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Graham's Goat
It’s not every day that you see a man walking down a street with a goat slung over his shoulder... but then it’s not every day that you go to Albania. Twelve of us from the church spent a week in June in the country’s capital city, Tirana, where we quickly learned that every man, woman and child is making the most of any opportunity they’re given to earn a few coins. That could mean loading a few chickens in the back of a car and driving them -- live -- to the market; standing on a street corner trying to offload a box full of cigarette lighters; or simply sitting on the pavement with a set of scales, offering to weigh passers-by for a few Lek. We were visiting Mat Wilson and his wife Hannah, who along with their small children Ben and Katie, left their Cambridgeshire home to help run the Way of Hope Baptist Church in Tirana. Mat says the people of Albania feel they are living in the forgotten country of Europe. He’s right. Before our visit we knew precious little about the place, other than the fact that the England football team had been there a few years ago and scraped a World Cup qualifying victory -- oh yes, and Norman Wisdom’s supposed to be pretty big over there. OK, so strictly speaking we knew a bit more -- we’d done a little homework about Albania’s history and had read about its isolation from Europe for many years. We knew that it will take years to revive an economy which left Communism behind but which hadn’t yet got the hang of Capitalism, so we weren’t surprised by the sight of crumbling roads and pavements, deadly open manholes waiting to swallow up unsuspecting pedestrians and the sight of many people out and about during working hours, signifying that not a huge percentage of the population had meaningful jobs to go to. But what did strike us was the warmth, the dignity, the generosity and the sheer joy which the Albanian people showed in welcoming 12 blokes from Bluntisham who’d gone there to play football in a bid to help Mat develop his church’s sporting links with the community. As well as the people, the city also makes an impression on you. By day, it resounds to the never-ending sound of car horns as drivers weave their way patiently, noisily, but not aggressively, through haphazard lines of traffic. We learned that everyone was still riding around on bikes as little as 10 years ago, so people tend to drive in the same way as they would ride a bike, but amidst the chaos we didn’t see any evidence of road rage. And that calm attitude continues into the night. Where Saturday in St Ives or Huntingdon might echo to the sound of drink-fuelled revelry and excessively aggressive behaviour, there’s a relaxed, family atmosphere to Tirana, even late into the night. You find people sharing a bottle of the local Tirana beer outside the various bars, and even when the evening ends with a few shots of a more potent throat warmer -- Raaki -- the behaviour still strikes you as exemplery. Yes, people have a tough life there. Yes, we heard of people going to desperate extremes to find ways of earning money, but you get the feeling that everyone wants to pull through for each other and they’re just waiting for the rest of us to welcome them into the wider European community. I, for one, will be back for a visit, to renew acquaintances and to hopefully enjoy more football and friendship with Mat, Hannah, and the people of Tirana. I might just give the man with the goat a wider berth next time, though. |
