Chaos

When people ask me what it is that draws me to the disorderly chaos that is life in Albania, I normally end up falling back on my favorite catch-phrase: "In chaos lies opportunity."  Usually, that's true.  Sometimes, chaos holds nothing but chaos and the very real possibility of death or dismemberment.  I was reminded of this fact today as I sat on the terrace with a cold Birra Korca and was witness to the spectacle of Albanian tree-doctoring.

The tree in question is a 70-year old eucalyptus that towers over the former Bank of Rome apartment building.  Originally built by the Italians to house the employees of - you guessed it - the Bank of Rome in the early 1930's, the building suffers from lack of maintenance and uncontrolled home improvements.  One of the less attractive additions was the little bar built in the former front garden.  The owner decided he needed to build a sidewalk raki/beer/qofte joint and was not about to let the presence of a massive tree deter him.  His establishment was built around the trunk of the tree.  The tree has suffered for almost 20 years, putting up with nails driven into its bark, a continuous cloud of cigarette smoke, and endless discussions of politics and soccer.  It's no wonder it has developed problems.

The topmost portion had started to deform and lean menacingly over the street. Normally this is no cause for concern as Albanians are accustomed to living under the sword of Damocles; one eyeblink from catastrophe.  However, last year another old eucalyptus dropped a branch from far above down on a new Mercedes SL.  The trendy showoffs who park along this particular section of the Blloku were not about to let their precious rides suffer the same fate.  The end result was a classic example of civic planning, risk mitigation, and hazard abatement as understood in this little corner of the Balkans.  I imagine the planning session went a little like this:

"When's the best time to cut this sucker down?"
"How about Saturday evening on the day of the first decent weather in months?
"Done!"
"What about all the cars parked (nay, double-parked) on the street?"
"Eh, once we start dropping branches, they'll move!"
"Cool!"
"What about traffic control?"
"Shut up! Let's ride!"

Just about the time the nightly cruise kicks off on the Blloku, the tree doctors moved in.  The "cherry-picker" truck double parked in front of the ramshackle bar and the shouting commenced.  The owner, who evidently anticipated the event, started tearing down his umbrellas and suggesting his clients might want to move someplace less prone to cranial fractures from falling logs.  One by one the owners of the Mercedes, Audis, and a Hummer arrived to swear at anyone within swearing distance before reluctantly moving off to find another place to flaunt their mobile status symbols. Those few who weren't sitting in local bars were less fortunate.  The city cops arrived with a flatbed tow truck and proceed to yank the last few cars out of harms way.  There's no sound like a Mercedes being winched sideways onto a truck with its alarm blaring and its tires protesting every centimeter of the way.

As the preliminaries were underway, the cast of primary actors assembled.  Cherry-picker operator guy, chainsaw guy, city cops, national cops, drunk guy with very impressive beer belly, gypsy beggar kids.  All present and accounted for. To ensure success, the owner of the bar offered most of the players a tumbler of raki and most of them accepted.    Nothing like a stiff belt before firing up the old McCulloch.  More like a Shanghai Industries Super Power Arm Render, but  a chainsaw is a chainsaw. 

Sufficiently lubricated, chainsaw and operator mount the cherry-picker basket and ascend treeward. Before the main cut is made, underbrush must be cleared.  Brrrrrappp!  Brrrrraaap! The saw is coaxed to life and the obstacles to ascension are cleared.  "Farewell linden branches!"  "Be gone, dangling wisteria vine!"  "Oops, you didn't need internet anway!"

Once they reached the prime target, the limb-lopping begins in earnest.  As each severed branch falls, the crowd of onlookers grows.  The "Vogue Lounge" crowd has stopped admiring themselves in their own sunglasses and anxiously awaits a crushed car or amputated limb.  The cops eventually decide they should divert traffic around the area instead of trying to sychronize circulation with chainsaw guy's cigarette breaks.  The Blloku become eerily empty of cars.

Where once the slow parade of luxury vehicles ruled, the shouting kibbitzer now holds sway.  Chainsaw guy is pelted with advice from amateur forestry experts.  "Oh Petrit!  Cut that one over that way first."  "What are you doing? Don't worry, it will fall like I say it will."  I gotta admit the pressure on chainsaw guy was unrelenting.  How did he deal with it?  Smoking, of course.  During refeuling of the saw!  "What?  Dying in a gasoline vapor explosion can't be any worse than falling 60 feet from the wobbly cherry-picker.  It'll all work out, inshallah."

In the end it was magnificent. A groaning crack.  The swish of descending branches.  The percussive crash of many tons of eucalyptus wood on the pavement elicited some polite applause and little pang of guilt from me.  How many koalas could have been fed from that branch? 

