Dear Reader,

Hello.  Today I traveled alone for the first time to the center of Tirana from Sauk.  This might not seem like much, but it was a victory for me.  I met with Alban by the clock-tower which is the last stop for my particular bus.  Alban is the minister in Fushe-Kruje who I will be working with, it is his church we are building there.  The most significant achievement for the day is how I am feeling now, at the end of it.  I feel more accustomed to the way things are here, and more like a part of the team.  This morning I passed Sprout off to Nella and Parek for the day.  They are two of the twelve students attending this school, they are engaged, and they are very cute.  They aren’t quite as cute as Sprout, but what kind of a bar is that to set for mere human beings.  You should have seen the excitement on both of their faces when I lifted the lid to Sprout’s makeshift domicile last night.  They took an immediate interest in the animal, showing her the greatest care.  Later, when Parek was feeding her, I saw that he was crying; the people here are so very sweet.

At the church today I could see a place for every member of the El Salvador Missions Team from all three years.  Here were Ed Harowitz, Chelsea Cook, Andy Sewrey, and Kaye Straight detailing paint around the trim.  Mary Bechen, and Mark Giles laughing with Kris Bates, Hannah McHugh, Joel Domingo and Laura Bolser while painting the walls and ceilings.  Tony Zimney, Stacey Carpenter, Conner and Ed Davilla, Brianne Owings, and Miranda Tyus chasing kids around the soccer field.  Me setting tile with the help of Chet Owings, my dad Joe, Jason Straight and Matt Weitkamp. Lara Severn-Schadee, April Mower (sorry if that’s changed my dear, no offense intended to you or John), and Donna Corallino are getting on amazingly well, mixing setting the grout in the floors.  It would be an honor to serve with this group in any country.

Fushe-Kruje means the “Field of Kruje,” which is the name of the city most famously known for being the point that the forces of Skenderbeu repelled the invading Turkish army on three different occasions.  Skenderbeu is called Skanderbeg in when talked about in English.  If you aren’t familiar with his story, its kind of a Moses meets William Wallace, throw in some George Washington overtones, and you’ve got a lasting image on which to build your people’s identity.  The symbol of Albania, the double eagle with the star of David flying over top, is emblazoned on the chest of Skanderbeg in every artistic rendering you will find.  The flag of Albania fly’s the eagles to this day.  My host Alban and a man called Vissy, who will be my right hand in the months to come, graciously showed me around Kruje today.  It is about a third of the size of Assisi, and under-traveled; two attributes which make it a real treat to visit.

I love you and I hope you are well.  Good night,

Joshua

My room at the school is located on the third floor of the building.  The school is located about a third of the way down a hill which, when it terminates, begins to climb immediately in the opposite direction at roughly the same angle.  I am about eye level with the basement floor of the buildings across the valley from me.  This valley fills with light on any morning without clouds, the sun coming up out of view to the left of my bedroom as I look out.  Looking across, I cannot make out a person’s hair color or sex from this distance, but I can see if people are walking on the sidewalk and cars as they travel along.  At 7AM I was surprised to see just how many people were already driving from here to there.  The whole world was taking its things to the places they need to be on a chill, damp morning in Sauk; the southernmost neighborhood in Tirana.

Yesterday I walked with two men from this building to Tirana’s center.  We were going to meet the associate pastor for the church in Fushe-Kruje.  We had missed a shuttle van from our neighborhood which would have connected us to the bus line in the middle of Albania’s capital city.  As we walked, sometimes on the sidewalks, sometimes in the road, we talked about our lives and where we are from.  Every minute or so we would line up in our walking to clear an avenue for an oncoming car.  The man leading the three of us would insist with every few meters that we were getting closer, and of course he was right.  And we are getting closer, each of us, with every step forward.  With every smile and nod to a passing stranger, with every mind flexing attempt to understand, with every tightening of hamstring and glute to bring us one step further along the path, we are getting closer.  Someone must have gotten there once, and told everyone how great it is, but that person most certainly missed out on the joy of the journey itself.  The human creature is a wandering animal, addicted to movement and change, or is that just who I am?

I am going to leave you now to find a morning meal and a doppio espresso.  Drinking this early in the morning always leads to more drinking, and I will probably be around six shots in before I begin my first real task of the morning, God willing.  I hope you are having your coffee now as you read this.  Take it slow, enjoy the sky.

