A Love Letter

This will be a love letter. I am a teenager again. Albania has stolen my heart.

It started last year, my last afternoon in the country, as I strolled through streets of Tirane made still by the double whammy of August-vacation and siesta-hour. I was alone, passing time before an evening plane to London, thinking about the two weeks that had just been. My head was spinning with impressions and possibilities. I had met a shipwreck, a research team, politicians, a language, a country. The bus ride from Sarande to Tirane that morning had reminded me of how much exploration and discovery still lay ahead. My head swirled. But as I strolled, the shaded quiet of the tree-rustled neighborhood of embassies and governmental buildings behind the statue of Skenderberg quieted me. I stepped through the open door of a shadowed courtyard that advertised a restaurant within, somewhat guiltily wakened the sleepy waiter, and enjoyed a snack of cheeses and beer. I remember planning a blog entry that would describe my thoughts about the shipwreck, but also that would share something of the beauty and promise I was beginning to feel about this land.

But I left for the airport and got caught up in schedules, deadlines, other commitments. The Albania project dissolved into a list of challenging logistics and I lost touch with the happy tingle of that afternoon. Even RPM’s generous invitation, this spring, to return elicited in me an anticipation for the project, but no leap of the heart.

You know from this blog that my first weeks here were a happy reunion with the RPM Supermen — Howard, still the nicest man you’ll ever meet; Todd, life of the party; George Robb, passionate visionary and mensch — and a whirlwind of good diving experiences. Fun and exciting, but not a love story.

It was during a drive to Tirane — shared with Dr. Anastasi, George, and Kela Qendro — that I fell in love. We drove half the country’s length along the coast road: plunging cliffs, narrow-streeted villages fringed by a dancing sea, sage-filled air, Kela and Adriani telling stories of the places we passed through. They told of families and histories, music and pirates, Caesar’s armies and Hoxha’s bunkers, of exile, return, hopes, cautions. The next day I returned to Sarande by bus and the inland road. Instead of the sea’s blue backdrop, hills of yellow wildflowers, their color intensified in the goldening light of the setting sun. I sat next to Leda, whom I met only just then. I learned that she runs the orphanage in Sarande, and makes the 6-7 hour bus trip (each way) every weekend to the capital in order to earn an advanced degree in administration. With her was one of her charges, a young boy who had gone to Tirane to get his first passport, and her colleague, an orphan who now assisted in running the institution. They invited me to sit with them during the half hour break in the bus trip, at a small eatery nestled into the bend of a cold-flowing creek. Dusk turned to dark. The people in our group became shadows that occasionally flashed teeth or eye-whites; firefly-embers of burning cigarettes traced the movements of their hands. The music was of running water, insects loud in the country night, an undercurrent of murmured conversations, and points of laughter.

May I please never bury the memory of that laughter! It was shared among people who also have in common the experiences of a troubled emergence from extreme hardship within this generation. They have recent and present reasons for pessimism and cynicism. And yet my experience and impression of Albanians is of earnest optimism — tempered by realism, yes, but nevertheless fundamentally positive. This is what I hear in my memory of that laughter among the travelers and in the many, many other instances of laughter shared with my Albanian colleagues and friends.

I took these same routes last year, made these same stops, learned the outlines of the same stories and histories. Why do I love now what I only saw then? The most important reason, I think, is the individual Albanians I am coming to know: Auron Tare, the unflinching problem-tackler; Dola with her sweet generosity, Kela with her uncompromising integrity and Naiada, all women of beauty and tremendous intelligence; the surprise (to me) of Dr. Adriani Anastasi’s humor and the poetic soul I now see in addition to the determined dedication I understood last year; and Dr. Ilirjan Gjiapali, a gentle man and dedicated archaeologist. If I am seeing Albania through rose-colored lenses, it is because these men and women have put them on my face.


Their contagious determination and can-do spirit has infected me. I have two years to figure out how to fund and run the excavation of the ship that sank 2300 years ago on its way to or from the harbor of Aeneas’ legend and Caesar and Augustus’ colonists. If you are reading this blog because you have an interest in participating in any aspect of this project (excavation, publication, Cultural Heritage Management, fund-raising) or thoughts about how to achieve this goal, please do contact me.