Babble from the Balkans (4): Ken Gibbs

Excerpts from a letter home from Tirana, mid 1999

I believe that I have been keeping the family downstairs awake. You see, I have been given an article to read about Albania written by an Irish journalist in early 1998 after he had experienced the results of the pyramid investment schemes' collapse. (Rolling Stones, April 2nd, 1998). He writes with tongue in cheek - but his descriptions are very accurate, and reading some of his comments has had me falling about. A couple of samples:

• "Private garbage collection is not yet up and running in Tirana, but private garbage disposal is fully operational."
• "The OSCE troops arrived in April, 1997, in their scout cars and personnel carriers. The situation in Albania was so bad that having Italians tooling around in armour-plated vehicles actually made the streets safer."
• "Now after 10pm in Tirana, everything was quiet. No, not quite. There was continual gunfire coming from the maze of Tirana's back streets. And the gunfire set off all of Tirana's dogs. As a result, I spent the night thinking, first about Kalashnikov slugs and the Hotel Tirana's nearly floor to ceiling windows, "Gosh I wish I had a room on a lower floor." Then thinking, about what a large number of loud dogs Tirana has, "Gosh I wish I had a room on a higher floor." I ended up on the balcony bar , fully exposed to both the bullets and the barking, but at least they had gin."
• "Until 1990, in Albania, there were no privately owned motor vehicles. They didn't know how to drive. They still don't."
• ". . . . . . . driving around with no thought of an errand or destination." ('cruising' is the word he uses to describe this aimless form of driving.)
• "Then a neophyte television producer walked up to us and announced that he'd gone out to tape some local colour and hadn't made it to the city limits before he lost a car, a TV camera and $5,000 in cash."

I see why I was given the article. It seems that success in Albania is measured by how far you can escape from the country. Just look at Mother Theresa.

*****

I came in this morning in the hope that there might be a note from you but it seems that the e-mail is not up-and-running at present. I'll try again this afternoon. Actually, the owner of the office building is presently rewelding the spiral staircase treads - one of which collapsed under our opera-singer lady's light footsteps. Yes, she is solid, but I wouldn't have thought 'that' solid. All this welding probably means that the steps will collapse under my weight now. This is quite important since I - and the computer which handles the e-mail (called the 'server' which is, I think, a bit of a misnomer) - both live upstairs. When I want to ensure that we have received all the messages which are in the New York in-box, I have to climb those same stairs and make the connection to New York manually.

Yes, I said 'manually'. In this almost 21st century, to make an electronic connection, one has actually to perform the operation manually. Not quite to the level of winding the handle vigorously and then shouting, "Hello, exchange?" - but pretty close to it. For this, we pay tens of thousands of dollars for the equipment and employ highly skilled technicians. Perhaps the word 'skilled' is purely 'relative', and might also give a clue to how the technician obtained employment in the first instance. Ah well.

*****

Yesterday's HASH was lovely, for two reasons. I was walking with an SCF lady (Danish), who speaks Albanian fluently and who speaks to virtually everyone she meets. They seem to think she is Christmas. Well, we met a tall peasant lady who was delighted that at least someone would talk to her - she complained that all the others had passed without a word. Not surprising since none of them could speak the language. Anyway, the two had a nice chat the way that women do and the peasant then asked us not to walk on too fast, she wanted to show us something. She disappeared from view and joined us about 100 yards further on with four of the most lovely looking pomegranates for us. Sweet. My last view of her was when we were about half a mile further on and I turned to see if she was still watching us - which she was - and I waved goodbye to her. She seemed delighted.

And then there are the crocuses. I have to assume they are autumn crocuses and they are truly lovely. They are bright yellow and grow in clusters - and I hope the one photograph I took will come out. They seem to enjoy growing in the shade on cooler banks. Under trees and bushes. Below hedges. But everywhere they are, they give a real flash of colour, and now that autumn is in full swing with its greys and dusty browns, these clumps of yellow are like lights that have been lit just before dusk.

*****

Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com

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