The Albanian country-side around Sauk is a fertile place.  Green is worked into the landscape everywhere that man has not removed it with a bulldozer or covered it with a heap of trash or a building of some kind.  The animals here are as productive as the fields and the olive trees seem to be.  In this season of sun and rain, storm and storm-break, there are many newborn animals around.  I am adjusting least well to the culture here in the terms of how these animals are treated.  My good friend Hannah will be the first to explain to you that my views on animal rights.  And although they parallel the trend our culture has normalized over the last twenty years or so, I am an advocate for doing something to care for animals which will otherwise simply die of exposure.  Today our pastor from Fushe-Kruje, our church to the north, and I happened upon ten puppies.  They were a noisy group, still wet with the fresh moisture of birth.  We saw them near a pair of dumpsters at the junction of two roads en-route to a café from the place I am now living.  I asked the pastor, what we should do.  “Nothing,” he said.  “I think their mother will return for them, or she will not.”  And so we lingered for another minute or so, mostly because of my interest and not his.  About an hour later I walked past the same spot on my way home and the puppies were still crying out, living beacons to a mother who was still away.  No one in the neighborhood seemed to notice their wailing, not even the children.  And so I too continued on about my business.

I was not so prepared yesterday when I happened upon two abandoned kittens.  Having explored the road turning to the left out of my new driveway earlier in the day, I decided to find out what lay to the right.  Not twenty steps after making my turn I heard the noise; the unmistakable cry, cry, cry.  Cry, cry, cry, cry of a kitten.  Rooting around in the air, unable to see through eyes which had yet to open, was one white and gray baby.  Next to it was a deceased sibling.  I stood their briefly trying to ask myself “what would I do if I were a Christian in this situation?”  “I would do what I can for this creature,” came the obvious reply.  And so I took off my stocking cap and picked up the tiny cat with it, cradling the fragile package like a hard-shelled taco.  I now have a kitten living in the third drawer of my clothes dresser.  She is crying now if you must know; the same cry, cry, cry, cry as before.  So, now what?

I bought an eye-dropper at the farmacy in Tirana today.  I have named the youngling Sprout, as in bean-sprout, and have nested it within the confines of a small plastic box which is lined with my old Chicago Cubs hat and a pair of comfortable socks.  I read online that you have to massage a kitten’s privates in order to teach it how to pass waste; confirmed.  I am sure that it is crying out of hunger and loneliness.  You may as well know that it is not coincidental me having dreams throughout the night that a kitten was scratching me from beneath my night-shirt.  Monday I will have to bring my problem to the head of the school at which time it will become our problem, our little blessing: Sprout. 

The unnamed ridges of the mountain bowl around this place must remember a time when they were first pressed to the sky.  Their peaks then seeming magnificent even to them.  They were pit-less, and eternal; impervious to sun, rain, wind and the hooves of highland fauna.  From before time until a period without time still, the sky proved every morning their perfection to the lake below.  The ridges needn’t view their reflection to know of their beauty, but why not have a look?  Sea then joined the sky above, surrounding these god-shark teeth with mar.  The ocean came and seized them in countless tides.  These cliffs became home to prowling Leviathan, hunting innocent prey; first in darkness, then into light for supper, back into the shadow of the ridges under sea.  For another time-less season he mapped their every crevice with his scale-slicked fins making use of every trick of light, every pull of the moon.  Mountains were not made to dwell in the fowl of serpent brine.  

The sky reclaimed the ridges, drained now of sea and all but the memory of sea.  They are scarred and craggy.  Their pores are filled in with wind-driven soil and plants brought by bird droppings.  Looking down into the lake is painful now.  A land once without blemish is reminded of her many years in darkness, brining darkness, hiding the predator, giving him an avenue to the weak.  It is so difficult to see why God loves her.  And yet He does without hesitation, or stutter in His stride and speech.  He loves her and has willed that she become as rich as any storehouse for the hungry, wandering sparrow or the seed in need of shelter from the world.  Seeking life, protection, food, and wise instruction; to the humble unnamed ridges of the mountain bowl around this place they come.  Leviathan has no power in this place, for God has seized it once again, in love.

When I was 15 years old I broke my uncle’s finger.  My uncle has always been a joker and on one particular occasion we miscalculated our exchange of horseplay.  My uncle makes his living with his hands, he always has.  Try to imagine the raw nerves of a carpenter with a broken finger after a normal day’s work.  Try now to imagine the patience it must have taken to be around the person who put you in a sort of nagging pain for six months to a year without losing your temper.  That is what the men of Athens feel like collectively to me; raw, tired, worn out, out of patience, and angry.  It feels like the anger is kept behind the eyes, but it is there even if it isn’t expressed by the tongue.  I have been shown nothing but courtesy by the women of this place; which is what I find so confusing.  Athens is a place without cohesion; it lacks altogether rhythm or hum. 

