Random Notes From My Part of the World

It has been a while since I have written anything. I guess I just haven't really been thinking much lately either. Need to jumpstart my brain. Here goes.........................oohhh that was nice.

Anyway, my brain will have to run on a generator because they have started the winter power cuts here. They started this weekend when I was in Pogradec and the past two days here in Durres we have been without power for about 4 hours each morning. The state electric company said that there would not be cuts and then they revised that statement to say, "Well, we were wrong." Evidently there is a shortage this year throughout Europe, so Albania found out last minute that they won't be able to buy as much juice as they thought.

There is a new controversy here in Durres. A new public university just opened here in Durres this fall and the director has decided not to allow two Muslim students to attend class because of their "religious attire". One is a man with a beard and the other is a woman in full covering. Now the first thing you may say is, "Isn't Albania majority Islamic? Didn't it used to be part of the Ottoman Empire?" And I would answer, "Yes, but live here long enough and you learn to distrust rational thought." Evidently the director is intent on banning any religious attire. For the life of me, though, I wouldn't be able tell a Muslim beard from a beard on a guy who has an aversion to showering and shaving. The kicker is that the constitution here explicitly says that no discrimination can be made due to a person's faith.



We got news a couple weeks ago that the Federal government is looking to invest in a project in our area of Keneta to install water pipes. This would be a great step for the area because, as you can see from the picture, the current water system is not holding up too well.

Randomness Keeps Things Interesting

Here are some pictures I took yesterday of the Latter Day Saints church they are building in Keneta. What a surreal place! You walk through Keneta and everything looks the same and then all of sudden there is just this church with a nice parking lot, green grass, and a sprinkler system!? I don't really know why they have a parking lot. It would not be very easy to get to the church with a car.

And in association with the absolute randomness of this church, I thought I would provide another installment of actual random thoughts that went through my head yesterday.

1. Women in high-heeled shoes are really not as tall as they appear.
2. I think the number one rule in the produce selling business is "Do not eat your product."
3. I wonder why Albanians don't make bacon? There is certainly not a shortage of pigs.
4. I don't think I should be able to smell a person's perfume from 40 paces away.
5. For cutting hair, I think scissors work better than a knife.

Unfathomable

I hadn’t done it in a while, so I thought I should take a walk through Keneta today. Usually, most of my time is spent in the small section where our project is focused, so it is not often that I see the rest of the area. So, today I took a walk.

I walked down the gravel roads, and over the small wooden bridges straddling the open sewers. I was sprayed a couple of times by mud from the tires of passing cars and by water shooting from punctured pipes. I petted a dog and a couple of sheep. And I was overwhelmed, all over again, by the size of the situation.

Keneta is an 850-acre area with over 5,000 homes. (More houses than my hometown of Abilene, Kansas.) No sewer system. No potable water system. No proper electrical system. Just homes and buildings. With more being added every day. The Latter Day Saints have just built a big new church, and there is a 10-storey shoe factory in the first stages of development. And all without legal title to any of the land!

Sometimes I almost understand it. I understand the push and pull of migration and the rapid urbanization happening throughout the developing world. I understand parents’ desires for their kids to have access to better schools, and I understand the desire to find work and a better salary.

However, as an urban planner, I simply cannot understand how people expect to build a city first and then worry about infrastructure later. It simply goes against every rational, logical understand of city planning. And then they have the gall complain about the smell, mosquitoes, and lack of electricity and water! My compassion for the area’s residents certainly ebbs and flows.

Granted, the local government has done little, if anything, to address any of the area’s problems, but even if they had the plans and the will to make changes, the cost to retrofit the area with proper infrastructure is infeasible. It has been estimated that to fit our project area of 150 acres with a closed sewer system is 1.5 million euros.

I supposed I am rambling, but like I said before, it is all a bit overwhelming. Perhaps I shouldn’t take any more walks.

We're Off to See the Pope

I am not sure if it made the international news wires, but a Turkish Airlines flight from Tirana to Istanbul was hijacked last week. Long story made short, the flight was hijacked by one man who forced his way into the cockpit. He had no weapons, but claimed to have an accomplice in the cabin that had a bomb. Turns out that he was a Turkish army defector that had moved to Albania and been denied a visa to stay long term, so he was being deported. He was a converted Catholic, so he forced the pilots to fly to Italy in the hopes that he would be able to deliver a message asking the Pope to intervene so that he would not have to go back to Turkey and serve in a “Muslim” army. Here is a link, if you want a description of the whole story.

In retrospect, seeing as how now one was injured, the situation was actually quite amusing to watch on TV. After the plane had landed in Brindisi, one of the Albanian TV stations was able to get a connection to one of the captive passenger’s cell phones. Of course, the anchor, with a grave tone, asked the passenger if he was okay and to explain what had happened when the plane was hijacked. His response was that he didn’t even really know that the plane had been hijacked. For some unknown reason they were in Italy and he was more concerned about the fact that they had been sitting there a long time and the flight attendants hadn’t given them anything to eat or drink.

As is expected, the situation was branded as terrorism. This has unfortunately started the wonderful, two-party political fighting we experienced in America post 9/11. I had some deja vu hearing the Socialist Party demand to know what the ministry knew and when they did they know it. From what I have heard, however, the fault seems to be with the flight attendants. The man had no weapons or other objects, and he only was able to get into the cockpit because the flight attendants kept opening the door.

Yesterday, I found out that someone I know was actually on the flight, so I will be interested in hearing a firsthand account.