My parents always expected that I would go to university. They supported me steadfastly throughout my studies and were proud of my academic success. Both my mother and father had left school without qualifications and no one in the family had previously gone into higher education. But I was never comfortable with the idea of going on to university. Though I had worked hard at improving my social skills, I still felt awkward and uncomfortable around people. I had also had enough of the classroom and wanted to do something new and challenging. However, like many people at eighteen, I had no clear idea yet of what that might be. When I told my mother that I had decided not to go on to university, she told me she was disappointed. At the time my parents were not sure that I would be able to fully adapt to the demands of the outside world. After all, I still found that the smallest things—like brushing my teeth and shaving—required a great deal of time and effort.
Every day I read the back pages of the newspaper, looking at various job adverts. At school I had told the careers officer that I wanted to be a postal sorter or a librarian one day. The idea of working in a sorting office, putting each letter in exactly the right slot, or in a library, surrounded by words and numbers, in environments that were structured, logical and quiet, had always seemed ideal to me. But the libraries in my area were not looking for new staff and some required particular qualifications that I did not have. Then I saw a small newspaper advert asking for individuals interested in doing volunteer work overseas. I had read so much in books about the different countries of the world—I knew the names of all the capital cities of Europe—that the idea of living and working in a different country far away struck me at once as both a terrifying and enormously exciting prospect. It was a huge step to even contemplate, but I knew that I did not want to live with my parents forever.
I talked it over with my family. They were not sure but said it would be okay for me to call the number in the advert for more information. A few days later some leaflets came through the door. The people who had placed the advert represented a youth branch of VSO—Voluntary Services Overseas—an international development charity and the largest volunteer-sending organization in the world. They were particularly looking to provide young people from deprived areas of the U.K. with an opportunity—to perform volunteer work in another country—that would otherwise not be available to them. Successful applicants would be sent to positions in parts of Eastern Europe and would be given ongoing training and support throughout the duration of their placement. After further conversations with my family, I filled out the application form and waited to hear from the organizers.
I felt very anxious about the possibility of leaving my family and traveling hundreds of miles away to a new life in a new country. But I was an adult now and knew that I had to do something if I was ever going to be able to make my own way in the world outside my room at home. My German friend Jens had encouraged me to travel, as he had done to Britain. He believed the experience would make me more confident and open to other people. I certainly hoped that by traveling overseas I would find out much more about myself, about the sort of person I was.
A letter arrived telling me that my application had been accepted and that I would need to attend an interview in central London. On the day, my parents gave me the money for a taxi so I would be sure not to be late. My father helped me with the knot in my tie and I wore a freshly bought shirt and trousers. The labels in the shirt kept rubbing into my back and I scratched and scratched until it felt very red and sore. Once I arrived at the building I went up in an elevator—watching the numbers as they flashed up on the little screen above the door—and then arrived at the reception and gave my name. The lady flicked through some pages then made a tick with a purple ink pen and asked me to take a seat. I knew that what she meant was “please sit down”—and not to pick up one of the seats in the waiting area and take it with me—so I walked over and sat and waited.
The waiting area was small and dark because the only windows were too small and set too high up in the walls to let in much light or air. The carpet was faded and there were small yellow crumbs on the patch near my chair where someone had eaten a cookie while waiting to be called in. There were magazines with lots of creases in them in a small pile on a table in the middle of the room, but I did not feel like reading so I looked down at the floor and counted the crumbs. Suddenly a door opened and I heard a voice calling my name. I stood up and walked over to the office, careful not to knock the magazines over as I passed them. The office itself had a large window and was much brighter. The woman behind the desk shook my hand and asked me to sit down. She also had lots of sheets of paper. Then the question came that I had most expected: What makes you think you would make a good volunteer? I looked down and took a deep breath and remembered what my mother had said about emphasizing the positive. “I can think very carefully about a situation, I can understand and respect difference in others, and I am a quick learner.”
More questions followed, such as whether I had a partner I would miss if posted overseas (I did not) and if I considered myself a tolerant person of other countries and cultures (I did). The interviewer asked me what I would like to do as a volunteer, what kind of work I was best at doing. I answered that I had sometimes helped younger students at school with their foreign language class work, and that I would enjoy teaching English. The woman smiled and wrote something down. Then she asked if I knew anything about Eastern Europe and I nodded and said that I had studied the history of the Soviet Union at school and knew the names and capital cities of all the different countries. Then she interrupted and asked if I would mind living in a much poorer country. I became silent for a few moments because I do not like being interrupted, but then I looked up and said that I would not mind and would bring the things that I really needed, like books and clothes and music cassettes to listen to, with me.
