Serbian Work Camp

First of all, despite my oh-so-dramatic title, life in Hajdukovo (the tiny village in which you'll find the Ludas Lake Special Nature Reserve) isn't so bad. We wake up every morning at 7, have a very light breakfast of bread, water, and cheese (and sometimes not so much cheese), then proceed to the worksite.

Now on our 4th day, I finally understand what we're doing and why. We started making a bridge, a series of posts driven into the mud of a shallow reed lake, and then putting two rows of boards along them to make what looks like an enormous 4-wheeler ramp into the middle of nowhere. As it turns out, we were building the "deck" out to a swampy island, and all along the stucture the local camp rangers will be putting up live-catch bird traps. They capture them, measure & weigh them, tag them, and then release in the span of about 9 minutes per bird.

So yeah, instead of just hauling odd-shaped lumber and wading through disgusting swamp water for the fun of it for 3 days, it turns out we may actually be doing some good. Who knew?

This is a very different camp experience than my time in Estonia for a variety of reasons. First, the group is larger (15 compared to 8), Second the group is multi-gendered (50/50 split compared to my first camp where I proudly possessed the only Y chromosome), Thirdly the work is more braun than brain, and Finally, it's in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

How nowhere? Well, not only does Google Earth not have pictures of the place (this is actually very common on Eastern Europe and I assume elsewhere), no, Google Maps doesn't even list the village as a tiny dot, just vast grey emptiness. They should visit, then they'd know it's actually vast green emptiness.

We can walk into "the village" a collection of 1 bakery, 1 church, 2 convenience stores and 1 pub in about 15 minutes. Or we can drive by car 20 minutes and get to something that more fully resembles civilization.

But I'm not unaccustomed to this, in general. I spent 4 summers working in an even more remote part of Oklahoma - and loving it. And here it's much the same. I love the work, getting my hands dirty, figuring out which lumber to use and what order to do things in, slamming nails into 2x12's when everyone else gets tired. I'm good at this stuff - both the work itself and the teamwork required to spread around the work and keep the enthusiasm up. This is why I always liked my Boy Scout Summer Camp job, and something I've always struggled to explain to the vast majority of my friends who didn't know anything about that side of me.

I liked my time at KRTU, and I think I could hold my own as an office manager, though I certainly wasn't anything special. But as an in-the-field problem solver, a group manager, a team leader - I can claim to do a pretty fine job without risking too much my sense of humility. This is something I'm good at, but I can only find ways to do it that are short term, temporary, non-careers.

Well, that's something to think about further anyway, especially as I get ready to embark on a very expensive 2 year academic process that doesn't lead me closer to this sort of thing.

But yeah, camp is Ok, my team is fun enough, if less diverse than it could be, and we're all getting along.

The food is it's own blog, but since the camp has no internet - let me say that again - NO INTERNET ACCESS WHATSOEVER WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE - I'll content myself to make a quickie post on it now:

I don't know what passes for "traditional fare" in Serbia, but I know that what I'm eating isn't it. I know this because I recognize every ingredient in every meal, the only odd thing, and it's a doozy, is what and how they decide to combine things.

Let's look at dinner last night, shall we?

Pasta - mother nature's carbs-in-a-hurry masterpiece. The meal I most often cook at home because there's just no way to mess it up.

So what do we do with Pasta in Serbia? Are we a Marinara, Cream, or Pesto kind of people?
Guess again, and no, it's not Ketchup (but good guess, these Europeans put it on everything!).
Nope, the winner is..... Big Globs of Sour Cream!


with Cocoa!

no, you didn't misread. You see, the sour cream allows you to imagine you're not just devouring large chunks of pasta, while the Cocoa helps cut the sour flavor, and add that oh-so-desirable sandy-tongue texture that regular pasta has been missing.

Now let me say, clearly and loudly, that none of this stopped me from finishing my plate - from having seconds in fact - because 1) I'm really damn hungry and 2) it's not as bad as you'd think. Quite. It's not Quite as bad as you'd think.

So go ahead, try it at home or let me make it for you on a Monday night when I return, your choice. There are other examples, most of them less ridiculous of course, but you get the idea. My Serbian team leader looks at dinner every day and mutters something like, "I've never seen this before in my life," then we all wait to see who will foolishly go first. Someone does, we hold our breath, and usually by the time they've had their second bite we're all in on it. usually.

So that's my Serbian work camp. More to say, but no time to say it, and what in life is worth this much detail anyway?

Much Love to you all.

Weber (on the lamb)