Above the Syntagma tram stop at street level, it appears the city is on the cusp of riot.  There is a mix of armed men in uniform.  Security guards, police officers and some kind of special police are deployed all around the Parliament building.  Some of these young men have machine guns at the ready; ready for what?  It is tense here.  In the subway, and in the civic centers, there is great deal of mistrust from one man to another.  This is the first city I’ve visited so far where I have been approached in a scheme by swindlers, and it has happened three times; same scheme, same type of salesman, same pitch.  In truth the only conversations I’ve had which I did not initiate have been by people who want something from me.  I am looking forward to being in a place where courtesy and hospitality are less precious.  I think I’ll give Athens another try in ten years or so, after the people have had some time to heal.

The taxi driver and two of his buddies ferried me to the Tunisi airport in Carthage this morning at 3:30AM.  For those of you who are sticklers for being on time for international flights, Carthage is not for you.  I am in Athens now and have purchased my bus ticket for the twelve hour journey to Tirana, beginning at 7PM on the 18th.  Athens is the first city I’ve visited where I feel uneasy since leaving Seattle.  I think crime is craft here, more than in other places, and I feel like a mark.  Athens looks the most like a city in the States, but for me its aura is off somehow.  I am probably just tired and over thinking my situation.  I am happy to be around a day away from the final leg of phase one of this trip: delivery.  It will be good to see the crew in Albania again and to start working on building those friendships.  I miss you.

In the United States it is possible to do almost anything local without planning ahead.  You can see a show, catch a flight to anywhere, and get any kind of food within two hours of deciding to do so.  Not all places in the world are like that.

This morning I told the woman at the reception desk of Hotel Jalta that I would like to rent a car, so she went and got the man who speaks English.  I told him I wanted to rent a car and he said “for right now, this morning?”  And I said “yes.”  “We will have to visit the agency to find if they have a car,” he told me.  “I can take you on my motorbike.”  Within a minute we were off into town to find a rental car for me.  One of my earliest memories is of my father nearly strangling my mother’s cousin Gene for having almost taken me for a ride on his motorcycle when I was either three or four years old.  I don’t know how Gene has lived as long as he has.  That was the last time I had sat on a bike with the motor running.  I felt relaxed as my host adeptly navigated the Bizerte traffic with my two-hundred pound bulk added to his conveyance’s burden.  Although I’m not sure what law there is on the roads here in Tunisia, everyone seems to agree that the best way to drive is to combine the sayings of: “get in where you fit in,” with: “take what you can and give nothing back.”  Most certainly my blue-jeans dusted a few bumpers on our route to six different rental agencies.  And after all of that, when my generous host had dropped me off at the Avis and it appeared they could accommodate my needs, my credit card was denied, so I walked back to the hotel.

I contemplated spending the rest of the day at the hotel, feeling a little defeated after all of that sewing and no harvest.  But then I remembered that I am from the United States; so I did what any American would do and hired a chauffeur to take me to Utica.  This turned out to be the best course of action after all as only someone like Han Solo would have success navigating the free-for-all streets here.  Passing a motorcycle while it is passing another car and there is oncoming traffic in view, needn’t alarm anyone to a state of caution.  There is a sign when you reach the drawbridge over the canal from the Mediterranean Sea to Lake Bizerte that has the silhouette of a donkey drawing a carriage behind it, I’m only saying.

Mahmud was a gem of a man and I really enjoyed having him with me.  He was valuable as a companion and also as someone who knows the culture of this place.  When we reached the outdoor museum for Utica, the gate was closed.  I am almost certain that had I arrived by myself and attempted entry that I would have been told by the guard to bugger myself first in French, and then in Arabic.  But Mahmud simply beeped the horn of his Volkswagen, had a quick word with the man at the gate, and in we drove.  Later, while walking the ruins of Utica, Mahmud stayed one step ahead of me to remove things which would otherwise have obstructed my view or kept me from getting proper photographs.  Utica was founded in 1101 BC.  At one point Mahmud lowered a bucket on a rope to retrieve water from one of the wells which is still in operation there, something I wouldn’t have thought to do.  He then called me over to show me how it worked.  The hospitality of Tunisians is tremendous.

Tomorrow I am flying to Athens where I will take a bus to Tirana.  I am looking forward to both of those prospects.  Thank you for reading, and do make a new friend this week.