At the end of the interview the woman rose from her chair, shook my hand and told me I would be informed of their decision soon. After arriving home my mother asked me how the interview had gone, but I did not know what to say because I had no idea. Several weeks later I received a letter in the post telling me that I had passed the interview stage and was required to attend a week of training the following month at a retreat center in the Midlands. I was excited to have passed the interview but very anxious too because I had never traveled on a train on my own before. There was a sheet of paper with the letter that gave directions to the center for those coming by train and I memorized them word for word to reassure myself. When the first morning of the week arrived, my parents helped me finish packing and my father traveled with me to the train station and stood with me in the queue for the ticket. He made sure I got on at the right platform and waved me good-bye as I boarded.
It was a hot summer’s day and inside the train felt airless and uncomfortable. I quickly sat on a window seat that had no one nearby and put my bag on the floor and squeezed it tight between my legs. The seat felt spongy and no matter how much I fidgeted I could not sit comfortably. I did not like being on the train. It was dirty, with plastic sweet wrappers on the floor and a crumpled newspaper on the empty seat in front of me. As the train moved, it made a lot of noise, which made it hard for me to concentrate on other things, like counting the scratches in the windowpane next to me. Gradually the train filled with people as it traveled between stations, and I became more and more anxious as the stream of commuters sitting and standing around me grew in numbers. The cacophony of different noises—magazine pages being flicked and Walkmans playing loud, thudding music and people coughing and sneezing and talking noisily—made me feel unwell and I pressed my fingers into my ears when it felt as though my head was about to shatter into a thousand pieces.
It was not a moment too soon when the train eventually reached my destination, and the sense of relief I felt was palpable. But with my poor sense of direction I worried that I would end up getting terribly lost. Luckily I spotted a waiting taxi, climbed inside and gave the address to the driver. The short ride brought me to a large red and white building, dotted with windows and surrounded by trees, with a sign that read Harborne Hall—Conference and Training Center. Inside, an information leaflet told visitors that the hall dated from the eighteenth century and was a former convent. The reception was gloomy with brown wooden pillars reaching up to the ceiling, dark brown leather chairs and a wooden bannister staircase opposite the desk. I was given a name badge to wear at all times while at the center, as well as a key and the number of my room and a schedule for the week’s events.
Upstairs, my room was lighter and felt a lot fresher. There was a small sink in the corner, but toilets and showers were situated down the hall. The thought of having to use shared facilities to wash myself (I showered daily at home) was an unpleasant one for me, and I woke very early each morning during the week to be certain that I was in and out of the bathroom before anyone else was up.
On the first day at the center I was told that I had been assigned an English-teaching placement in Lithuania. I had only previously heard of the name and that of its capital city—Vilnius—and was given books and leaflets to study to learn more about the country and its people. There was then a group introduction with a dozen other young people who were going to various volunteer placements across Eastern Europe. We sat in a circle and each of us had a minute to introduce ourselves. I was very nervous and tried not to forget to make eye contact with members of the group as I gave my name and that of the country I was going to. Of the other volunteers that I met, one was an Irishman with long, curly hair who was being posted to Russia. Another, a young woman, had received a placement working with children in Hungary.
There were long periods of unoccupied time that the other volunteers spent socializing in the game room, chatting and playing pool. I preferred to stay in my room and read, or visit the hall’s information room, filled with books and charts, and study in quiet. During meal breaks, I would rush down to get my food first and eat it as quickly as I could to avoid having lots of people around me. At the close of each day, I sat alone out on the grass in the secluded grounds outside the hall and stared up at the trees standing tall against the warm, fading colors of the evening sky, absorbed in my thoughts and feelings. There was anxiety, of course, about the trip and whether or not the placement would be successful. But there was something else as well: excitement, that I was finally taking charge of my life and my destiny. Such a thought took my breath away.
• • •
The training consisted of three parts. The first was designed to encourage teamwork, participation and cooperation. The volunteers were divided into small groups and asked to devise a system between them for removing colored plastic balls in particular sequences from a filled box given to each team. When I was given simple and clear instructions to follow by my fellow team members I performed well and was happy enough to play my part for the purpose of the exercise. Exercises such as these could sometimes last for several hours, so the biggest challenge for me was to stay focused and maintain my levels of concentration throughout.
