Happy New Year

Well, it's New Year's Eve. We are safely back in Albania.
I have discovered a few things I didn't know,namely:
1.With clear rds you can drive from Albania to Bosnia in only 9 ½ hrs, not 16!
2.Bosnia is ¾ covered by forest, yes 3/4! And is beautiful with mountains, river canyons & pretty valleys.
3.That on a 4 wheel drive all the tires need to be the same or the circumference will be different (2Pi r etc) & so cause big problems for the 4WD mechanism. Guess what? Ours were all different....More noises, more repairs needed.
4.That in the space of a week, we could spend a third of the car's value on getting it fixed.
5.My husband will run over & kill a puppy rather than swerve on icy, snowy rds to avoid it & cause an accident. I know this is what you should do, I am just glad he was driving as I think I would instinctively have swerved. Fortunately our dog-besotted children were both asleep when this happened.
6.That the effects of a holiday can be erased so fast with the appearance of pot holed roads, mad drivers, death wish drivers, daily power cuts & a house hovering overnight at 5 degrees & 10 degrees during the day.

Both Mr Ngo & my hearts sank as we crossed border. I had been to a 'cross cultural' talk the year I arrived, which talked about when you notice your 'grace levels' going down & you get unreasonably angry & irritated by every little thing, that you normally cope with. e.g the traffic, the bureaucracy, the litter, the bad driving, the noise & pollution, corruption etc. yes I have been like this for about 2 months! But the speaker said that this is caused by the stress of living in another culture particularly if it is very different or difficult (e.g developing etc) This happens about every 2-3 months & you need to get out to recharge your batteries.

Normally this rejuvenates you to enter the fray once more. This time however, despite not having had a brilliant holiday, so it wasn't 'end of holiday blues', we still felt depressed! Mr Ngo said he thinks he's getting to the stage with Albania that he got to with Sri Lanka. Fed up with everything & wearied by the never ending fight against bureaucracy, unfair taxes, & hurdles the Albanian government put in International organisations' way to make it so hard for them to grow & make a success of his microfinance organisation. This for a perfectionist adds to his stress at being thwarted constantly from doing well.
It just so happens that we are going to try & return to the UK next year. Our eldest will be 11 in May, so it is a good time to repatriate in time for secondary school. However, for my husband who works in international development, this could be easier said than done! So far Mr Ngo has changed career 4 times, from Army, to British Airways, to children's charity to overseas development in his 21 year working life. All very successfully I might add. He reassures me that if he cannot get a development job back in the UK, he will opt for career number 5 & retrain as a teacher & send me out to work full time for a year whilst he qualifies!

I have come to the conclusion, that he lives by Mark Twain's quote “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
He's much more of a “throw off the bowlines” man & I am a “safe harbour” kind of gal. I never used to be, but now I am. I am tired & I want to go home. I hope 2011 is the year we manage to do so.
We are off to celebrate New Year with friends of 5 different nationalities. On such occasions it's nice to dress up. However in an Albanian winter when you know everyone else's house is as cold as yours, you opt for Practical not Party Frock. And of course when, anyway, you always get given 'shapka' (slippers) to put on, it rather defeats the fashionable effect of little black dress, tights & heels. So thermal vest, woolly tights, plus socks & at least 3 more layers it is.
Albanians have been 'warming up' with their fireworks night & day for the last few days. At midnight in Skenderbeg square, all hell breaks loose. People let off fireworks in the crowd, in the street, everywhere. It's utterly mad, chaotic, dangerous & very......Albanian!
We will be watching from the safety of friends' 7th floor baclony!

Happy New Year one & all!

The Sarajevan Samaritan. Our Christmas Tale.

My winter's tale of Balkan adventures seems to be becoming a regular fixture. For the 3^rd

year running we have had an adventurous ski holiday, on each occasion, the adventure being just the getting there!

This year's has to win the prize though. We set off at 6a.m to drive to Bosnia; through Albania, through Monte Negro & up into the mountains where Paddy Ashdown goers skiing. An 8 hour trip.

(Above, a digger removing an avalanche from our mountain road!)

We got to the capital of Monte Negro, Podgorica in 5 hours. This was where the snow started. Our speed halved from 80km to 40 kmh. It was falling thickly, the roads were covered & there were no snow ploughs in sight.

