A trip to the "big city"

The nearest big city to Erseke is
Korce. Korce is a community of about 80,000 an hour's drive northeast, on the same windy roads we took to get here. Mark, Ruth and Beka invited us to come with them to Korce on Wednesday, since they had to pick up a few items there. As we learned, when one plans a trip to Korce, all friends, neighbors and colleagues feel free to put in their orders for things they need. (I find this a pleasant picture of small town life -- everyone kind of depends on one another to get what they need.) So Mark spent much of his day locating and purchasing things like basketballs for the camp, a replacement wheelchair wheel for a church member and staplers -- which we never actually found. No staplers in this part of the world, I guess.

We ate a wonderful lunch of chicken cooked on a spit and served with halved lemons, french fries, salad, bread and plentiful tzatziki dressing (the Greek, cucumber and sour cream dressing you eat on gyros). You can sense our enjoyment in the photo above, right?

But even more memorable than the lunch was our tour of the Evangelical Church of Korca (also called the Kenedi Foundation after the missionary who founded it). This church has launched

some fantastic ministries to serve the people of this area. We saw their medical clinic, where our tour guide Marlene (a warm, energetic Belgian woman pictured at right) is one of the nurses providing basic medical services for a very nominal cost. While we were there, a mother and her three little girls from Erseke arrived to receive care for second degree burns they had acquired making jam with wild figs. (I know, this sounds weird. Even Marlene had never heard of such a thing, but it's true. The fig juice reacted to their skin and burned them!) The family (in photo at right) had spent 10 days in the hospital, but the hospital was not very knowledgable about caring for the burns after initial treatment, so the doctor had referred them to the church clinic. Marlene said when they first came to the clinic days before, their bandages were so stiff she had to soak them with water to remove them. Apparently, this is the wrong way to treat burns, letting everything get dry and stiff. The skin must be kept soft and moist to regenerate. So Marlene had been applying medicine daily and rebandaging their wounds, while offering a healthy dose of love and good humor.

Marlene next showed us a group home next to the church where girls rescued from dangerous

or abusive living situations can find safe haven. The seven girls

live as a family with a house mom, and when they mature are given help finding a place to live and a job. We got to interact a bit with a few of the residents, so I took their pictures. They were lovely young girls. (Marlene says child abuse is quite common in Albania, and she suspects sexual abuse is also quite a problem, although no one will talk about it, including the victims.)

The church also provides daily lunches to a group of street children in an off-site location. And they deliver meals to dozens of elderly people who don't have family to tend to them. (Most older people in Albania live with one of their children -- usually the youngest son, I'm told.) The church is now building the city's first assisted living facility, where these older people can live safely. The entire visit to this church was very impressive and also humbling, when one considers that the church is likely pouring more of its resources into serving the community than its own members.

Our last stop in Korce was the grocery store, where we grabbed a few items we cannot find in Erseke: raspberry jam, chamomille and green tea, broccoli and honey. Funny the things you come to miss, or in some cases not miss at all, when you're traveling. Number-one on my list, in case you're wondering, is my pillow. And my dog. And all of you, of course...oh, don't get me started....

Tonight we go back to the camp to celebrate the campers' last night with skits, singing and a slide show. We're really looking forward to having Godebo and Noel back here with us, although it has been strangely peaceful without their boisterous energy!