There was also a group discussion about cultural values and practices, which was meant to stimulate debate among the volunteers, challenge preconceptions and promote tolerance. At one point, after watching a video together about the exotic types of food eaten in different parts of the world, the discussion leader asked the group how we might feel about a country where many people ate a lot of their food smeared in animal fat. Many of the volunteers in the room creased up their faces and said that it sounded disgusting. Realizing that he was probably referring to butter (which he was), I replied that I did not mind at all that people ate it.
Towards the end of the week there was a lecture on the countries of Eastern Europe and their geography and social and political situation. The lecture lasted an hour and everyone was expected to take notes. I sat and listened but did not write anything down. At one point the lecturer asked me why I was not making notes and I answered that I could remember everything that he had said and was making the notes mentally, in my head. I had always made notes in this way; it had helped me a lot during my school exams. He asked me several questions in order to test me and I got each right.
Back at home after the training, I waited to receive final confirmation of the placement in Lithuania. It came by post: a large package of printed notes with maps, names and contact numbers, accommodation and work details and plane ticket. My parents were very nervous for me and worried whether I would be able to cope being away from home for so long, but I was just excited to be taking what I considered to be a big step forward in my life. I could hardly believe it, but at nearly twenty, I was finally moving out, eight hundred miles away.
• • •
The republic of Lithuania is one of the three Baltic states, sharing borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland to the south and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia to the southwest. In 1940, during the Second World War, Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union. It later came under German occupation and fell again to the Soviet Union in 1945. Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare its independence, on Sunday, March 11, 1990. Soviet forces tried to suppress the accession—notably during an incident at the capital’s TV tower, which resulted in the deaths of several civilians—but were unsuccessful. In 2004, Lithuania became a full member of NATO and the European Union.
In the taxi to the airport I watched the other cars driving past and counted them. My head was pounding and I felt sick. I could not believe that I would not see my family again until the following year. Before I left, I promised my mother I would phone home every week with a progress report and would make sure I was eating enough. At check-in, it was surprisingly quiet—it was October and the summer holidays were long over—and I had little trouble checking my luggage in and going through security to the departures area. After a long wait, when I walked up and down over and over again and made very regular checks of the departures screen, my flight was finally announced and I ran to the gate and boarded the plane. It was half empty and I felt huge relief at having no one sitting next to me. I sunk into my seat and read the notes I had been sent about the center I was being posted to, practicing under my breath the pronunciation of the different names of people and places. I was undisturbed by the attendants during the flight, and as the plane came in to land at Vilnius International Airport I checked that I had my camera with me; it was nearing winter and I was looking forward to taking lots of photos of the snow.
At immigration, there were short queues and policemen dressed from head to toe in black, observing the people as they came past. My passport was checked and then stamped in red with the words Lietuvos Respublika (Republic of Lithuania) and I was waved through. After collecting my bags, I was met by the volunteers’ coordinator for the Baltic states and driven to my apartment in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city, which is located in the center of the country.
The apartment block was made of concrete and metal, with a vegetable garden at the front tended by its elderly occupants who were all in their seventies and eighties. It was a quiet area, away from main roads and traffic. I was introduced to the landlord, a silver-haired man named Jonas, who explained in broken English the rules of the block and how to do such basic things as turn the heating on and off. He gave me his telephone number to ring in case of an emergency. The coordinator confirmed the address of the center where I was to perform my volunteer work and gave me written directions to reach there by trolley bus. It was a Friday, so I would have the weekend to settle in before starting my first day at work.
Inside, my apartment was surprisingly spacious and consisted of a kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom. The interior was decorated in heavy, dark fabrics and was often gloomy on overcast days. The kitchen had an old oven, cupboards and a refrigerator. There were white tiles, some of them chipped, running up the sides of the walls. In the living room there was a large wall unit with photos and ornaments belonging to Jonas’s family. There was also a small table, sofa and television. The bathroom came with a shower and a washing machine, a luxury at the time in Lithuania. My bedroom was a good size, with a large wardrobe, table and chair, bed and telephone. This was to be my home for the next nine months.
I was too nervous to leave the apartment and explore the area outside during that first weekend in Kaunas. Instead, I busied myself by unpacking and working out how to use the various items around my new home. I watched some television and soon realized that many of the programs were American imports with Lithuanian subtitles. Jonas had left essentials, like milk and bread and cereal, in the kitchen for me. I hadn’t ever had to cook for myself before and made do at first with eating lots of sandwiches and bowls of cornflakes. I would soon have to summon up all my courage to make my first journey to the center.
