Merigoesaround

Today I lack ideals. Not ideas. IDEALS. Oh, how much admiration I have for idealist! Where can I buy some? Human Rights observance, Development Aid effectiveness, Good Governance...Can anybody teach me how to passionately and truly believe in all this? Sigh...

I belong to noisy, dusty, chaotic places. I belong to Tirana. Tirana si e dua. Yesterday I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt I got lost in a gigantic Safeway supermarket in Boston...so many types of chips, products, I started checking yoghurt brands and lost 30 minutes of study time. For those unaware, I am moving to Boston by the end of August. Oh orderly cities, how fastly I forgot about you. Here in Tirana the choice is much smaller, the pollution in the late hours of the day is as heavy as to make you feel being inside a bar or at home and now it is starting to get really, really warm. And I love all these adversities. Despite the fact that every single morning of my Albanian days I have been woken up by claxoning minivans. I also scream at non considerate car drivers, at drivers that block my street, the entrance to the bank, pimp-like drivers who go nowhere, just drive, windows open, listening to really loud trashy Albanian disco music and impregnating everything with a slummy O...

...the feel good reaction is much sweeter. Even if it is not exactly what you had in mind. I elaborate. When I learnt that I was coming to Tirana I started reading all kind of true and false stories posted in the internet. Today, after a year and a half here, I would say that most of what I read back then was false. This is a huge problem in Albania: its bad reputation and the lack of information about this country beyond its borders. Gangs, trafficking, drugs, blood feuds, bad infrastructure, corruption, underdevelopment, crime...you name it. I am not going to say that none of this is true...but there are few articles giving credit to positive economic/political developments. I just read a paper on Corruption and Organized Crime in Albania, from the IUE in Florence, written by an Italian that a)uses sources from 2002 and b)shows her ignorance on this country. Not to offend anybody, but as we Spaniards have many cliches on Latino America...Italians are extremely unfair with Albania. I ...

I haven't devoted any post to my visit to "Hugo L'Africain". I was in Benin recently. Apart from the terrific safari with a bunch of funny Quebecois, the culinary richness of Cotonou, the good times bodyboarding and watching how Hot Hugo practices surf and the colonial lifestyle of yobos (whites)...I was ashamed by the level of poverty in that corner of Africa. In my mind, I thought the documentaries I watched in those long boring Sunday afternoons of my Spanish adolescence selected the worst places in Africa, the most impoverished ones, portraying how appalling poverty and misery are. But hey, no...it was not a selection...it is pretty much like that all around. What makes me wonder..where is the money? where are the thousands of millions of donor's money? I think I have the answer to this question. And sometimes I wish I didn't. Picture of Benin's gas station in this post. Many more here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meritxell

My landlord wants something else than a formal owner-tenant relationship with me. Note: he is 55, married, not especially ugly but smells what my colleague Dritan and I have come to describe as “montagnard” or ‘comunistish’. I know when he is being at my place repairing something just for the smell I get pleasure from when opening my front door. Leather aroma with a touch of rotten wood. Seriously, I think he wants to exercise his extra-marital talents with me. The fact that my landlord is conspicuously hitting on me and another story that follows below have made me wonder about marital relations in Albania. Reportedly, 3 out of 4 Albanian women have suffered from some kind of domestic violence. Regardless the reliability of this data (data and Albania are not good friends), I have had the impression, since the beginning of my Albanian life, that the percentage must be quite high…It is also high in my own country. However, conditions in Iberia are different. Spanish ladies integration ...

In a good way... It is not that I lack stories. I lack time between one and the next. So many things happening. So many trips, new friends, changes at work. I thought that working for the international public administration I would never say "I am super busy", but, oh yes, I am. Forget about the sleepy civil servant, sometimes we really work!! It might be because I have few months to stay in bukur Shqiperie (nice Albania) and I want to squeeze every single day of it. I have seen the most beautiful rainbows ever, smell the sage and other herbs in Southern lost places, eat the best meat with the kindest and most afable service. I can't leave this place without visiting the Albanian region bordering Kosovo, check the pictures! I promise I come back soon. Most probably tomorrow.