What is "Clean"?

I used to think I was a very clean person. I had some obsessive-compulsive behavior concerning cleanliness as a kid. Like refusing to walk on my bedroom carpet with shoes on. Even now, I am generally pretty good about keeping things uncluttered and neat. If I can see dirt on the floor I clean it up.

Sometimes cleaning can be therapeutic for me. Doesn't it feel better to live in a clean space? I considered myself to be above average when it came to cleaning. That was before I moved to Albania. 

For an Albanian woman who has no job outside the home, house cleaning is the primary daily activity. Floors are swept and mopped. Every day. Outdoor tile is rinsed off with water. Rugs are taken outside and beaten at least once a week. Regardless are whether or not company is coming. After all, you never know when company might arrive!

You could literally eat off the floors of most of the homes here. In fact, at my current home, we do. It is a tradition among northern Albanian families to spread a tablecloth on the floor and eat picnic-style. After eating, all we have to do is pick up the tablecloth, shake off the crumbs outside, and re-use or wash. It was interesting to watch when their three-year-old niece came to visit, who is used to eating at a table. When she came in the room, she walked right across the open tablecloth but after being reprimanded, she quickly learned to walk around it instead. I thought about my first day with my family when I am quite sure I let my feet touch the top of the tablecloth without thinking. If they noticed, they never let on.

Here are just a few other things I have noticed about keeping things neat and clean in Albania:

• When you enter a home, take off your shoes and leave them outside the door. Then you may be offered a pair of sandals or flip-flops that are only worn inside. In my house my family and I typically just go barefoot, which will change in the winter when the tile floors feel like ice. House shoes are absolutely essential then!
• When laundry is hung to dry, like kinds are always hung together. I like to do this as well, but am not always strict about it. When I hung a pair of pants in between two shirts I was quickly corrected and told that the pants were in the wrong place.
• Dishes must be very thoroughly rinsed. I have helped several times with washing the dishes and have found the process to be quite complex (one which I still do not fully understand how to do correctly here.) First, the largest pot is washed, then filled with water so that the other dishes can be washed by using the pot like a sink. After all the dishes are scrubbed clean, the water is thrown out so the dishes can be rinsed in fresh water. Here is a VERY IMPORTANT instruction (which may very likely be a personal preference in my family, as opposed to a cultural habit): I must not simply dunk the dish under the water. I must splash the water up onto the dish for it to be considered "clean."

While cleanliness in the home is highly valued,  I cleanliness in public is not. There is no such thing as organized public garbage disposal. Trash is tossed onto the side of the road when no longer wanted. However, there are certain places throughout the Kenet which act as dumping grounds for people to drop their full garbage bags, and these are regularly burned. It was difficult for me to get used to seeing so much trash everywhere at first, but now I am pretty much used to it. However, I was NOT prepared for the observation I made at the meat market...

When we approached the little meat shop, a man was in front of us getting his order filled. I noticed the shopkeeper chop up the meat on a table right beside the money drawer. Without even wiping his hands on anything, he put the meat in a plastic bag, tied it up, and took a couple of bills from the man. He opened the money drawer, retrieved some change, and handed it to the man with the bag of meat. As my Albanian sister and I stepped up to make our order, I couldn't help but stare as the man, still holding that Albanian money in his bloody hands, opened the cabinet behind him where all the meat was stored and took out a long rack of ribs. Hands bare, never cleaning the table, his knife, or his hands from the previous order, he set the rack on the table and whacked off part of it. All I could think of was the money that my friend was going to put into his bloody hand and how many times I have handled money without ever washing my hands after, wondering how many meat shops it has been through. 

But then again, money in every part of the world is pretty gross if you think about how many places it has been and how many dirty hands have touched it. Nobody's ever died from handling money before, that I know of, so I should be okay :) But maybe it wouldn't hurt to start washing my hands after I buy something!