On Monday morning I woke early, showered, and dressed in a thick coat and scarf. It was already very cold, even though winter had not yet arrived. A short walk from the apartment brought me to the main road. I had been told in the instructions given to me by the coordinator that trolley bus tickets could be purchased at any of the many newspaper stands that were dotted along Lithuania’s larger streets. Having memorized the contents of the Lithuanian phrase book that had been included in my volunteer kit, I asked for vieną troleibusų bilietą (one trolley bus ticket) and was given a small, rectangular ticket in exchange for a few litas (the Lithuanian currency). The bus crawled up the long, steep road, stopping almost every minute to let more and more people aboard. There were men in caps and heavy fur coats, young women with children under each arm and small, elderly women with scarf-covered heads and myriad plastic bags by their feet. With few seats and little standing space, the bus quickly became crammed full and I started to feel sick and dizzy, gasping for air as though I were drowning in a sea of people. As the bus inched to the next stop I stood up suddenly from my seat, almost knocking over a man standing next to it, and with my head down I pushed and squeezed my way out into the fresh, open air. I was sweating and trembling and it took several minutes for me to feel calm again.
I walked the rest of the way up the steep incline of the Savanorių Prospektas (Volunteer Avenue) to the top until I reached number 1, a tall brown concrete building. I walked up the two flights of concrete steps and pressed a button to the side of the door. Suddenly the door swung open and a short woman wearing lots of makeup and jewelry greeted me in good English: “Welcome! You must be Daniel. Please come in. How are you liking Lithuania so far?” I answered that I had not seen much of it yet. The woman introduced herself as Liuda, the center’s founder and director.
Liuda’s center was called the Socialinių Inovacijų Fondas (Social Innovation Fund), a nongovernmental organization for unemployed and economically at-risk women in the community. Many Lithuanians had lost their jobs in the upheaval that followed the country’s secession from the Soviet Union and she had had the idea to found an organization to help women like herself navigate their way in the new economy.
Volunteers did much of the center’s work and were critical to its success. Like me, some were from other countries, both near and far. I prepared the English lessons alongside an American Peace Corps volunteer in his seventies called Neil. He liked to reminisce during coffee breaks, telling me about the house he had built for himself back in the United States and the mobile home he and his wife had bought following his retirement, in which they had traveled to all fifty states in the Union.
The other teacher at the center was Olga, a Russian woman with curly red hair and tinted glasses. Whenever she spoke I could see her two gold teeth, one in each corner of her mouth. Olga understood that I was feeling anxious about being in such a completely different environment and explained that it was normal to feel homesick and nervous about starting something new. I really appreciated her words.
My main role as a volunteer was in the classroom. The center provided a few textbooks and worksheets, but otherwise resources were scarce and I was allowed to organize the class’s content however I wanted, which suited me very well. The women who attended the classes were all very different in age, background and education and there were never more than twelve to a class, which meant that the students knew each other well and the atmosphere of the lessons was always relaxed and friendly. At the beginning, I felt very nervous about standing up in front of my students and directing the lesson, but everyone was very kind and positive towards me and I gradually became more and more comfortable with the role.
It was through these classes that I met the person who would become one of my closest friends, a middle-aged woman called Birutė. She worked as a translator and her English was already good, but she lacked confidence and attended the class for practice. After the lessons she would come up to the front of the class and speak to me, asking me how I was finding life in Lithuania. Once she asked whether I would like a guide to show me around. I had been too nervous to walk around the city by myself and gratefully accepted her offer.
We walked together down Kaunas’s main pedestrian walkway, Laisvės Aleja (Liberty Avenue), 1,621 meters (approximately one mile) long and located in the town center. At one end of the avenue is Saint Michael the Archangel Church, a huge blue-domed and white-pillared building that glittered and glowed in the sunshine. The church was transformed into an art gallery under Soviet rule and only reopened to public worship following Lithuanian independence. On the other side of the avenue Birutė took me to see Kaunas’s old town with its cobbled streets and red brick castle, the country’s first defensive bastion, which dates from the thirteenth century.
Each day around noon, following morning class, Birutė would wait for me and we would walk together to the local town hall for lunch. Routines such as these helped me to start to settle down into my new life by giving each day a consistent and predictable shape that I was happy with. The canteen was located downstairs and was dimly lit and never more than half full. The food here was plentiful and inexpensive, including many traditional Lithuanian recipes such as creamy beetroot soup with meat-filled rolls. My eating habits had changed a lot since childhood and I was comfortable eating a wide range of different foods. On days when there was no afternoon class, Birutė and I would eat in one of the many restaurants along Laisvės Aleja. My favorite meal was Lithuania’s national dish, Cepelinai, so named because of the resemblance of their shape to zeppelins. It is made from grated potatoes and ground meat, boiled and served with sour cream.
