“In winter we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths”

The G: “In winter we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths”  –  The Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin

The fall weather came very quickly this year.  In September, we went from some very hot summer temperatures one week to rain and damp the next, and the warm temperatures never returned.  Today we’re even getting some snowflakes mixed in with the rain.  The sudden change in weather (and the fact that I’m reading the 4^th Game of Thrones book) is making me think more about the not-so-welcome fact that winter is coming.  With that in mind, I’ll share a story that I should have shared 9 or so months ago.

[These photos are from the Harvest Fair we had today.  Even with the rain/snow, there were a lot of people buying and selling local goodies]

Harvest Festival today with snow in the background

The beekeeper was happy to show us the bees he brought from Bulqiza

Albania has the best honey

Our locally made apple juice – delicious

My haul – apples, petulla (“pancakes”), mozzarella (usually hard to come by but this is locally made)

 

Last winter was one of Albania’s coldest in recent memory.  Co-workers and friends said it was the coldest winter they could remember.  Temperatures dipped below -12˚C (10˚ F) and school was cancelled for a couple weeks in part due to the cold (and in part due to a flu epidemic).  As snow and ice accumulated in town in early January, many of the water pipes started freezing.  The water pipe leading into our apartment building was unfortunately one of the freezing victims.  Keith and I had luckily been in Tirana (which is much warmer) for medical appointments when the temperatures had dropped the furthest.  When we returned home after the roads had been cleared of ice and snow and deemed safe enough to transverse, we realized we weren’t getting our daily fill-up of water.  Usually the 2 water deposit tanks in our bathroom fill up 1 -3 times every day so we have plenty of water to use throughout the day.

View from our apartment

My walk to school – the black stuff is charcoal spread over ice

Frozen windows

Thick ice frozen on the inside of the window

Bathroom window frozen shut

The water pipe leading into our building was totally exposed (happily someone concreted over it this summer).  Neighbors had tried to thaw the pipe by building fires underneath, to no avail.  We slowly depleted the remaining water in the water deposit tanks over the course of a week.  We were out of water besides our small store of bottled drinking water.

The culprit

Realizing a thaw wasn’t coming any time soon, we started asking around to more people to figure out how widespread the water shortage was in town.  When we went to ask our closest neighbors, they invited us in and served us some preserved cherries and grosh (traditional bean soup).  While we chatted and warmed up in their living room, we learned no one in our building was getting water, but others in town were.

When school started up again, Keith talked to the teachers he works with and found someone that lives close by and was still getting water in the late evening.  She kindly offered to let us fill up a bunch of plastic bottles during the time her family was getting water.  At 9:00pm or so, we would carefully cross the icy road separating our apartment buildings carrying bottles back and forth as our neighbor filled them in her bathroom.  With the extraordinary hospitality typical of Albanians, she invited us to have some sweets as we talked with her family after she had filled bottles of water for us for 45 minutes.  We repeated this over the course of the next couple weeks.  During these water runs, two more people, our favorite produce lady and the mother of the owner of a local pizza shop we frequent, offered to share their water with us as well.  The warmth from so many of our neighbors and their willingness to go above and beyond to help us through a difficult situation was humbling and indicative of how important social networks and taking care of others are in Albanian communities.

Filling up the tank we use to take showers by hand

Our water store

Filling bottles to fill the shower tank

The experience also made me further appreciate the luxury of having running water all the time.  Everything felt hard in freezing temperatures and without easy access to water.  To take a shower when our water pipes were frozen, we had to transfer water one 1.5 liter bottle at a time into our water deposit tank using a funnel system Keith devised to get the water in through the small gap between the ceiling and the top of the tank.  This was about an hour long process.  Needless to say we were not smelling very fresh during the time of frozen pipes (but at least it was too cold to do much sweating!).  We also quickly found out who in town had the nicest bathrooms with western-style toilets as we ate out more frequently to avoid using precious water to wash dishes and flush the toilet.

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On a very happy note, big thank you to everyone who supported our Girl Scouts of Albania fundraiser!  We raised over $4,000, which will go a long way in supporting girls and women in Albania.  The organization was confirmed as an Associate Member during the World Association of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting World Conference in India last month, and we just held a training last weekend to train more women to be Girl Scout leaders 🙂