Trip to the Mountain

While we waited to learn when our language classes would start and still had a little flexibility in our schedule, we took a field trip day off of homeschool to accompany Mandi up to D*arshen for Kids' Club and to drop off clothing and food for some needy families.  I will let the images tell the story.

Down to 30 families and 14 school children this fall.

Better than a petting zoo, we got up close with a lot of livestock, including cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and donkeys.  The kids were thrilled.  The chicks might have been a little traumatized.

The views are breathtakingly beautiful, but life is so, so difficult.

Last Christmas Nathan recounted his visit to a particularly humble home.  It became one of our most-read posts of all time.  If you missed it, I would encourage you to click here.  You may also see the little boy below and how he has changed!

A rare view.  A glimpse of untainted nature.

No place for a baby!

Monday morning we got the call. The road to Darshen was open after being snowed in for more than a week. David and I scrapped our plans and headed to this Albanian mountain village where Planters has ministered for more than a decade. This trip was a little different though. Instead of hosting a children's program or visiting and assisting the village school, we were there to meet a family that had somehow fallen through the cracks of even this rural society. Mondi, our colleague and translator, 'found' them a few weeks prior and was shocked by their living conditions. He shared his burden for this family and we talked together of the best way to help.

The 25-mile drive took more than an hour and a half through the slushy road. We stopped in front Darshen's pool hall/post office/bar/convenience store and warmed ourselves by the wood stove while Mondi picked out the food staples we would bring on our home visit. Buying the staples in Darshen helps keep the money in the local community. With bags in tow we began our hike up the mountain towards the edge of town. 

The further we got from our van, the more deserted houses we found. Water is hard to come by in the summer, and many families have abandoned their homes in the country for the concrete jungle of the city of Tirana. Many of these homes will be purchased and destroyed for the centuries-old stones they are made from.

As we reached the top of the hill and the end of the road I saw a house that had remained unchanged for a century or more. Unchanged that is except for the satellite-style TV antenna attached to the corner.

It is customary and practical to take your shoes off at the door as you enter a house, but this was different. Boots were needed inside the kitchen/living room as we dodged mud puddles in the dirt floor from a leaking roof. The walls were black from the smoke of a fire with no recessed fireplace. There was a pot of boiling water on the ground heated on a hotplate fed by a bare wire attached to the 220 voltage provided by the state.



Wind blew in windows that held no glass. The 13-inch TV was on, and chickens constantly wandered into the room only to be shooed away by the lady of the house. But most troubling of all was a tightly bound baby strapped into a tiny wooden box with rough rocking legs. This was no place for a baby! 

He cried as we entered and his mother rocked him with her foot as she talked with us. He was the youngest of three. His sisters were in school. One of them as a baby had been burned badly by the fire and the other had pins in her leg from a bad break. This was no place for a baby!

I took a picture of he and his mother and showed it to them on the back of the camera. His eyes brightened and he cracked a smile. A few more pictures, and bigger smiles! He won my heart and troubled my mind. What does the future hold for this precious boy? How will he live to adulthood? This was no place for a baby!

In a village 1000 miles away, 2000 years earlier, another mother wrapped her baby tightly and placed him in a wooden box to keep him safe. She probably shooed away the chickens and tried to avoid a draft. The shepherds kept their shoes on. It was no place for a baby. 

As we left the little house on the hillside in Darshen our hostess quipped, "I don't think heaven comes this far, this feels more like hell." But heaven DID come to a place just like this! It was no place for a baby, but the perfect place for a savior!

----  Nathan

the town that time forgot

I'm going to let the photos do the talking for today's post (with post script added by me in the captions)...

Reni did not want to wake up this morning.  In fact, he fell asleep on the floor at 11AM and slept for 2.5 solid hours.  He was a joyful child the rest of the day without nary a cry until bedtime.  And yes, that is a fat lip.  Within a couple hours of arriving, he tripped and his mouth broke the fall, poor guy.  It looks much better this evening!

