Dita e Verës

Gezuar Dita e Verës! Happy Spring Day, a festival celebrated in Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania welcoming Spring after a long, wet winter. For me Dita e Verës began helping my friend make bryek. Imagine making about fifty large crepes and then layering the crepes in a large, round pan. As you layer each crepe, you add a brushing of butter between each crepe and whatever filling you choose--leeks, onion, spinach, etc. and then the entire enormous concoction is baked to flaky, multi layered perfection.
While the bryek was bubbling in the oven, we put fresh flowers and potted plants all over the house, on the porch, and hung garlands of greens above the doors symbolizing the freshness and newness of Spring. Fine bracelets of red and white thread were braided into the traditional verore for all the girls to wear. Verore should be worn on the wrist from Dite E Verës until Nevruz--the Iranian and Zoroastrian holiday marking the New Year as well as the Vernal Equinox marking the first day of Spring. On Nevruz (March 22) women remove the verore and attach them to rose bushes until a bird comes to snatch the bracelet and grant the wearer's wish.
Very early in the morning, my friend Shqipe with her mane of straight blond hair approached each sleeping family member with scented Mimosa branches dipped in water. Like a little forest nymph, she misted each one of us with flower infused water. Then the children made packages for everyone containing a hard boiled egg, an apple, chocolate, and the traditional cookie for Dita e Verës the ballokume.
Meanwhile downtown Tirana exploded in activity as everyone put away their umbrellas to welcome Spring. Blessed with a sunny Dita E Veres, thousands of people cruised Tirana's boulevards listening to music, buying plants and flowers, and watching acrobatics sponsored by the embassies of Holland, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Many streets were closed to vehicular traffic and concerts filled the night with song until four o'clock in the morning. Many Albanians make bonfires on this night and tell stories. Dite E Veres is mostly celebrated in the city of Elbasan, but now it's a national holiday for all Albanians to bid farewell to winter and honor Spring. Gezuar!

Religion in Albania

Most Americans do not realize Albania is considered a Muslim country. Most Americans also couldn't explain the difference between Sunni, Shi'a, and Sufi sects of Islam. Most Americans still choose to fear Islam when they should remember Islamic extremism is to Islam what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity.
Today, Albania's 3,000,000 denizens break down into 70% Muslim, 20% Albanian Orthodox, and 10% Roman Catholic. Prior to World War II, there were also about 300 Jews who all survived because Enver Hoxha's repressive communist regime did not contain anti-Jewish measures and therefore Albanian Jews gained special protection from the extermination their European brethren faced. Hoxha also declared Albania officially atheist from 1967-1991, ordering most mosques and churches destroyed, imams and ministers executed and believers persecuted. Idiosyncratic religious teeter-tottering is the reason Albania seems such a deistic enigma today.
Following the rigidity of State imposed atheism, most Albanians today consider themselves agnostic, rather than adhering to strict Islamic and Catholic rites, yet all over the country are the most exquisite monasteries, ancient mosques such as the Gjin Aleks in the village of Rusan near Delvina, depicted above. Albanians are grateful for the luxury of religious freedom and choice, just as we are in America. Due to their aberrant religious past, Albanians are some of the most tolerant people in the world. With this refreshing expression of religious pluralism, it is no accident Mother Theresa (Nene Tereze) hails from Albania.
Most Albanian Muslims are moderate Sunnis or Bektashi--part of the mystical tradition of Sufi Islam. All Albanian cities represent Christians and Muslims living side by side with a predominance of Catholics dwelling in the North in Shkoder and the South in Saranda with a more visible Muslim presence in the country's center.
During my trip to Saranda last week, in one day, I visited the remains of a Saranda synagogue, lit a candle at one of the whimsical Greek Orthodox churches, and spent three hours exploring the five hundred year old Gjin Aleks mosque, including a daring climb up the narrow, slippery minaret. I wish I lived closer to a mosque because I miss the regular, lulling musical calls to prayer I heard everyday when I lived in Morocco. I love wandering through Tirana's neighborhoods and passing a mosque and a church within a few hundred yards of one another.
I end this post with a quote from Nene Tereze and I dedicate it to my father for reasons he will understand the minute he steps off the plane in Tirana.
"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. "

