by Jerina Zaloshnja
It was about 18:30 hours that afternoon that I noticed him, just at the moment when the man with glasses was urging the little boy to jump into the water.
-“The water is freezing,” the child pleaded and took two or three steps backwards.
-“It’s not freezing, its lovely and warm,” the man snapped and reached for the child’s hand. -“Come on, we’ll jump in together,!”
The little boy seemed to give in for a split second, but all of a sudden he let out a shriek which could not fail to hold my attention.
-“Look, look Daddy, there is pooh floating in the water, see,” the little boy wailed. Two or three others who were basking in the dying rays of sun of that afternoon began laughing.
-“No, its not,” the father coaxed, “it’s a clump of old leaves,” he said reassuringly and plopƴhey both took the plunge without further ado.
Two things have profoundly changed related to the waters of Lake Ohri, on the banks of which nestles the city of Pogradec: the temperature of the lake’s water and its cleanliness.20 years ago, you could only swim in the lake after midday and up to about three in the afternoon. The water was crystal clear and icy cold. But it was so clean. A dive just beneath the surface and you were surrounded by shoals of bright red fish and you could see the reflexes of the colours of the plants on the bottom of the lake. Today, a plunge into the waters, both early in the morning or late in the afternoon is like taking a lukewarm bath, like diving into a big basin of body oil, the water is tepid and almost buttery, and in particular, you can join the flotsam, fragments of broken bottles, jars, scraps of paper of all kinds. The elderly locals of Pogradec claim that the temperature of the lake waters has risen due to global warming. The population growth of the city and its surrounding areas, (trebled in the last 20 years), is also blamed for the pollution. If prior to the nineties’ the direct discharge of sewerage into the lake waters was insignificant due to the limited population of 20 thousand people, today’s population of the city exceeds 50.000 and pollution has assumed frightening proportions.
A week-end, how it used to be
Crisp, cool, and clean waters. Alpine air that lungs can’t get enough of. An exquisite cuisine, oven baked dishes of rare Rainbow trout which the locals caught by casting hooks baited with nuts. A good local wine, brewed by almost every household in the town. Alleyways laid in tiny cobble stones and a town a-blaze with flowers in the beautifully kept public parks and gardens. In a few sentences this is as good as any description of Summer holidays or week-ends in the city of Pogradec up until the nineties.’ A very quiet and peaceful lake side beach under a sun that did not scorch the skin off you; nights when one crawled into bed under fragranced woolen covers; the beehives which the locals looked after high up in the hills around the town; the remarkable village of Tushemisht, five kilometers from the town’s centre, with its little houses built upon the waters of the lake; a strange kind of local pie cooked in something known as a “hot cooking lid”ơll these memories crowd back like sequences of a film of yesteryear.
Summer holidays in Pogradec, as well as week-ends were a luxury and not just for Albanians. The large tourist hotel, built in the center of the town, the tourist park of Volerka, were other reasons why it was worthwhile to holiday there. This small Albanian tourist resort with its beautiful lake and alpine climate, up until the beginning of the nineties’ slowly transformed itself into a beautiful holiday attraction, captivating visitors the moment they arrived. Pogradec was one of the few cities in the country, famous for its massive flower beds and all the floral colours and fragrances. The cleanliness of the town was beyond reproach, wholesome, fresh local food. Undoubtedly this is why Dictator Enver Hoxha had a permanent residence here.
A week-end, how it is today
If I had not slammed on the brakes when I did, the boy who ran out in front of my car would have been sent flying! He was in his early teens. He stood there in front of the windscreen dangling a big fish in front of me from a plastic bag threaded somehow through the fishes’ gills like a hook.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted at the boy, shaking. He had been trying to stop the car to sell me the limp looking specimen of a fish that he insisted was a rare type of trout and had misjudged the distance and the speed of the vehicle. He told me that I would see child fish vendors all along the road as I headed into town, who would be trying to sell fresh trout to passers-by on the busy main road. This trout was raised in the back yards of the houses, in small ponds. The genuine Rainbow Trout caught in the lake, has long since gone. Prior to the Nineties’, this kind of fish, found exclusively in Lakes Bajkal and Ohrid, was exported and was also a great delicacy of Albanian cuisine. The experts say that sewerage discharge into the lake, use of dynamite sticks to blast the fish out of the water and also catching the smaller fish which were food for the Rainbow Trout, were the main reasons why the resources of Rainbow Trout were completely depleted. The smaller fish were called Belushka and the State raised them artificially at a fish farm in a village nearby on the side of the lake. But this business collapsed in the nineties in total disarray.
“Drive slowly,” the boy I almost ran over said to me, giving me a friendly smile. So I did just that. And why not, nothing is hurrying me, I have no time table to meet, nothing. I was driving into town, about 20 minutes away from the hotel I had booked into for the week end. I thought I would go and have a coffee at the Tourist Hotel of the town as it is connected with some of my earlier memories.
The Hotel has now been taken over by a private company, but the building still bears scars of the barbarous destruction of 1997. I stood there for a moment with the feeling that I had never seen this hotel before, that this must be some other venue. I had imagined the town and the hotel so differently, where I had spent unforgettable summer vacations for several years in succession. I didn’t recognize anyone at all, and not even my own memories. I failed to recognize any of the faces amongst the customers at the bar. These customers were of a different profile. I decided to take a stroll along the waterfront road where the locals had their traditional evening promenade. The very pleasant and courteous local strollers had all been replaced by people who were poorly dressed and looked so run down. Litter lying in the streets, bushes instead of flower beds and clouds of dust. From a population of twenty thousand at the end of the eighties’, today the city’s population had trebled. “The “natives” of the area have moved out to Tirana and other cities of the country or have emigrated, in search of work, and the city has filled up with the rural population from the surrounding zones,” says an owner of an eatery in the middle of the city.
Change, like an avalanche
It was obvious that my effort to return to the location of my “unforgettable holidays” had, in essence, failed. Events, the people, the city itself had all changed so drastically, in the most unimaginable way and there was no return. It was also plainly obvious that this avalanche of a change had been for the worst and not for the better. At about 9:30 pm. I turned around and headed back to the hotel, this time slowly, as the young fish monger had advised me, fearful that another young boy would dash out in front of the car waving a fish. However, there was no need to worry, at that time they were all asleep.
