someone passes away! They drink milk that doesn't have to be refrigerated until opened, and eat a loaf of bread a day! It's just really awesome to get to experience this other culture--what a blessing!