Once the threat of impending doom was neutralized, attitudes changed.  Bystanders who "oohed" and "aahed" at each buzzing cut of the saw now started to complain about the dust.  The police, who minutes before were the heroic guardians of the lives of unsuspecting pedestrians, began to harass the cleanup crew.  "Get this stuff out of the way.  We got cars that want to drive in circles around the Blloku to show off!"  Chainsaw guy realized his 15 minutes were up and zipped up the top his jumpsuit, which previously flaunted his copious chest hair in a testosterone-fueled dispaly of derring-do.  Only drunken beer-belly guy continued to revel in the moment, gazing vacantly skyward in hopes of another epic branch fall. 

This time we were lucky.  Chaos claimed no victims, unless you count koalas with rumbly tummies.  Indeed, this little drama gave me the opportunity to enjoy a few cold Korca beers.  "In chaos there is opportunity!"
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Saranda Again?

I suppose it's only natural that the resort town closest to Corfu has become the "it" destination for brave foreigners venturing into Albania for the first time.  Only 30-90 minutes away by ferry.  Marketed to bored Brits lounging on the beaches, looking for something to break up the routine.  "Day trip to Saranda and Butrint in the lawless wilds of Albania, mate?"  Hell, I'd plunk down a few bucks for that myself.

So it continues.  More and more tourists are plucking up their courage and taking the plunge.  The latest item to crop up on my screen came from the good folks at the LA Times. A very nice article.  If folks from LA like your beaches, you must be doing something right! 

The government seems to have gotten the message here and is in the process of moving all the commercial shipping traffic away from the tourist ferry terminal to the former Navy base on the north side of the peninsula.  Once that's gone, the pier will be extended 100 meters and the harbor dredged to allow cruise ships to dock directly on the quay.  Not soon enough!  I look forward to reading more articles from folks who have discovered this southern gateway to Albania.
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Surprise!

One nice thing about living in a country that has a history of isolation and a geography that makes exploration problematic is the frequency of "new stuff."  Just when you think you are beginning to transition from outsider to seasoned local, somebody or something comes along to expose a new facet of the country that makes you do a mental double-take.  Discovering Byllis was the first of many of these moments for me.  It happened again last week.

Cruising, as I do, through the digital back alleys of Google-dom, I came across a story on sea turtle research that has been ongoing for a few years here.  Not only did I not know the research was in progress, I didn't know sea turtles even took the time to wander ashore in Albania.  Turns out over 250 of the little amphibians (reptile!) have been captured, tagged,  and logged.  Three of our lucky contestants were named and tracked via GPS.  Shpresa (Hope) stayed local.  The same goes for Guximtari (The Brave One) who couldn't muster the courage to paddle more than a few kilometers from his capture site.  The only turtle with real cojones was little Patok (named after the place he was tagged) who is currently kicking it in Corfu.  Probably talking smack to some Scandanavian tourist-turtle: "You are schweeeet!  Turtally, dude."

The other revelation from Albanian news was the discovery of some slightly slower-moving residents.  Glacially slow, in fact. A team of persistent "mountainologists" found four undiscovered glaciers in the northern reaches of the country.  None were named or tagged as you really don't need GPS to keep track of their wanderings.  The group from the University of Manchester was surprised to find these glaciers so far south in Europe and were quoted as saying, "I got your global warming right here, Al Gore!" 

Seriously.  Turtles.  Glaciers.  What next?  A missing link?  A Japanese solider who never got the message that WWII is over?  Lately, I wouldn't be surprised at all.  The more you unfold the creases of this country, the more it keeps suprising you.  I can hardly wait!
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Animal Rights?

The recent flooding in Northern Albania has sparked a lot of thought and discussion.  "Did the government cause the disaster unintentionally as a consequence of  a scheme to skim money on the import of electricy?"  "Why has the drainage infrastructure been allowed to decay so badly?"  "Is it an act of god or man?" For me, the burning question is: "Would they eat a hippo?"  You might think this doesn't make much sense, but be patient. We'll get there.  But first I have to do some backing up. 

I confess I am not much of an animal rights activist.  Raised in the western U.S. among ranchers, I grew up in an environment that clearly defined "Us" and "Them."  People and Animals, that is.  We loved our dogs but didn't shy away from giving them the "Old Yeller" treatment if they needed it.  We took care of cattle or sheep because of their economic value and had no qualms about plinking at jack-rabbits for fun.  Hunting deer or antelope was a sacred rite which warranted a school holiday.  Seriously, if you scored a buck tag, no teacher would think about penalizing you for unauthorized absence as you spent the better part of a school week freezing your ass off in the slim hope of actually getting to plug Bambi.

