Shishtavec of the immigrants

SHISHTAVEC, Sept. 7 – Shishtavec is a village near Kukes town, some 1,100 meters above the sea level, somewhere in the border between Albania and Kosova, just behind the Gjalica mountain. It is a great surprise and almost fantasy when going there you find yourself between Gjalica and Koretnik mountains, two of the highest in the country, also good targets or objects to promote mountainous tourism. Shishtavec is there and you may call it poor from the financial point of view, but rich from the natural point of view.
Shishtavec is in the middle of Gore area, the biggest there with 1,100 residents. It had 2,000 in 1991. Now only elders have remained. It is different in summer when all their children come back home for vacations. People there may feel isolated, not only for the long six-month winter, and they have found a way out with immigration.
The elementary school lacks the staff or has unqualified ones. The middle school has closed. A few students go every year to graduate teaching but they do not come back. Once known for its potato now they plant only 400 hectares from 1,200 hectares before. They still find a way to survive and that seems immigration.
One may call Shishtavec the village of immigration. Only during the communist regime they were not allowed to move around. Some 150 families left the place in 1945 going to other areas in the south. More than 600 persons have left the place after 1991 going to England, Belgium, Italy and Canada and the United States. Some of them have married women from those countries and when back home in summer they cannot communicate in Albania with their other family members.
Besides that summer is full of weddings as many boys come, get married and make proper documentation to take their spouse and start a new life abroad. It is estimated that some 126 new families from Shishtavec have gone on immigration. Like Mersat Grisha, 24, immigrant in England. He comes back to get married to Malvina Murati in a wedding with DJ and not the usual way. Then he leaves and takes Malvina with him.
Every family in Shishtavec has normally a boy in immigration. They all come back home and bring some money for their families but also for the village. An eight-member committee takes care of some funding collected from immigrants for the village needs. The committee decides where to invest them.
They have built a mosque, surrounded the cemetery with a wall, or build a small soccer pitch which is used freely by all youngsters. It belongs to the whole village.
Shishtavec has 180 two-store houses that are either totally new, built after 1991, or totally reconstructed.
One day they may turn and sty there, when Albania will likely be a European country with all the necessary infrastructure and services.