The Dordolec: Albanian and American Superstitions

When I first came to Albania, one of the first cultural differences I noted was the strange practice of hanging garlic, horns, old stuffed animals or dolls from homes and business--especially new homes and businesses in various stages of construction. This odd Albanian practice is called dordolec, pronounced door-da-letz which literally translates as scarecrow or doll in English. According to Kristin Peterson-Bidoshi, in the American Journal of Folklore, the recent development of a highly stratified class system and the introduction of individual property ownership helped to increase the dependence of Albanians on the dordolec for protection of their newfound wealth. Sound ridiculous?
When was the last time you knocked on wood? Refused to walk under a ladder? Didn't step on a crack? Held your breath as you passed a cemetery? Crossed your fingers? Got anxious on Friday the thirteenth? Thought about seven years of bad luck after breaking a mirror? Carried a rabbit's foot? Threw salt over your left shoulder? Declined to open your umbrella inside the house?
Every country, even America, contains fabulous and bizarre rituals and talismans to ward off bad luck or the evil eye. The French call it le mauvais oeil; the Italians call it malocchio; the Spanish call it malojo; it is ayin harsha in Arabic and ayin horeh in Hebrew; it is Сглаз in Russian and 邪眼 in Chinese, and onde øje in Danish.
Now I can't stop seeing dordolec; it is ubiquitous and endearing. I am considering which dordolec to choose to suspend from my terrace of the Luminous Lakeside Sanctuary: the russet ram's horns affixed to the entryway with a necklace of garlic around it, the cheesy red Valentine's day teddy bear holding a heart that says be mine swinging from a gas station's tall sign advertising gas prices, and the plastic baby doll sporting a wispy pink bubble dress swaying from side to side from the grey concrete roof of the half finished home.

Mbajeni Shqiperine te Paster

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out! Remember Shel Silverstein's 1974 poem all American kids grew up with? Well when Americans take the garbage out, where do the 254 million tons of annually produced waste go? If you are an American reading this post, you are responsible for producing an average of 4.6 pounds of garbage every day. Americans are experts at using landfill to keep our trash out of sight and out of mind.
In Albania there is almost no organized solid waste management, no properly managed dumpsites or incinerators, waste reduction targets, or waste monitoring programs. For the past four months, I ruminate on the notion of garbage--what we produce and where it goes. As a recycling Californian, it breaks my heart to have to throw away plastic water bottles and glass products. As a citizen of the world, my stomach lurches every time I watch an Albanian litter.
I spent last week in Saranda, Albania's riviera along the Ionian and Adriatic coasts, in some of the most breathtaking mountain and ocean scenery I have ever seen. The physical attractiveness was always interrupted by unsightly pink and blue plastic bags, water bottles, and quotidian product packaging. But then I began to wonder. Maybe the Albanians are as immune to the garbage as Americans are to homeless people.
The first step to living a more green lifestlye is to be conscious of the problem. Engaging in small acts do create ripple effects and maybe leadership by example. Everytime I head to the vegetable market, I bring my bright red and white shopping bag from my favorite U.S. store, Lululemon Athletica. Inside the bag, I keep previous blue plastic bags and reuse them. Usually, I must repeat to Albanian vegetable sellers two or three times une nuk kam nevoje per qese, I don't need a bag. Perhaps it's futile. I am only one person in this country of three million who emerged from its post communist era in the early 1990s one of the poorest countries in Europe. While all Albanians are educated in schools, not to litter, I see them littering everyday. How do you get people to care? Each one of us is responsible for the well being of our planet. If I was back in the U.S. and I witnessed someone littering, I probably wouldn't say anything either.
When I travel here, I focus on the positive because once Albania develops its tourism industry, it will be a sportsman's paradise--hiking, white water rafting, paragliding, fishing, mountain climbing and swimming. Saranda appears to be the flagship city since it is Albania's most popular tourist destination and the streets were much cleaner than Tirana. The two photos accompanying this post are extreme to demonstrate areas with high concentration of garbage. I feel obligated to juxtapose these negative images with beautiful ones since, after all, my glass is always half full. How do we get people to care?