From this background I ventured out into the world to discover there were lots of people who never "met their meat," so to speak.  Those who ate meat got it from the grocery store wrapped in plastic with little evidence that it was once a living animal.  Then there were the vegetarians, vegans, ovo-lacto-vegetarians, cat-lovers, dog-lovers, PETA members, and many more who held a starkly different view on the Us/Them relationship.  I listened, learned, and generally held my tongue among these folks.

When I came to Albania, I was back in my element.  The luxury of imbuing animals with human characteristics was not affordable here.  Animals had their work to do or their place on the table.  Period.  In fact, Albanians challenged my comfort level.  It's a common sight here to see a kasapi in a kiosk on the side of the road hacking away at the carcass of a lamb while three more line up for their turn.  Blood runs into the gutter while customers haggle over the choicest morsels.  Absolutely no squeamishness. 

As I learned more about Albania, I heard stories about families who kept a turkey in the bathroom in the run-up to New Years Eve.  That's like Thanksgiving here.  A real turkey bloodbath.  Family members would fend off the turkey while taking their morning constitutional, knowing it was a small price to pay for the feast of gjell deti and pershesh which awaited them.  The slaughtering also occured in the bathroom. 

And it wasn't just food animals.  At three in the morning on a cold January night I awoke to the sounds of a pitched battle outside my apartment in Tirana.  The sounds of gunfire were unmistakable and prolonged.  "What they hell are they shooting at," I wondered.  Turns out, it was dogs.  The mayor's office had a bounty of 500 lek for every tail collected in order to control the stray dog population.  The local hunter's clubs joined the game with gusto.  The most disturbing thing is this hunt was repeated every six month with no shortage of targets. Where are the spay and neuter folks when you need them?

The purest distillation of this experience happened when I went to a distant cousin's 40th birthday celebration in their ancestral village.  Twenty-six kilometers and two hours from the paved road landed me 200 years back in time.  The village of Zhej lies hard in the mountains of southern Albania. Normal vehicles stop a few klicks out of town to let mules take over.  The stoutest of 4x4's get you within 500 meters of the village.  Once there, the hospitality is unequaled.  Despite the fact that they just met me and I was only very distantly related to them by marriage, I was welcomed into the family and pampered.  The culmination of the celebration was the roasting of a young goat. 

A farmer from the neighboring village arrived with the kid slung over his mule.  Pleasantries were exchanged and the serious haggling began.  The goat was weighed, prodded, examined and assessed.  An elderly gentleman delighted in pointing out the subterfuge of the farmer. "Look at his stomach," the old man whispered.  "It's full of water.  This mashtruese has been forcing it to drink water all morning so it weighs more at sale."  A counter-tactic of delay was employed until the kid answered the call of nature in a huge way and resumed a more reasonable weight!  Once bought, the goat stayed in the garden with a crowd of children feeding it choice leaves until its final appointment with the cook. 

The end came quickly and without much ceremony.  The kid was led out behind the cookshed and dispatched swiftly with a sharp knife.  As I watched I gained a new appreciation of the rituals adopted by Islam or American Indians to offer up a prayer of thanks to the animal.  Despite ones outlook on the carnivore lifestyle, you can't deny that while we are "interested" in the process, the animal is "committed."  The cook quickly got to work preparing the carcass.   He started with the upper lip and began to peel the skin back until the entire head was bare.  Then he switched his attention to the rear legs and made a small incision near what would be the Achilles tendon on a person.  Into this cut, he rammed a stick, separating the hide from the meat.  Once the initial opening was made, he pressed his lips to the hole and blew furiously.  The hide came away cleanly and the rest was simple butchery.

Nothing was wasted.  The whole kid, including the head, was rubbed with salt and oregano and roasted over an open fire.  All of the men took turns keeping the spit rotating between sessions of raki drinking and story telling.  The innards were cleaned, spiced, and impaled on a long skewer. The whole thing was wrapped with small intestine and roasted over the coals to make an  incomparable kukurec. As I licked the grease off my fingers I wondered, "What would PETA think of this?"  Then I thought, "Who cares.. this is delicious!"

With this in mind, I had to chuckle when I read this article from the Southeastern European Times about a hippopotamus in Montenegro that escaped from its pen during the recent flooding.  The locals worried it was a dangerous beast threatening their children.  The owner swore it was a gentle lady who wouldn't hurt anyone because "she loves mud more than life itself."  According to him, the only danger was standing too close when she thrashed her tail while defecating to spread her scent around.  Local officials worried about creating an international incident if the hippo swam across Shkoder Lake into Albania.  Knowing what I do about Albanians and their relationship with animals, I know the real potential for a diplomatic brouhaha lies in the very real possibility of the Montenegrins being offered a steaming dish of hippo kukurec. 
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