The conditions carried on getting worse & worse. Fog, sleet, snow. As we drove up the Tara canyon to the Bosnian border, through tunnels & a winter wonderland of thick icicles & snow laden pines, we came to 6 cars stopped on the road. Ahead the road just ended, in a wall of snow & beyond it was a digger digging out the road which had a massive landslide of snow across it. It was about 20 feet high. The children wondered if the digger would unearth a car beneath this avalanche. It had obviously happened very recently. Fortunately no car was buried. This little event took an hour.

We also had to keep putting on & taking off the snow chains so as not to damage the tyres, as the road wavered between slushy covered tarmac & snow packed roads.

By 7p.m we were just getting to the turn off to climb into the mountains where we were advised the road was impassable (it was also dark & snowing heavily) So we had to take a long detour. By this point we had been going 13 hrs (had had 1 coffee stop but no lunch stop, to make the most of the light, & run out of rolls, tangerines & biscuits) & we were getting anxious about our 4 wheel drive which wouldn't disengage when we changed to 2 wheel drive. (We were later to learn another useful piece of mechanical advice; you just reverse to disengage it. That knowledge could have saved us 600Euros).......

At 8 p.m 14 hours after leaving Tirana, we heard the noise we were dreading, as something ominous made a sudden, horrible grinding clanking sound & we ground to a halt On the side of a mountain road, in the dark, snowing lightly, very few cars passing, -15 degrees & 8 o clock at night..

Now what, we thought? No international breakdown recovery, in a foreign country, where we didn't speak the language.... We did the only thing we could do; phoned the guy we were renting our ski chalet from. And said 'Help!' We waited in the car with no heating in -15 for 2 hrs.

Zlatko turned out to be our guardian angel. We couldn't have asked for better help if we had constructed a detailed job description. He spoke fluent English, was calm, efficient, & so very, very kind. He called a breakdown recovery service, (turns out they didn't want to help because, understandably, we didn't have an account with them, but in true Balkan style, he knew the general manager so 'persuaded' them to help). He kept calling us back with updates, then drove from the ski resort to where we were (a 50 min drive) to collect me & the children to take us to the ski resort, whilst Mr Ngo waited with our car & went with the breakdown vehicle into Sarajevo (a 1.5 hr journey).

We arrived at the resort at 11.45p.m. We were greeted by Zlako's parents & given apple cinnamon baklava & warmed up by the roaring wood burner in the cosy wooden chalet. Meanwhile Zlatko drove back into Sarajevo, another 50 minute drive, met Mr Ngo at the garage & took him back to his own apartment where he put him up for the night. The following morning he drove both of them back to the ski resort.

Today, Christmas Eve, his parents drove us from the ski resort into Sarajevo to collect our mended car, which had had to be moved to another garage which could find & fit a spare 4x4 part. Zlatko paid the bill at the first garage. He has been phoning the garage & checking progress.

It turned out the car wasn't ready. So we went ice skating at the rink where Torvil & Dean won gold in the 1984 winter Olympics & then Zlatko who insisted on meeting us, & this is where it gets really embarrassing, drove us to to the garage so we could collect our suitcase of Christmas presents left in the car. Our old Isuzu was jacked up 6 feet in the air on a ramp, with another car under it in a tiny crowded garage, so after the mechanic had given Mr Ngo a guided tour of the underside of our vehicle pointing out all the (many) other things wrong with it, or badly mended in Albania, they had to then get a ladder out & Zlatko & the mechanic held it whilst Mr Ngo climbed up it, opened the back door & climbed in to retrieve the suitcase & our Dwarf Christmas Tree, emerging seconds later wobbling atop the ladder & waving the midget pine triumphantly aloft. This was just too much, I couldn't watch, I felt so awful about the whole debacle. The kids reasoned with me:

“Mum, it's not at all embarrassing, we're children & everyone knows children like presents. It IS Christmas Day tomorrow after all.”

Zlatko then drove us back to his apartment where his parents took us back to the ski resort. No amount of arguing, protesting, offering remuneration for petrol etc. prevailed. They said they felt bad for us that the snow had all melted on day 3 & wanted to help give us a good holiday! However they did finally accept our liquid & edible presents offered under the guise of “Christmas.”

I am sure hospitality is as much a part of Bosnian culture as it is in Albania & frankly it puts the West to shame. How many of us would put ourselves out this much for people who were strangers & foreigners merely renting an apartment from us? And refuse to accept any remuneration, petrol money & wave aside our profuse thanks as if it were nothing. It was a truly humbling experience.