The friendship that I shared with Birutė grew deeper and more special over time. She was always patient and understanding with me, willing to listen and full of advice and encouragement. I do not know how I would have survived in Lithuania without her. When several of the women at the center told me that they needed more English practice but could not afford the extra class fees, I had the idea of holding a weekly English conversation group at my home, which Birutė helped to organize. The women brought cookies and helped make tea and coffee, and then everyone sat in chairs or on the sofa and talked in English about anything and everything. One evening, Birutė brought and showed slides from a holiday she had taken with her family, and the group watched and asked questions and discussed their own traveling experiences.
Frequently the women in my class and at the center asked whether I had made any friends of my own age. Inga, Liuda’s deputy, introduced me to her nephew, who was three years younger than me, and encouraged us to socialize. Peter spoke good English and was rather shy and very polite. We visited the cinema together in town and watched the latest American releases. Whenever the music became too loud, I pressed my fingers into my ears, though he never seemed to notice.
There were other volunteers in the country from the U.K. and we were encouraged to stay in touch as a support network for one another. One of the volunteers, Vikram, had recently finished studying for a law degree at university before deciding he did not want a career as a lawyer. We did not have much in common—he talked a lot about soccer and rock music and other things that I had no interest in—and our conversations were often punctuated by long periods of silence, because I sometimes find it hard to sustain a conversation when the topic is not interesting to me, as the words just do not come.
Another volunteer working in Lithuania was Denise, a tall, slim Welsh woman in her thirties who was very energetic in everything that she said or did. Denise was staying in Lithuania’s capital city, Vilnius, and invited the volunteers in Kaunas to come and visit her and see the city up close. We traveled by bus—I sat at the back so as not to be surrounded by the other passengers—on a bumpy hour-long ride to the city center. Vilnius was very different from Kaunas—the people walked more quickly and there were many new building developments built in shiny glass and metal. Denise’s apartment was clean and brightly painted with wooden floors. The kitchen chairs were made of wood and the tops of their backs were shaped like rolling hills. I liked rubbing my fingers over them—they had a slightly gritty, ticklish texture. We drank tea and ate cookies and looked at photos Denise had taken during her stay so far. I liked that the other volunteers encouraged me to participate in their conversations and did not seem to judge me for being different. The volunteers each had their own personality and were all very open and friendly with one another.
The most experienced of the volunteers was a British Asian woman called Gurcharan. She had thick, curly dark hair and wore large, brightly colored saris. Her apartment was close to mine in Kaunas and she would come over regularly with bags of laundry to use my washing machine. In return, Gurcharan invited me to her apartment to talk and eat together in the evenings after work. The walls of each room were decorated with multicolored Indian pictures, and the living room table was covered in candles and burning incense sticks. Gurcharan talked very rapidly and I sometimes found it difficult to follow what she was saying. She was very open and spoke a lot about her personal life and encouraged me to do the same. I did not have a personal life and so did not know what to say. When she asked me if I had a girlfriend, I shook my head. Then she asked if I had a boyfriend. I must have blushed, because she then asked me if I was gay. The rapid succession of questions felt somewhat overwhelming, like the continuous pitter-patter of rain upon my head, and it was several moments before I answered her. She smiled broadly and asked if I had any gay friends. I shook my head again.
In one of the leaflets given to all the volunteers before flying out was a list of useful telephone numbers, which I kept next to the phone in my apartment. The conversation I had had with Gurcharan prompted me to call one of the numbers, of a group for gay people in Lithuania, and arrange to meet with one of its local members outside the town hall after work the following day. I had become tired of not knowing who I was, of feeling disconnected from a part of me that I had long been aware of. That phone call was one of the biggest decisions of my life and one of the most important too. All through my classes the next day I felt my pulse racing and could not eat anything. Later, walking down the avenue towards the town hall, I could feel myself shaking and I had to try very hard to push away the pressing thought to turn around and run. As I approached, I could see that the person I was due to meet had already arrived and was standing very still, waiting for me. I took a deep breath, walked up and introduced myself. He was tall and thin and wearing a black jacket that matched the color of his hair.
