Tirana 17 July 1999
Mirdita,
It is early in the morning when I have my morning coffee at Jerusalem, I don't even have to ask for it anymore, when I come with my laptop I just sit down and start to write, after a few minutes the waiter will come and bring my coffee. It is early since around me most of the street-sellers are still busy to build up their small stores, on cartoon boxes, old tabels and more creative constructions. They are up for another long day of sitting and waiting. Lots of these people come from the country site i was told, they came to Tirana in the pyramide game times, after selling their land, which they just had gotten from the state. They didn't want to work on the land anymore, they had enough from it during communist times. So the new thing was to become bussines men, they invested their money in the pyramides and on the site line did a little street-selling (some cigarettes, paper tissues, salt peanuts, razors blades, cookies), in the hope that their money would grow until they had enough for a restaurant, then you don't have to work anymore. Then the whole pyramide system collapsed and now they are still sitting there the whole day hoping that somebody will buy something from them. I wonder what they all see during such a day. Sometimes I hope that once in my life I will work for an organisation which has big amounts of money just in their hands and don´t always have to shuffle with small amounts around. In this case the situation in Kosov@ is giving me a lot of grey hairs. From all the satphone connections I have one thing is becoming very clear, the prices of renting houses in Kosov@ has sky rocketing so heavily over the last 3 weeks that it is almost impossible for us to find a good base. Everywhere the other NGO's are happy when they see us, but they have also hardly a place for themselves, the same problem for them. In Gjakove we need at least $1000 per month, in Peja at least $1500, in Pristina at least $1000 also, in Mitrovica at least $700. And sorry we just solved the problem to get $1500 together for Tirana. With other words it is not as easy as we hoped it would be, but who has said that it would be easy. In Croatia and partly in Bosnia we solved these problems by offering the local people to repair their houses in the afternoon. But that option seems not to work. Besides that we are becoming a real logistic office here in Tirana, shuffling people with big and mini buses to Kukes and Skopje (to go from there to Pristina), by convoy, by WFP plane, by helicopter to Kukes and from there by minibus to Prizen and then by big bus to Gjakove or Pristina. It seems that Sunflowers are travelling allover the place. One good thing is that we meet good people during all those travels and that maybe will help us to get further. My hope is a bit concentrated on the first meeting of the Kosov@ youth council in Pristina this weekend. There will be people from all the different places where sunflowers have arrived in the last days. Most are now in Pristina, the appartment already hosted 11 of them last night, a bit too much I would say. But also the people who worked on the way stations wanted to see the country before they go home. Somebody like Katherina who has been on the way station in Shemri for almost 3 and half weeks really would like to see how that country looks like before she returns to Switzerland. Today she came back by nato helicopter from Kukes, with 4 other volunteers who worked in Shemri and continued her trip directly in the same helicopter to Switzerland. Those soldiers where anyway going there so they invited her to come with them. The others from Shemri arrived during the day here and told that they were as suprised as I was when they crossed the border at Morina. They also had a big qeustion in the head - where did the war really happen? For the first kilometers you have the feeling that you are travelling in the wrong direction - Kosov@ seems much more in peace and undamaged whereas the country you have just left seems unsafe and destroyed by war. I think that I wrote already months ago, at least I thought it months ago that Tirana reminds me a lot of Sarajevo after the war. Today by the way I made some photos here in Tirana from a little restaurant in another park which they are cleaning up and honestly when I would send these fotos to newspapers telling that they had been taken in Peja, or Peje, they wouldn't see the difference. It looks a lot like a place where just some big shells have come in. I think that the media around the world have blown up the war in Kosov@ and the possible destruction in the country to such a height that everybody which sees it with their own eyes is surprised. What we have here is the paradox after the Bosnian war. After the Yugoslavian war raged over Slovenia and Croatia, people didn't know how to describe what happened in Bosnia. They simply used up all the words they had to describe how bad a war can be already in Slovenia and the extrem level they used for Croatia. So they hadn't words for Bosnia. Now they use the same words as in Bosnia to describe what has happened in Kosov@ and that gives people the feeling that Kosov@ is as heavily destroyed as Bosnia and maybe even worse, since the war more or less is going on there since 10 years. But no way that you can compare Bosnia and Kosov@. These are two total different wars. But the Kosov@ war got the better media coverage. Basically because NATO was this time so heavily involved. In many ways I feel bad that it took so much attention, since it put Bosnia and the reconstruction of the country on a back burner. The world is now concentrating on what is happening or has happened in Kosov@ and doesn't realise that the situation now in Bosnia is not cleared yet either. Neither do you see that the media puts much interest in finding out the roots of these conflicts. Almost 10 years this conflict is going