This man was a civilian defender in Sarajevo during the 92-95 siege of Sarajevo. He was on the front-line. With generosity of spirit & character like his, I am not surprised the indomitable Sarajevans held out during the longest siege in modern history with no water, gas or electricity for 3 ½ years. They coped & persevered in horrific & dangerous conditions, being targeted by Serbian snipers in the hills as they went about their daily lives. They helped each other & kept going against the odds. A great fictional account, but based on real life stories is 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Stephen Galloway, which gives a graphic example of what daily life was like.

I am sure the war taught the Sarajevans something we have learned living in a foreign culture where infrastructure is not always established & where it is not always possible to be self sufficient. That is, that we are interdependent. We need each other & we should do all we can to help our fellow neighbour. And it is something we feel privileged to have experienced on many an occasion.

The original parable of the Good Samaritan was Jesus' response to the question 'Who is my neighbour?' when Jesus said we should “Love our neighbour.” The answer given showed that our neighbour is not the person who lives next door, or someone local or someone who can repay us or simply our friends. In the story the man who actually helped the injured man was a foreigner, an alien, a hated person amongst Jews, a man of different, or no religion, a merchant, who knew the value of time & money & the 'cost' of helping, but he extended the hand of practical friendship & did all he could for the man.

In much the same way as our Sarajevan Samaritan did for us.

British "Mustn't Grumble day".

Although we live in Albania, the 90 strong little school my children go to is 50% American. So it goes without saying Thanksgiving is given as a holiday. The school has a British director & follows the British National Curriculum (Don't ask, I've no idea why) but Thanksgiving is non negotiable. And really, what's not to like? A 4 day holiday towards the end of a long 16 week term. Hooray, or to get into the American spirit, yay!

However us Brits, & indeed the Europeans here, feel slightly 'left out'. And of course being all about 'Thanksgiving', gratitude &, Heaven forbid, expressing it, it sits slightly uneasily with the British psyche. But we all felt we wanted to mark it in some way as the Americans were all having their Thanksgiving dinners somewhere, after playing in the annual Turkey Bowl, the 'friendly' American Football match, which, though Mr Ingo & our son play, they were not invited to join in with. So we felt we needed to mark it in some way for ourselves.

So I suggested to the assembled Brits & honorary Brits that we have a “Mustn't Grumble Day”. It seemed suitably, well British. It is now an unofficial Tirana Thanksgiving European Tradition. Last year it took us to the beach. This year, as it has suddenly turned wet, to a shopping mall & play area. We only have bowling & very expensive ice skating left & we have exhausted Tirana's child friendly offerings. I should add that the British contingent in Tirana is tiny, tiny, which perhaps explains why we felt the need to assert our own tradition.

We spent the day together & had fun, reverting to British type very quickly. We all escaped for a coffee whilst the children played. The coffee took ages to come. This was of course noted & remarked upon, but still, we thought, mustn't grumble, so we patiently waited, & of course didn't mention a thing to the waiter & still left our tip, even if slightly underwhelmed by the non existent service.

It was a lovely relaxing, hilariously familiar day. We talked about the remembrance service, tutted about the Albanian president holding up proceedings by arriving late 'just because he could', reminisced about the Defence attache's splendid spurs, talked about what a jolly affair the Guy Fawkes night had been, if unBritishly mild at 20' . We even discussed the Royal wedding. I am sure none of these subjects would have crossed my lips living in the UK & out for coffee with friends. But it was British Mustn't Grumble Day so we had to fly the flag.

The rest of my Thanksgiving w/e? Well: I took the kids out for Breakfast Pancakes (they are willing participants in American culture), walked 10 mins up to the clinic to drop off yet another of my daughter's urine samples, then we walked back, all in the pouring rain, looking in vain for a bus to take us home. There are no bus stops signs here, youjust guess or watch people. Our car was being MOT-ed & we are not very used to taking buses. It took us an hour to walk home, during which time ONE of our buses passed us. Right at the entrance to the road our house is in. One bus in an hour. Grrrrrrr.

Our car failed its MOT. Still only on two minor things: steering & suspension......