Vytautas—a common name in Lithuania—was my age and excited to meet someone from Britain. His English was very good because he enjoyed watching American films and television shows. He invited me to visit him and his partner, Žygintas, that weekend at their home and I accepted. Because I did not like to travel on the crowded trolley buses, they collected me in their car and drove to their apartment on the other side of town. Many of the modern things that they had, such as a wide-screen television and a CD player, were relatively rare at the time in Lithuanian homes. Žygintas loved British music and had collected many CDs and played some of them for me. Over food, we talked about our lives—Vytautas was a student, while Žygintas worked in a dental practice. They had met through the group and had been together for several years. Over the following weeks I visited them regularly to talk about events, eat together and listen to music. It was always dark when I left to go home at the end of an evening and, though Žygintas was worried for my safety and always offered to drive me back, I looked forward to the long walk alone through the silent, empty, moonlit streets.
Gurcharan was excited to hear about my friendship with Vytautas and Žygintas and wanted to meet them. She offered to cook a meal for the four of us at her apartment, and we gratefully accepted. It was a frosty late autumnal evening when we arrived and it took several minutes of removing coats, hats, scarves and gloves before we entered the living room. Gurcharan was already busy in the adjoining kitchen cooking several dishes simultaneously, the spicy aromas filling the room and whetting our appetites. Any lingering daylight was fading fast and replaced instead with the flickering, warm glow of candles crammed on various shelves and boxes. The table in the center of the room had already been laid out with plates and cutlery and glasses that twinkled in the candlelight. Wine was poured for the guests and the food piled onto plates to hand around the table. There were numerous curries full of vegetables and meat and more than enough rice for everyone. Gurcharan was as talkative as ever and asked Vytautas and Žygintas all about themselves over supper. I listened as best I could between mouthfuls of the delicious homemade food, but mostly the conversation did not interest me and after I finished eating I picked up a book from a nearby shelf and began to read to myself. I was embarrassed when Gurcharan exclaimed that I was being very impolite; I hadn’t any idea that I was being rude. Just then, as Žygintas was finishing his meal, he stopped suddenly and shouted a word in Lithuanian, before repeating it in English for our benefit: “Mouse, you have a mouse!” He pointed to the kitchen worktop where he had just seen it appear, jump and vanish before his eyes. Gurcharan smiled slightly and said simply: “Yes, I know.” She had no problem living with a mouse, she explained to us, and had lived with one before, back at her home in the U.K. As long as it did not get in the way, she saw no reason to worry about it. I had not ever had the chance to see a mouse at such close range and was disappointed to have just missed it. The conversation continued as before and this time no one seemed to mind when I returned to my book and read to myself. At the end of the evening, Gurcharan went to give each of us a kiss as we left; I hesitated, so she put her hand in mine instead and squeezed it tight. She was aware that I was different and told me she was proud of me because I was willing to take risks.
• • •
About a week later, I was in the kitchen of my apartment making sandwiches when I noticed a small smudge move on the tiled wall opposite. As I moved my head closer and looked again I saw that it was an insect that I had never seen before. The next day, at the center, I asked Birutė about it. “It’s tarakonas,” she said, then thought for several moments, searching for the English word, “a cockroach.” The insects are—I soon discovered—a common problem in many of Lithuania’s older buildings. My landlord, Jonas, was telephoned and was very apologetic and promised to treat the infestation. However, the whole block required treatment and, as my neighbors were all very elderly, this proved difficult to arrange quickly. In the meantime Jonas gave me a spray to use on any cockroaches that I saw. I did not mind them too much, though I found them distracting if I saw one while trying to listen to a conversation with someone or watch the television. When I told my parents of the problem in one of my regular phone reports home, they were very unhappy and I had to reassure them that my apartment was otherwise clean, that I was completely healthy and that the landlord was working promptly to deal with the problem. It was several weeks before Jonas was able to complete the treatment across the block and even then the cockroaches persisted, though only making the odd appearance from time to time.
Winter came inexorably over the months following my arrival in Lithuania, bringing heavy snowfall and bitterly cold weather throughout the country. Temperatures fell at night to as low as minus thirty degrees in Kaunas. My apartment was not a modern building; it was poorly insulated and very difficult to keep warm. I borrowed a radiator from one of the volunteer workers at the center who had bought a new one and was happy to loan the spare to me. I put it in my living room while I watched the television or read in the evenings, and later I would carry it into the bedroom to help keep me warm and sleep comfortably. Jonas put weather stripping around the door and windows after Birutė, to whom I had explained the problem with the constant cold, intervened on my behalf. Apart from the severity of the cold, I loved the wintry weather: the crunching sensation of treading through several inches of freshly laid snow on the way to work and the sight of bright, glistening white all around me. At night, I sometimes put on my coat and boots and walked the still streets while the snowflakes tumbled around my head. I would stop under a blazing streetlamp and turn my face up towards the falling sky, stretch out my arms and spin round and round in circles.
