As always on these trips, it’s been a busy week. We were traveling down around Fieri in southern Albania, and spent the week interviewing farmers who had received cows or pigs from Heifer International. From what I’ve seen the process of providing a cow – or sheep or goats – to a poor family is essentially like micro credit, only with animals, not money. That cow, say, reproduces each year. According to the Heifer structure, the family then passes on one calf to another family, and can then do as they with the offspring after that. Mean time, the animal produces milk, which they can consume, or sell, or make into cheese or yoghurt to sell. Over time, it works like compound interest. If your cow gives birth each spring, you double your investment every year, which makes a huge difference for a poor rural farmer.
Being on small farms all weeks reminds you, one, how easy life is for those of us in the West, where in the US for example less than 2% of the population still lives on farms. The rest of us buy or meat already packaged, drink milk from cows we never see, and flick a switch or push a button to cook a meal. Nothing is that quick or easy on a farm.
But what really strikes you when you spend time on farms here is just how close the families are – physically, because they often share the same house, or simply build new houses on the same property as the children grow and marry – but also just close knit. I spent a lot of time photographing children this week, and it strikes you just how easily entertained they are. They play with animals, carry each other around, spend 20 minutes just trying to knock ripe fruit from the tops of trees. They don’t miss all of the distractions we heap on our kids in the US. There are no Ipods or computer games or DVDs. They don’t plunk down in front of a screen for hours on end. I really think we’re on the wrong path as far as that goes in the US.
So, packing up and off to the airport in an hour or two. Have a week to get this trip all wrapped up, then a week to pack, and I’m off to Africa for a long stretch…
June 14th, 2009 | by David in Travel
Back in Albania, after ten years. Can’t believe I’m getting old enough o say things like that, but indeed it has been a decade since I was here last, in 1999. Then, a million refugees from the neighboring Kosovo province were on the move in Eastern Europe, many of them streaming across the borders into Albania to escape the violence tearing Kosovo apart at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic. How times have changed. I remember Albania distinctly then, largely because it was a formative experience for me, to witness a full scale CNN emergency first hand. It was my first real emergency experience, working then for Catholic Relief Services, and though I have been to many since, I have to say I was eager to come back and see how the Albania of today matched my memories of those weeks here a decade ago.
I only got in yesterday, so I don’t as yet have much to go on. But my first impressions are positive. A new airport has replaced the old, Communist era terminals I recalled. The gleaming new one has wireless internet and a sleek, open design the Communists never could have dreamed up. With the weather sunny an in the 80s, we walked to dinner last night at a nearby Italian restaurant. Everywhere, people were out strolling, the women in outfits both smaller and more sophisticated than I recall from my time here in 1999. For diner I had a nicely-prepared ostrich steak – one of the menu items I miss most from my Africa days – and two cold Tirana beers.
Albania is still in transition, and is currently facing an unemployment rate of 30%, according to the briefing we received by national staff at Heifer International this morning. Rural unemployment is even higher, and more than 12% of the country’s 3.5 million people live on less than $50 a month. But I get the feeling – first impressions at least – that Albania has come far in the last ten years.
June 14th, 2009 | by David in Travel | 1 Comment
I’m in a small courtyard just now, on a beautiful morning in east central Romania. Sighisoara isn’t not known for much, save as the birthplace of the Dracula – born here in 1431, says the placard on his house a hundred yards or so down the street. Not much time to write – busy busy trip - but my first to Romania. Beautiful country – lush and green, with the Old Europe charm of tile roofs and cottage-dotted hillsides. Been visiting small villages for Heifer International which as the name implies provides cows – goats, sheep, and other livestock as well – to poor families around the world. They are then able to multiply those animals and earn income from the milk produces – sort of like microcredit with bovines. But it works – pretty amazing, actually, how just a cow can change someones life in such areas of the world.
Here for a few more days, then off to Albania on Sunday. I’ve been there before, but not since 1999, so interested to get back and take another look. Sorry for so short a blog – just not too often you get to hang out in Dracula’s home village…
June 4th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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