We had a power cut from Saturday night (during dinner with friends), through to Sun afternoon, 3 hrs of power then another all nighter power outtage.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr Ingo (aka my husband), was changing the light bulbs in the sitting room, & our daughter was handing him the screw driver. The glass light cover fell (because Mr Ingo discovered it didn't have all 4 screws in place) & sliced our daughter's cheek as it bounced onto the sofa. Said light cover was 14 inches square & weighed about 2 pounds.

At times like this I feel particularly vulnerable living somewhere with as limited medical resources as Albania. The good thing is you can call the (lovely) American Dr any time & the entire round trip takes less than an hr. No long queues in A&E. The down side is, you just have a general practitioner sewing up the gash with 3 stitches & you just hope he paid attention in medical seamstress classes. If not, our daughter, as my husband joked with her, will forever after be able to go to fancy dress parties as a pirate, with a ready made & genuine scar rakishly slashed across her cheek. I thought our 6 y-o took this in remarkably good spirits, considering she would never entertain going as a pirate anyway, quite apart from being told she would be scarred for life (which wouldn't go very well with her princess outfit she said). Fortunately our daughter is used to her dad's style of humour & just rolled her eyes at him. Equally fortunately, being so young I am sure it will heal very well.

And when you see how close to her eye it cut, you really do think, I mustn't grumble, this could have been a whole lot worse.

And for that we are very thankful....

Dear So and So

Last week I had one of those situations where you write a letter & then burn it. Or rather the cyber equivalent, you write an email & then press delete.

It was a situation that really upset & hurt me & left both my husband & I perplexed & dumbfounded. We just felt shabbily treated. And it was over such a small thing. The trouble with situations like this is you can't say anything & so it doesn't get dealt with, so it forever changes your perception of that relationship.

So anyway it got me thinking about those Dear So & So letters Kat introduced over at her blog 3bedroom bungalow. And I decided I would write a few of these to express my frustrations at other (but less personal) circumstances we live in & ones which are responsible for my comparative silence over this Autumn.

Dear Landlord,

Please, please could you take our advice, honed in the fires of bitter experience (to date 7 electrical items destroyed by power surges), & buy yourself a surge protector for the modem we share?

To lose one modem, I grant, is unfortunate, to lose two is careless, but to lose 3 to power surges, in the space of a few months & do you not see a teensy bit of a pattern emerging?

Oh & while we are on the subject, could you also get an electrician to mend our (& your) electrical safety cut-out circuit, so that a.) we are safe & b.) when all these power cuts happen we could actually use the generator which has sat idle for 4 months now tantalising us with its hefty, useless back-up bulk.

I know, I know, the damage was caused in our fault & we were cavalier, I admit, to plug things into sockets with such 'gay abandon', without any consideration of the consequences of doing such a thing, but it was a guest of ours who wanted to charge his mobile phone &, well, silly us, we said “Go right ahead. Use our electricity. Enjoy!”

Whilst I have your attention, do you think you could also fix our blind (broken since we moved in 3 yrs ago), our daughter's window, the oven (the fan has broken & is burning everything I cook), oh & when you light a fire in your sitting room 2 floors below, the smoke climbs up to the third floor & instead of carrying on up, it seeps out into our sitting room, filling it with smoke, to the point where you can't sit in there.

However, we have found a solution to this; we light the wood burner whenever you have a fire & all the smoke goes up the chimney. This is not an unpleasant solution, & I know how you like to find 'home made' solutions, but, as you can imagine, it rather limits my daily activities. I have not, to date, found a stoker to keep the home fires burning,whilst I go about my daily life.

Yours

Ever Patient Paradise.

Dear Internet Provider Number 1.

I know you are facing large hurdles in getting Albania 'online' but really, is stringing our internet cable across the street from our tree to a pole on the other side really the most sensible solution?

Because there is building work on both sides of us, there are a lot of concrete lorries, cranes etc. passing by. Twice now a lorry has driven through our internet wire severing it. Fortunately our landlord has a (rapidly dwindling) roll of insulating tape & he has made the pole higher but there is a limit to how high he can go.

I admit sometimes our internet problems have been down to the landlord's modem breaking, but you could come & help a bit sooner & better still not just shrug & say you don't know what the problem is. It's all very nice speaking to you every day on the phone, but I am not phoning for a chat, I mean, really I don't even speak to my husband on a daily basis on the phone. But if I did he would soon get the message that something needed attention, so why don't you?