In December, as Christmas approached, the women at the center asked me what my plans were for the festive season. I realized that this would be my first Christmas away from my family and understood Christmas to be a special time to be shared with others. One of my coworkers at the center, Audronė, insisted that I come and spend the holiday with her and her family and I gratefully accepted. In Lithuania, Christmas Eve is much more important than Christmas Day and preparations for it take many hours. The house is cleaned and everyone must bathe and wear clean clothes before the evening meal. Audronė and her husband collected me and drove me to their home in a large apartment block. As they climbed out of the car, I noticed that her husband was extremely tall—more than six and a half feet in height. He reminded me of the number 9.
Inside, I met Audronė’s son and mother. Everyone was smiling and seemed happy to meet me. The corridor into the living room was long, dark and narrow, but as I walked slowly along it the gloom ebbed away until I was met suddenly by a rush of bright, swimming light and color. A long table in the middle of the room was covered with a smooth linen cloth with fine hay spread underneath it. I was told that this was to remind us that Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger filled with hay. There were twelve different dishes on the table, all meatless (the number represents the twelve apostles). They included salted herring, fish, winter vegetable salad, boiled potatoes, sauerkraut, bread, cranberry pudding and poppy-seed milk. Before eating, Audronė’s husband took a plate of Christmas wafers and gave one to each person around the table, including myself. He then offered his wafer to Audronė, who broke off a piece and offered her wafer in turn to him. This continued until each person had broken off a piece of each other’s wafer. There was no particular order in which each dish had to be eaten, but I was told that it was customary to at least sample each food. Each symbolized something important for the year ahead: the bread, for example, represented sustenance for the coming months, the potatoes humility. My favorite was the poppy-seed milk—aguonu pienas in Lithuanian—served with small round balls of dough. The milk is prepared by grinding the scalded poppy seeds and mixing them with water, sugar or honey, and nuts. During the meal, Audronė explained to me some of the traditional Lithuanian beliefs surrounding Christmas. For example, it is believed that at midnight on Christmas all the water in the streams, rivers, lakes and wells changes to wine, though only for an instant. Another belief is that at midnight animals can speak, though people are discouraged from trying to listen to them. The following day, December 25, the family took me to a park filled with snow and we walked and talked together by a huge, frozen lake. It had been a Christmas to remember.
• • •
One of the most rewarding experiences for me of living in Lithuania was learning the Lithuanian language. When I first told the women at the center that I wanted to learn to speak Lithuanian they were puzzled: Why did I want to learn such a small and difficult language? It was certainly true that many Lithuanians spoke enough English for me not to have to learn Lithuanian. In fact, none of the other British volunteers, nor Neil, the U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, could say more than a few words. It was considered very strange for a foreigner to even want to attempt to learn Lithuanian. Nonetheless, it was the language I heard spoken around me every day and I knew that I would feel more comfortable, more at home, in Lithuania if I could speak with my friends and students and fellow workers at the center in their own language.
Birutė was more than happy to teach me. She was very proud of her language and enjoyed discussing and speaking it with me. I wrote words down as I learned them to help me visualize and remember them and read children’s books that Birutė’s daughters had read when they were younger. Birutė also taught me a popular Lithuanian nursery rhyme:
Mano batai buvo du
Vienas dingo, nerandu.
Aš su vienu batuku
Niekur eiti negaliu!
Which means: “I had two shoes, one is missing, I cannot find it. With one little shoe I cannot go anywhere!”
Within a few days of beginning to learn the language, with Birutė’s help, I was able to build my own sentences, much to her initial surprise, and within a few weeks I was able to converse comfortably with native speakers. It helped a lot that I always asked my colleagues at the center to speak with me in Lithuanian as much as possible. Everyone I spoke to complimented me on my ability to speak good Lithuanian, including one of my elderly neighbors who was especially amazed that a young Englishman could converse with her in her own language. It was also a benefit on one occasion when I was invited out with the other volunteers for a meal in a restaurant. The waiter did not understand English, much to the volunteers’ annoyance, so I translated the order into Lithuanian for him. I did not mind occasionally having to act as an interpreter for the other volunteers, because I found the experience very interesting and another opportunity for me to practice my language skills.
