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Albania |
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Albania was ill. A veil of irrationality and madness covered the country. When a human body is ill, a very complex automatic process is triggered to destroy the enemy. Is there a similar process in the case of human societies? How do they react when the texture, which keeps them together, is altered? Visit Albania and you’ll find a lot of facts to ponder about. *** I meet the Land O'Lakes team in Tirana at the Monday morning meeting. Then we start the training in accounting and accounting computer programs, with Gjergji and Migerta. Gjergji is engineer in electrotechnique, but this is very far from describing the real Gjergji. When we entered the conference room, where we had the training, I saw Gjergji take out of his pocket one of those pliers with multiple functions, to start fixing something at the lock of the door that didn’t close well. There is a problem in the office with plumbing, or electrical wiring, or changing a bulb, or connecting the current generator, or setting up the computer network? Gjergji is there to fix it. He speaks English and French. On his desk, on a shelf, there are his CDs that he listens when he works on the computer: Bach, Ceaikovski, Chopin. He has a deep understanding of different computer program. It was a very simple task for him, and also for me, to do the accounting training, enter the documents of a previous month, and enter all the documents of the current month. And he had a lot of them. If this had been his only task, we would have probably finished everything in one long day. Migerta is a veterinarian, who finished college two years ago. She never studied accounting, but she understood everything very quickly. In the same office with Gjergji is Merita, Ph.D., whose pleasure is constant learning. Their kindness toward me was overwhelming. Albania from inside the LOL office is certainly at the level of the most advanced states of the world.
*** Gjergji is leaving Albania soon to go to Belgium. In several months Migerta will go to Canada. Why? Because Albania from outside the LOL office shows a different picture. At the end of the LOL office street there is a metal plate where two month ago someone was killed. At the other end of the street someone else was killed several months ago. The second night of my stay, the usual sound of stray dogs barking and howling and of cock singing was interrupted by the sound of several bursts of machine gun. I asked the next day, was it really a machine gun? Yes, probably a guard just wanted to show anyone that he is on duty. Here no one would wonder if someone would get out in the balcony and start shooting in the air. It seems that the American Embassy threatened that they will not open an American consulate if the crime will not be stopped, and as a result seven big gangsters were arrested. Though, there is still a lot to be done. There isn’t a real danger for normal people; the killing is done only between rival gangs. The streets are always full and no one is afraid. Situation can change immediately if you want to start a business. Suppose you want to import grapes from Greece, a business that could easily make $6,000 daily profit. First you have to bribe the custom offices. The truck has to pass through many police checkpoints. Truck drivers have always 200 Lek banknotes ready to give to the policemen. This is done like a road tax, even if you haven’t done anything wrong you have to pay, otherwise you stay forever to wait for your papers, while your grapes rot in the back of the truck. The real danger starts only when you come with the grapes on the market, because on the market you discover some other competitors. What to do then? First you go to your competitor and threaten him. Or send someone from the Agricultural Department to stop the sales because of a million of reasons. If this doesn’t work, may be a grenade thrown into the warehouse, or a fire will do the trick. If nothing helps, kill the guy, may be this will help him to stay out of business. This way of solving problems certainly discourages many entrepreneurs to start their own business, if you do not have the guts to assume rather high risks, and life insurance doesn’t exist here. For the daring, business opportunities abound. In Durres, the main port of Albania, there is the group of boaters, owners of rubber boats, each equipped with two very powerful motors, capable of reaching a speed much higher than the Italian patrol boats. They have a very good business smuggling immigrants into Italy; they make $800 for each. When the local chief of police had the guts to confiscate some of the boats, the boaters arrested him, and with a gun at his temple, forced him to return their boats. The way the state is organized now reminds me very much of the little I know about Ireland or Scotland in the Middle Age: small clans of warriors, fighting with each other, each controlling one small part of the country. Some laws existed, but everyone applied the law based of self-interest or whims. In Albania there are several big groups, that make the law. If a policeman arrests one of the members of the groups, he will loose his job. Law has a very relative scope of application. And this starts with some basic laws, like traffic regulations. One way streets exist, signs exist, but who cares. I saw a police car coming the wrong way on a one way street. Burning the red light is not such a big deal. All this can happen with police present, but if you have the car of a “new-rich”, they will not even look at you. Even more striking is the complete freedom in constructions. I am sure that there are some rules, but again no one cares. The rhythm building of is shocking. Until 1991 it was completely forbidden to build a house on flat land, this had to be used for agriculture. After that, houses mushroomed everywhere, without any concern about land property. In the downtown area of Tirana houses were planted everywhere a patch of free land existed. Houses are so close to each other that you get almost a feeling of claustrophobia. A large park along a channel disappeared completely covered by new houses. From the University, from the top of the hill, one can look at the sea of newly built houses that form now the outskirts of Tirana. New houses are present all the way from Tirana to Durres. At Durres, on the beach, houses are thrown without any concern of destroying the beach. Anyhow, no one really cares about the nice beach; four wheel drive cars turned the beach into a racing ground to prove the macho talents of their drivers.
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The
building LOL rented for the office is newly build across an older one.
The distance between them is so narrow that a car can hardly pass. I
lived for one week at the third floor, the guest of Debbie, the country
director, and I watched every morning my neighbors across the street
doing their morning toilet, my intimacy with them was rather high. Every
evening they placed their shoes on the windowsill, probably as mosquito
repellent during the night.
The large
park along the canal in the heart of Tirana was conquered by houses, in
the frenzy of constructing every piece of land available. All
these houses didn't exist before, they non-legally replaced the park.