2 ½ months is a long time to be without internet. I have unavoidably developed a '40 a day Balkan Passive Smoking' habit as a result of resorting to internet cafés. Please sort it out.

A Gradually Losing Patience Paradise.

Dear Internet Provider Number 2

How can we be 20 metres short of being able to be connected to your provider? Don't you want our business?

A Perplexed Paradise.

Dear Internet Provider Number 3.

Thank you, thank you for getting us online, though please refer to my letter to Internet Provider Number 1 to see that I really do not think this 'high wire' stuff is a good idea. I See you have installed a new wire.... from our ROOF terrace, 4 floors up, across our courtyard, over the road beyond the houses opposite to the apartment block one road over. I realise I know very little about these things but it does seem a tad...... precarious. Though I admit, I wish I had been here to see you set it up...

It's a shame with all the power cuts I am still not getting internet very regularly.

But thank you for your efforts which, as well as acrobatic, have been better than other providers.

Yours

An Increasingly Wearied Paradise.

Dear Electricity Board,

A small tip. Invest more money in infrastructure. Winters are wet, the country is covered in high mountains & large rivers. Hydro electric is the way to go. One of the few things Hoxha got right. But it needs upgrading badly, it can't cope with today's power needs.

I know things have improved a lot & I know it's a difficult job, though I have also heard your board is the most corrupt company in Albania, but we'll gloss over that for the moment.

Our electricity supply has actually got more erratic over the last 3 years. Could you possibly send someone to look at our antiquated little substation because every time it rains, I mean EVERY time it rains, our power goes off, & stays off. For a long time. And our generator doesn't work because our landlord has not fixed the fused circuit that connects the generator, which was fused when our friend plugged his mobile phone into one of our sockets. But I digress & it's hardly an electrifying tale (except perhaps for our friend who had a narrow escape..)

And so the flat is cold, gloomy, with no heating (except the smoking wood burner) & 2 gas rings for cooking. Oh & the electric gates don't work of course, so I have to park up the road & carry all the shopping & my school bag up the road, across our flooded sewagey courtyard & up 3 flights of stairs.

SO I would really appreciate it. Maybe it's something as simple as a hole in the roof ? Could you just take a peek?

Yours

A Powerless Paradise.

Dear God,

We have had a beautiful warm colourful Autumn this year, for which I am truly grateful. Thank you, it's been lovely.

I know Mediterranean climates have wet winters & actually I don't mind the rain too much (as long as I have a warm, well lit flat to be in....) I love the mountain-ricocheting thunderstorms too.

But the trouble is rain here means several things:

Power cuts – floods - sewage drains overflowing in our courtyard - lots of mud on the unmade up roads - & no internet often (even when there IS power). And traffic worse than usual & crazier than usual. I mean yesterday cars were driving on pavements to beat the queues....

So you see I was just wondering.... obviously I am not asking you to move mountains (though of course, I know you could.) or to shift the rain shadow, alter an entire climate, but how about sending just a little bit less? It seems we get a month's quota in a day. And then the same again the next day. It's like a Mediterranean Monsoon.

Alternatively perhaps, my son's suggestion, could you make it colder so it fell as snow?? (& then there'd be no school, & we could make use of the mountains by toboganning & maybe even 'crosscity' skiing instead of using the car.) But I'm not convinced because we'd still have power cuts from overload, so I'd still be cold, internet-less, light-less & have to get by on stove-top pasta

A Precipitation Averse Paradise.

Blood feud

“This belongs in a history text book, not an event occurring in the middle of Europe in 2010.”

So spoke the director of the Evangelical Alliance in Albania. We attended a rally on Saturday morning in the middle of Tirana, joining with 1000s from churches across Albania to protest the killing of a pastor in Shkodra. My husband worked with the pastor's sister in law. The pastor himself has left a wife, a 6 yr old & a 9 yr old. (Incidentally, the poster above says "No to blood feuds, yes to life.") The woman on the podium is the pastor's wife.

The killing was the result of a blood feud. (I'll tell you the story in a moment)

It was incredibly moving & yet incredibly surreal,because of what it was about. I've been teaching Romeo &Juliet this term & have got the students to research blood-feuds in Albania & compare it to 16^th century Verona. It really has brought the play to life as they are living in a context where “ancient grudge break(s) to new mutiny” & “civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Amazing, a 400 year old text, & it's still happening.

