The Shepherdess In My ‘Hood

This last weekend, I found the first few minutes of quiet that I’ve had since the reality of this move to Tirana unfolded months and months ago. The State Department’s process for moving families overseas can only be described, at its best, as challenging. I have waged, and continue to wage, various battles over and over and over again with the mammoth bureaucracy I am now tied to, and with myself about which battles to choose. Pile on top of that my departure from BigLaw and all of my efforts to transition a litigation career of ten years into my own consulting practice, and I am, quite literally, exhausted.

So, on Saturday afternoon I broke free for an hour, grateful to my husband for taking over. I went to the little workout area in my housing complex and ran on the treadmill for the first time in years. Then I treated myself to a swim. As I laid on a borrowed pool chair, cursing the fact that I cannot simply buy a pool chair myself but have to submit an official request and wait for the embassy to negotiate pricing, issue work orders, and do whatever other confusingly convoluted steps it needs to simply to buy a pool chair, I felt myself quickly drying in the scorching Mediterranean sun and I heard a stunningly loud cow from across the road.

I smiled. I’ve come to recognize this cow. She travels with three other cows, a small herd of sheep, and a precocious donkey (that just the other day decided to follow the dog and I up the road a little too ambitiously), and is guided by a wonderfully friendly old woman. I see this woman every day. She is always dressed head to foot in black and dons a white kerchief. I believe she lives up our unpaved road in one of the small towns that dot the foothills of the mountains we are close to. With a water bottle in one hand and a sack in the other, she yells and herds her animals down from the hills every day stopping at as many of the unfertile, small “pastures” along the road as she needs to, trying to find them enough to eat.

Then, in the evenings, she turns around and starts her ascent back home with her herd in tow. Whenever she sees me on the road with my youngest son she stops her yelling long enough to give us a beaming toothless grin and pat my son’s brilliantly blond hair. How different and hard must her life be compared to the comforts I have always had and until recently, took for granted?

Tirana seems to be a city undergoing rapid and sporadic development. Because of that, there is a stark contrast between the modern and rural, rich and poor. Take this shepherdess as an example. Our road is unforgiving. It is a combination of mud, stone, and broken old pavement. She has to traverse this road everyday with her herd simply to make a life for herself and whoever may be dependent on her. Yet, this same road dead-ends one city block from our house at Tirana’s newest and most chic mall — TEG (Tirana East Gate). The place where the Albanian nouveau riche shop and where the working class dress their best just to visit on the weekends. (It also happens to be the only walkable destination from our house, so my son and I have walked this mall countless times already on his so far unfulfilled quest for a cupcake.) Surrounding TEG are some of the randomly located fields that this woman directs her animals to. So on more than one occasion I have seen brand new, gleaming luxury vehicles passing her without pause or concern as they zoom into the mall’s parking lot.

I wonder whether there are any regulations in place to preserve land for this woman and others like her? Whether there is a master development plan to guide zoning and permitting decisions for the development that is occurring? How much more difficult will her life be if one of these BMW’s takes out a sheep or two, and would she have any recourse whatsoever to be compensated? As I have heard it described by a few expats who have been here for decades, Albania is a country stuck in a state of adolescence. It is rebelling against a history of extreme, dictatorial rule and is now enjoying the freedom of certain lawlessness, or at least, laws that will not readily be enforced. So my guess is, there aren’t many, if any, government protections in place for this woman, her livelihood, or others in her position.

With her on my mind and realizing I was getting one hell of a sunburn, I grabbed my towel and headed back to my kiddos no longer caring about the fight with the embassy for my pool chairs. Rather, I was grateful to know that we have an institution, as horribly frustrating and with as many warts as it may have, that has our back. And, feeling refreshed and calm, I resolved to come up with a small kindness I could perform that might ease or at least brighten this woman’s day.