I was even once mistaken for a native Lithuanian. Walking home one day from the center, a man wanting directions approached me, persisting even when I kept replying in Lithuanian that I did not know the place he was asking directions for. Eventually I stopped and said: “Atsiprašau, bet tikrai nežinau. Aš nesu Lietuvis. Esu iš Anglijos.” (“Excuse me, but I really do not know. I am not Lithuanian. I am from England.”) His eyes widened and then he apologized and walked away.
• • •
By the spring, I had settled firmly into my life in Lithuania. I had gradually developed routines that gave me a sense of calm and security and that helped me cope with change. Early each morning, just before dawn, I woke and pulled on some loose, warm clothes and went for a long walk through the streets to a local park filled with oak trees. The trees were tall, as though reaching up into the sky, and helped make me feel safe as I walked the identical, well-trodden route around them at the start of each day. After returning to my apartment to wash or shower and get dressed for work, I walked up the long, steep road to the center and sat and drank coffee while the women gossiped together about personal things that did not interest me. Neil had suffered for some months since Christmas with an increasingly painful back, which numerous trips to doctors had not helped. He eventually had to return to the United States for treatment. I took over his classes to fill the gap, which meant that I taught English mornings and afternoons most days of the week. There had been other changes too: Birutė’s husband had fallen very ill and she had had to stop attending classes to spend time looking after him. At lunchtime I often stayed at the center and ate sandwiches I had prepared the night before, though occasionally I ate at a local café with Žygintas whose workplace was near the center. After work I bought frozen fish fingers, bread, cheese and other essentials before walking back home to prepare and eat supper, read, and watch television before bed. I didn’t mind being on my own more often, though I missed Birutė and hoped I would see her again before long.
In the summer, work at the center reduced to a trickle as the students went away for long coastal holidays with their families. Žygintas’s family, like many Lithuanians, had a summer house in the countryside and invited me to come and visit him. He gave me instructions for a bus that traveled close by the house and said that he would pick me up and drive me the rest of the way once I had reached the agreed meeting point. The bus was old and shaky and very quickly the route took me out of the towns and into long, muddy roads surrounded only by trees and fields. Žygintas had given me a name to look out for, but I could not see it anywhere and was too nervous to ask anyone, so I sat and waited and hoped. Eventually the bus reached a stop next to a series of wooden buildings, the first I had seen for half an hour, so I summoned all my courage and stood and explained in Lithuanian that I was lost. The three other passengers just stared at me, so I climbed off the bus and counted to myself because I was shaking and did not know what to do. Then the driver came over to me and without saying a word pointed to a timetable. The name Žygintas had given me was not on there. I looked at my watch; I was an hour late for my meeting with him. I walked into the first building and explained the situation in Lithuanian to a woman standing behind a counter. She shook her head and did not say anything. I tried again, repeating myself in Lithuanian, but she again shook her head. Then, out of desperation, I tried English. “Do you have a telephone?” I asked. On the word “telephone” she suddenly nodded and pointed to a black telephone in the corner. I ran over to it and dialed Žygintas’s number. “Where are you?” he asked and I gave him the name that I saw on the timetable outside. “How did you get there?” he asked and then, “Wait there, I’ll come and collect you.” Half an hour later his car came and we drove to the summer house. On the way, Žygintas explained that I had found myself in one of the parts of Lithuania’s countryside inhabited by Russian speakers who do not understand Lithuanian. The delay meant my visit to the house was abbreviated, but I met Žygintas’s family and was just in time for a barbecue, followed by a swim in the nearby river.
Birutė, too, wanted me to come over and spend some time at her family’s summer house. She took me to meet her sister, who was a poet. Over cups of coffee she recited some of her poems to us and afterwards we walked together along a lake of clear, blue water. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone brightly, its light sparkling on the water’s surface like solar flotsam. As the day went on, Birutė asked me to come with her to a point close by where we could sit and watch the sunset. This was our first meeting in several weeks and our last, too, because my volunteer contract had expired and it was time for me to return home. Birutė told me that our friendship had meant a great deal to her, particularly through what had often been difficult times for her. She felt that I had grown a lot in the time that she had known me. I knew it too and had felt for some time that it was not only my day-to-day life that had changed with the decision to come and live in Lithuania; I myself had changed and had been somehow renewed. As we sat in silence together, looking out towards the sinking summer sun, our hearts were not heavy because we knew that even as one adventure was ending, another was about to begin.