There isn't much history of protesting in Albania. I think it's the fear legacy of the communists probably. But the churches came out in force on Saturday morning to commemorate this brave man who died as a result of this anachronistic practice that still rages on in Albania.

In 2010. In a European country. One which is desperate to join the EU. It is scarcely credible.

Blood feuds were an ancient device (pre FIFTEENTH century) for resolving conflicts & bringing about 'justice'. It has been common in many cultures but rarely has it been so formally codified as it has in Albania in the Kanun (The Code) the code governed all aspects of life in the northern clans (marriage, property,taxes) & the 2 most important aspects were (& still are) Honour & Hospitality The Kanun also attempted to regulate revenge killings & reconcile feuds between rival clans.

If a man is killed by someone in a rival clan (even accidentally), then the family of the murdered man must preserve family honour by killing a member of the rival clan, preferably the murderer himself, but failing that any close male relative. It isn't rocket science to work out that surely that means eventually both clans will die out. But this went on for generations.

The Kanun method of ending blood-feud was 'besa' a truce brought about by negotiation; a marriage between families (Friar Lawrence's intention in Romeo & Juliet), a Meal of Blood truce, or the payment of a 'tribute' (that's cash not compliment) But it didn't always work & wasn't always permanent. And so the cycle would begin again involving the male members of society. This led to men locking themselves in a 'lock-in' tower for years sometimes, till a blood feud was resolved. Such as this one.

This is in Thethi, the only remaining one in Albania which is accessible to visitors. They wd climb up, pull the ladder up, climb up to the next floor & pull the ladder up again. With very little light & only slits for windows, it must have been a miserable existence. Because the women aren't vulnerable in a blood-feud, they would bring food to their men folk.

Communism suppressed blood-feuds pretty comprehensively for 45 years, (they were pretty good at suppression).However, they re-emerged in the 1990s & have become a serious & ongoing problem. The Code excludes women & children from revenge killing, but, whether because the Kanun code was maintained orally, (not written down until the 19th century), or whether it is just blood lust, is hard to say but the ancient Kanun customs have taken on insidious interpretations. Many young boys cannot go to school to leave their house (the Kanun says you are safe in your house but if you leave it you can be killed. Furthermore any male relative is now fair game, no matter how distant. In fact women & children have also been killed on occasion too.

The Director of the Evangelical Alliance who organised the rally, appeared on TV with four young Albanian boys who are “in blood”. Victims of a blood feud. They appeared on a talk show under police escort, wearing black hoods. One boy described how he had never left his house in 13 of his 14 years. This was his 2^nd time out. He has had no education. The government pay the family 5000 Lek 'compensation' There are currently about 1350 families still caught up in a blood-feud.

Shkodra is particularly badly affected by blood-feuds. It is 2 hours north of the capital. The system of 'besa' has broken down too. One well known activist, of the Reconciliation Missionaries group who had helped negotiate hundreds of reconcilaitions between families, was himself murdered in 2004. A revenge killing of different sort.

The pastor in Shkodra had an uncle who had murdered someone. He was very careful for about 4 years, but then said that he was a pastor & he needed to attend to his people & church & couldn't do his job in hiding, & shouldn't live in fear. He had actually been interviewed on camera about it all a few months before but at a conference, not on TV. He had said that if he was killed, then at least that would save the live of the 23 other male members of his family as the family have said they do not intend to continue revenge killings to retaliate. He was shot in broad daylight outside his church office in the middle of a busy street.

Oh & get this. The mother of the murdered man, which precipitated the feud, would say to her other son every day for 7 years as she put his meal in front of him.

“How can you sit there & eat when your brother's death goes unavenged?”

It really is like something out of Shakespeare isn't it? It was Lady Capulet in her feud who called for Romeo's death “I beg for justice...Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.”

The man was caught (& will be out of prison in 10 years if he's good). Albanians have told me that the sense of honour is so strong that people don't mind being caught, in fact they are proud of what they have done for the family honour.

Of course many Albanians are appalled by this practice too & are desperate for their country to move into the 21^st century, but so much here thwarts that goal. The government need to take it seriously of course & clamp down. But how do you begin to change attitudes? Suppression clearly didn't work, you have to change hearts.

Well, that's what Pastor Proj's life was about. He preached reconciliation & forgiveness. And love. He is a modern martyr & his death has certainly had a big impact. I hope it is not in vain.

