Albania Blog ONE
The Daily Albanian Blog:
Wednesday October 31st
Greetings from downtown Tirana; it’s a warm evening in this busy dusty city a few dozen miles inland from the Adriatic Sea.
Some interesting statistics:
on a 23 minute journey along the A1 (or its Albanian equivalent) we passed 32 petrol stations, 29 of which were open.
the roads here are drive-on-the-right in style, except in downtown Tirana where it is more like drive-wherever-you-feel-is-right.
electricity here operates mots of the time but never all of the time and a trip into a restaurant involves finding one with a generator!
people are very friendly and helpful and don’t take themselves too seriously, including our very kind host Altin Hysi
In order to help us get a grasp of the country and the culture, Altin took us today via Autoroute and cobbled 40 degree mountain track to a castle on a hill in Berati.
The castle contained some forty churches and chapels, many of which were still beautifully decorated with centuries old icons and wall paintings. The most beautiful, the cathedral, is only slightly younger than our own and displays the icons (paintings on wood with meaning depicting biblical scenes and saintly characters) of its history. Most iconocasts (the screen between the body of the church and the sanctuary) traditionally and by rule of the Orthodox Church, contain four icons at least: one of Christ Pancreator, (Jesus who made the world) one of Mary with the infant Jesus, one of John the Baptist, and one of the particular saint commemorated by the particular church. This particular cathedral had almost 160 icons.
The electric has just gone off in the “Stephen Centre” where we are staying tonight… and on again.. since thankfully they have a generator here.
The food in Albania is fine: the place we are staying is owned by Americans so it will be something with chips tonight, having had a tradiotnal Albanian lunch at 3.30 pm.
As we discover more about Bible Society in Albania, it appears that the country’s problems are reflected in the Society itself: essentially it is an economy which relies on money coming into the state (from children working abroad, international aid, churches and companies investing in members here). The Society cannot sell New Testaments at their actual cost, because there is no way ordinary Albanians could afford it. Nor dare they give them away, since paper is so scarce that the pages of the Bible could be misused for e.g. wrapping food in at the markets. Hence a subsidised market is the only way to create sustained sales. The New Testament is just that: launched on Monday 29th October it is the fruit of the labours of translators from Orthodox Catholic and international translators working to produce a text which is readily understandable and usable by people here. It sells for about $5 equivalent.
Production is in China, and delivery takes weeks, and the next batch (after an initial 50 or so) will not arrive until December. So Altin and his team have a few months to develop a sales programme which will help encourage clergy from the various traditions to use the new version, in turn to encourage their congregations to purchase them and use them, and so in turn to help the church grow.
They have done a tremendous work here, and it is exciting to see them at the start of the process of spreading the word, literally. We need to find ways of helping them do this as they cannot do it on their own, but have the heart to do so with some help.
Funding the sales of Testaments, Supporting the cost of a translation of the Old Testament, helping to provide copies for key individuals, developing the usability of the Bible using e.g. computerised versions: these and other methods will probably have to be considered and adopted by the local Bible Society and the United Bible Society which supports them internationally.
It is interesting to be part of this and I’ll let you know more when I get a chance.