on now and I have heard the nicest philosophies why, but hardly any which brings it back to the point it turns around. These are not war because of ethnical things, not religious fights, These are conflicts about economy, about people who lost their hopes for the future. But who am I to say that. The biggest change in Tirana the last 3 days is that the police has started to put up traffic signs. At last after they installed the poles for it months ago, now the traffic signs are there. This is almost driving everybody crazy. Lots of roads became one way streets suddenly over night and you see a lot of surprised looking drivers who turn into a road and suddenly find out that it is not possible anymore. It is going to change the city quickly now. I wonder how the Albanians will take it. I talked this day with John, our translator, which has become a part of the family now, about this idea I wrote about yesterday to make this kind of peace-bus tour through Albania. I really wanted to know how he as former professional soldier thought about it. And he suprisingly was immediatly busy with putting forwards ideas what we should do. He is anyway the opinion that 99% of the weapons in this country are in the wrong hands. It is funny to say, but he as former Albanian officer is very much complaining about the way how most Albanian soldiers and police handle their guns. As if they have no respect for the thing at all. Today f.e. in the afternoon we went with a small group to Durres to the beach. Not that I like swimming so much, but I never came around to see Durres beach as long as I was here. I just wanted to see how Tirana people spending their free time there. We passed by the Italian army refugee camp, which is now secured by Albanian soldiers, there are about 100 refugees still there. And those guys walked around with their machine guns if it are water pistols. It is as if they don't realise how deadly dangerous those things can be. If you want to know how the beaches in Durres look like. Just some short remarks. Yesterday stood in most of the Albanian newspapers that almost 250.000 children, babies, between 0 and 5 years, are in danger. A lot of them are sick, extreme high tempatures, "running shit", etc. Partly the Albanian health officials say it is because of the bad situation on the beaches, the water is heavily polluted this year. And because of the bad water situation in the rest of the country, like we had (I hope we had) in Tirana last week, this is now happening. Due to the huge increase of people in the last months this sanitation problem has increased. I am just writing down what stood in the newspapers. Up to now I hadn't heard about it, but that doesn't mean it is not true. For the rest it is a beach like many overpopulated beaches in the world, with that difference that there are hardly any waste containers so all the waste stays on the beaches. And the most remarkable thing is that the boys with the expensive fancy cars are just driving over the beach. You see the most expensive mercedes cars just going up and down the beach. More or less people have left a part, next to the water free for those parade of machos with their fancy cars, to show their richness. In the air helicopter pilots from NATO are more or less doing the same thing, by the way. And at the end of the day, say around 5 o'clock also the minibuses are driving up and down the beach to get people who like to go back to Tirana. Especially the germans who were with us really couldn't believe their eyes, cars on the beach. They asked if that was allowed, of course not was the answer. Why is there in such case no police who do something about it, they ask, at that moment a police van came driving down the beach and stopped one of the white mercedes cars which drove by. Nobody left their car, they talked for 3 minutes and both went on. I don't think that the germans meant such an action from the police. In the evening I met my favourite street-selling boy again, the one who was always selling flowers, he changed to cigarettes. I asked him if the cigarettes go better as the flowers, but he answered that it is almost the same. His selling box is full with pictures of all his favourite football players. And he keeps asking me when I finally will come to visit him. So this week I finally will go and see him. In principle it wasn't me who promised him to visit him, but some other volunteers, but that is happening often, volunteers when they are just arriving promising all kind of things, since they are full of energy and thinking that they can do everything in the short period they are here. In the end they leave and weren't able to do it all. Just like all those people from different organisations who passing by and tell what they can do, they can raise money for the nicest things, but slowly as time goes by you hear less and less and suddenly you don't hear anything anymore. Yes I am sceptical, I can't help it, it is a way to protect myself. Otherwise I would be loosing my hope and dreams, since it happens often in this work. Writing this is not meaning that I am tired or disappointed, it is just describing the extra small problems which are part of this work, a kind of warning for you out there, do not promise anything to anybody if you can't deliver. Especially don't promise things to people in crisis without knowing if it is possible to realise it. Here they believe in every dream and every dream which is not coming true is taking a bit of their hope for the future away. Also a bit from the trust in other people. In the last 3 months there were a lot of these huge projects presented to me, I am happy that I kept most of them for myself and didn't tell them further. Otherwise there would be pretty much people angry on me by now, just because somebody else couldn't keep their promises. Never mind lots of people do keep their promises luckily enough.

wam :-)