An Italian Foray

Sorry for a distinct lack of transmission recently. 2 reasons: the boring one is what seems to be our annual Autumn internet blackout, lasting 3 wks so far. The 2^nd & much nicer reason is we have just had 'Fall Break' & been to Italy. One of the constant wonders (to someone from an island) is the serendipity of living with 4 countries on one's border, (incidentally do you know which 4 they are?) & Italy just across the water, which is, together with Greece, in fact the most visited of the 'spitting distance' destinations, (probably because it its the most developed).

Hoards of car ferries plough back & forth across the Adriatic sea leaving at 11p.m & arriving around 8a.m the next morning. They are all manned by Philippinos who work them 7 nights a week, floating (literally) stateless & living a life between countries & having an abode in none. They cram the cars & huge numbers of lorries in so tightly that when we came to return to our car, we had to weave back & forth in a metallic maze until we found a way to squeeze through the gaps between cars, only to reach a point too tight & so we had to double back & start again.

We were going to spend a week on the 'spur' of the heel of Italy's boot. A place called the Gargano promontory – limestone cliffs, beech forests, escarpments, wild & rocky beaches one side & sheltered powdery beaches the other. And of course endless white washed medieval towns with cobbled streets & bleached churches on rocky outcrops.

The south is becoming very fashionable, but it is still cheaper, slower paced, poorer, with strong traditions & family ties & much friendlier. In fact, more like Albania than Northern Italy, we felt. And the traffic? Not mad at all, very civilised in fact, but then I am coming from Albania.

We stopped off at a co-operative in Bitonto to buy some of the area's famous olive oil, & have breakfast. Much like Albania, many o f the cafés & bar s only serve drinks, so we went into a little unassuming shop with the ubiquitous fly-screen tassles. I remember these from my childhood (IN Britain. Perhaps there were more flies 30 yr sago.......?) They are on every shop & apartment in this s area of Italy. This little shop sported a huge variety, for its size, of prosciutto crudo & hard gran padano style cheeses, so the shop assistant kindly made us rolls stuffed with parma ham & some salty cheese which we devoured sitting under this window.

We had lunch in this farm restaurant which was full of 3-generation-families enjoying lunch together, & consisted of whatever they had cooked that day, on this occasion, at least 10 mini courses of olives, antipasti, tiny soup portions, pasta etc., ending with

nuts, mini desserts & espressos. It took about 3 hrs. Fortunately our daughter

fell asleep, & our son had 'The Young James Bond' for company.

Then we stayed overnight in an old monastery in Trani where we breakfasted in a citrus tree-ed

courtyard. Our 10 y-o took this pot(below), experimenting with Mr Ingo's cast off camera. We were even served olive & sun-dried tomato focaccio bread. Salty, doughy & warm. You can get used to anything for breakfast in this kind of environment.

I must admit, loving cooking as I do, I was very excited at the prospect of eating genuine Italian food (as opposed to an Albanian version of it) & going to their food markets. We saw fishermen selling their catch from the night before & in Vieste men selling mushrooms in baskets.

Even the supermarkets sold huge brown multi floreted dark brown mushrooms which had more in comm

on it seemed, with alien life forms than those anaemic white things you get in blue plastic cellophane-wrapped tubs in the UK.

We spent our days on the beach surfing (the children in wetsuits), me doing life guard duty (spent too long in warm climes to cope with cold water anymore) & MrIngo surfing with no wetsuit, we also mountain biked in the national park & played beach cricket: as well , of course, as sampling the local red wine, cappuccinos & gelati & roaming round the little medieval towns' old quarters. On one occasion we stumbled upon a carabinieri Fiat Cinquacento in one of these impossibly narrow, hilly cobbled streets that locals drive around with such aplomb & alarming speed. The 2 policemen were escorting a young man, in hand cuffs from his home, pursued by his 'mama' clutching her cheeks & wailing dramatically. And we hadn't even stumbled upon a film set.

The only down side was our car breaking down but even that meant we got a new starter motor & a check up in a reputable garage with a mechanic who knew what he was doing & didn't rip us off. And the owner of our self catering apartment even offered us his car to use that evening should we have wished to go out somewhere.

Next time we'd like to go down to the heel & also in Basilicata, visit Matera, with its ancient cave dwellings inhabited since the Palaeolithic Age & the Mediterraneean's most extensive troglodyte complex, now , of course turned into hotels & houses, but still awe inspiring. A UNSESCO world Heritage Site. Mel Gibson's Passion Of the Christ was filmed here. This is definitely one of the perks of living abroad, the accessibility of travel options.