Gigi treated us to hot breakfast (though Ellie opted for cereal -- her favorite).  Just what we needed before taking a drive up into the mountains...

There is a village on the other side of Mt Dajti that holds a special place in my Dad's heart, and we were anxious for Nathan to have the chance to visit for the first time. We didn't know if weather would permit as last week snow covered the road, however halfway up, we encountered a minibus coming down who told us it was drive-able. Here we are at the highest point in the trip.  The wind was blowing about 50 mph.  It was COLD!

As you can see, the road was a mess, though thankfully they were muddy, not icey.  Nevertheless, we would have been in a bind had we met an oncoming car or bus.  Most of the road does not enjoy the benefit of guardrails (there are some perilous curves) and after a certain point there are no pull over places to let anyone pass.  More than once did we have to back up and try again to get through some of the worst patches (like that above).

Once we got through the worst parts, we were making our way back down again and the snow disappeared and we got our first glimpses of Darshen.

The yellow building is the village school.  In its heyday, it accomodated around 300 students.  Now there are fewer than 20.  A lack of water and harsh living conditions have depleted this centuries-old community down to 27 families.  Each year my parents return, there are fewer and fewer people.

As you can see, the windows on this side of the building are all broken out.  They have three teachers that use three classrooms and 1 office on the 2nd floor.

It was a pleasure to return to this home (I visited last in November 2009).  Klodi (left) and Megena (right) along with their mother and brother will be moving to Tirana come spring.  They've sold all their lifestock except for one donkey (we joked that we might need him to get back to Tirana ourselves!)

I met Keterina 2 years ago as well.  She is next door neighbors to the sisters above (no doubt she will sorely miss them).  We had an interesting discussion with Keterina about killing chickens.  If Ellie had grown up here, it sounds like she'd be doing this on a regular basis (just like I was mowing the grass or painting the outbuildings) by the time she was in her mid-teens!

Mom returns from taking out the sheep... LIFE here is constant work, just to survive.

Keterina and her mom...

Here we are visiting Vali.  She and her husband are super industrious, raising sheep, bees, ducks, chickens, cows and pigs.  If the world's economic systems all collapsed tomorrow, she'd be completely fine (and probably not even know).  Did I mention that the village was without power due to the high winds in the mountain?  Yet, Mandi had uninterrupted cell service.  Such a contrast.

Mandi demonstrates the knife sharpener

boiling water for washing dishes and corncobs for feeding the lifestock.

Sampling some homegrown honey...

Firearms grace each coat rack like umbrellas. Blackbirds are on the menu.

The building where we have Bible club

visiting the school.  Dad poses a question to the teacher during Grammar class.

Planters has tried to help the school over the years.  The woodstoves in the classrooms, the map, some of the desks and chairs, computers (for days when they have power!) and an overhead projector have been some of the contributions.  When asked today what they could really use, the teacher above requested a printer so they could make and distribute copies of their own tests.

Mathematics class

All of the village school children, age 10 and under.

During the previous evening the wind had blown out the center window pain making for a chilly corridor.

My dad asked the students what they would do for school once they completed 9th grade (the highest level offered in Darshen).  The students can either walk to the closest high school (in a village on the center green mountain, just below the snow -- a 2 hour walk one way, requiring them to bring a change of pants for walking through a river --  or pay $3 a day to catch a ride on a microbus to another distant school -- or go live with relatives).  A few of the boys will do this, but more than likely, the girls will not.

During the cold months, school lets out at noon.

Dad insisted on capturing video here so mom could sense the intensity of the wind.
We are laughing below because we can't believe Dad talked us into going out in it.  Again.

We came home to a lunch of Mom's homemade chili.  It was perfect after our morning of hiking, mud, snow, cold, and wind.  And I fell asleep on the couch warming by the woodstove.  Later Nathan would go to Vlash with Dad for the men's Bible study.  Those photos will have to be posted later.

Thanks for checking in!