A welcome break, I've finally kicked off my chest infection & it's still warm back in Albania. And I have a large stash of imported olive oil, red wine & other food goodies to see me through the winter.

A Wee Celebration.

My daughter is 6 years & 5months. She has worn nappies for 6 yrs & 5 months. Until September 20^th 2010. On that day we went cold turkey. Complete withdrawal from nappies.

A friend back in the UK told me what she had done. I decided to take her advice. She bought 2 mattress protectors, & made the bed up twice over so that in the night when her daughter wet the bed, she would just strip off the 1^st sheet & protector to reveal the next layer of sheet & protector. She said her daughter just decided to stop wearing nappies. It took 3 wks of 50% wet, 50% dry nights until she cracked it.

So I drew a deep breath & decided I would try it. After all, I could manage 3 wks couldn't I? My 6 y-o has never been dry at night. Aged 2 ½ she went about 7 days of dry nights, & I thought 'Great, we're nearly there'. She never did it again for 4 yrs. I can count on the fingers of (possibly) both hands the times she has had a dry night.

Her paediatrician in the UK has always said not to worry, some children just are late, no investigations till she's 7, don't 'lift her' at night, wait till she's ready. So I waited. And waited.

Of course I felt somehow it was a failure on my part. My parents (the Dr Spock generation) had us all dry, by day, at 18mths, with the 'catch whatever's passing through after a meal' school of thought. I don't know when we were dry at night but certainly we weren't late. Until I admitted it to someone & suddenly the stories came 'flooding' out, I had had no idea that statistically, in fact, it's very common.

My son was potty trained really quickly, & very annoyingly, by my husband. There was I, going by the book, doing star charts, soft rewards, lots of praise etc. but still we had very regular 'poo' accidents. So Mr INGO took it upon himself to ask a good friend of ours who had had 4 children what she would recommend. She said, without hesitation “Bribe him, with edible treats.” So he decided chocolate biscuits were the order of the day. Reader, it worked. Immediately, instantaneously & without a blip. Grrrrrr.

Our son also decided he wasn't wearing nappies at night & aged 3 was dry at night. I remember one night waking up rather startled to hear the sound of someone in the bathroom. But my husband was in bed next to me. We had no guests. Was it the Phantom Bathroom Burglar?

Nope, it was 3 y-o. He had got himself up, walked up the two little steps into the bathroom, done a stand up wee, in the dark- (gets that from his father), & retraced his steps, all without putting a light on, or calling for us. To coin a phrase I was 'gob-smacked'. Where did he learn to do that I wondered? Maybe that had been part of my husband's alternative potty training methods.....

So I assumed this was genetic. Early potty trainees. Hooray. Imagine my surprise when my daughter followed no such pattern. Chocolate biscuits? If only.

She had accidents every day at a nursery aged 2 ½, then managed to survive the 3 hours at nursery “pantus intactus” as it were, only to wee on the floor of our garage in Sri Lanka, as soon as we got out of the car at home. It was so perfectly timed, I found it hard to convince myself it wasn't deliberate. Potty training whilst living in Sri Lanka, at least, was easier climate wise. Tiled floors, hot weather, no clothes needed.

But on 20^th September, I decided I would just have to 'hit the wall' & run through the pain barrier of being a 44 yr old having to cope with broken nights. So I did. And we had a dry night. Then another, then another. From the day of removing her nappy, my daughter has been dry every night for 2 wks without fail. I am ecstatic & she is pretty pleased with herself too. Though I do find myself wondering if she was perfectly capable before but just couldn't be bothered....

And like her brother, she gets herself up in the night & takes herself off to the loo. Unlike her brother, the 1st night this happened, she just yelled for me from her bed telling me she needed the loo, so I escorted her, then got her a torch & told her she could go by herself & so she does now, most nights, wakes herself up & goes to the loo.

So it seems it's actually much more a mental thing than a physical thing. I am now kicking myself at the pounds I have wasted on nappies wondering whether she could have done this aged 5,4 or even 3.

But my daughter, in so many ways, is a law unto herself. She just lets me think I'm in charge, when really, she knows the truth & every now & then gives me a little clue to prove the point. Mum training the child....? Ha, you wish....