SURVIVING CULTURE CLASHES, DOGS AND THE UNKNOWN —

The sky opens up as we exit the gorge, my clothes soaked, my hands scratched from the rocky ledges. An open field rests outside the canyon walls. A flock of sheep graze. When we approach the field, three sheepdogs charge us. The dogs are trained to attack anyone who approaches the sheep, defending the flock from potential thieves. One of the dogs, an inch away, snaps at us as a shepherd cracks a tree branch against the ground. The dogs return to their master, but growl as we pass.

“Take off your helmets,” says Ansley. Canadian-born, she’s lived in Erseke, Albania for three years. We follow her instructions, unclipping the helmets that protected us in the gorge. The dogs chase after us again. Ansley asks for my helmet, and I hand it to her; she swings the helmets at the dogs. They step back, and we stand our ground.

Ansley instructs us to keep moving.

“They weren’t going to attack us. They were just herding us, like they do to the sheep,” she says later.

We trek back to the small town of Erseke. It’s surrounded by mountains on all sides, and cars and horses share the only paved road. We’ve just tested the safety of the gorge for camp Udhëkryq, where counselors will take up to thirty high school students through the water. It’s at this camp that I’ve decided to spend a month of my summer. I do everything from working the high ropes course to washing hundreds of dishes.

A communist dictatorship until 1992, Albania is in a period of revival and reconstruction. The country was declared an atheist state, and religion was persecuted. An electric fence lined the border. Now, bomb shelters are empty and overgrown, stripped of their metal. Religion flourishes in mosques and churches alike, with about 60 percent of Albanians identifying as Muslims and 17 percent identifying as Christians.

“God is good,” says Xhulie, one of the camp counselors, on a near-daily basis. She’s bilingual in English and in the native language, Shqip. She’s also a Roma girl, and her darker skin has been the target of ridicule from her peers.

The Roma are a nomadic group of people that have faced persecution both during the Holocaust and across Europe today. A group of Roma campers flock together, sharing meals and free time in each other’s company.

“The girls want to know why they can’t talk to any of the boys, but they can’t. They’re Roma girls. Their mothers will kill me,” says Julie, one of the few English-speaking counselors.

The girls, aged 11 to 15, are at marriageable age. Any contact with boys is taboo and dangerous; simply visiting a boy’s home could have them wed locked. Husbands control divorce, and most of the girls won’t receive any kind of education. If their husbands throw them out of the house for burning food or cleaning poorly, the girls will most likely be forced to remarry.

On our way back from the gorge, grasshoppers pelt our legs. It’s the season of their awakening, and they’ve burrowed out of the ground. Now, they fill up the fields.

We’ve just climbed a rock face, tossing stones from the ledges to keep the dogs away. They linger for a moment before running back to their flock.

“I’ve been bitten by a dog, so I don’t fear them anymore,” Ansley says.

Back in the gorge, I’m standing at the edge of a small cliff. I have to jump into the pool of water, churned white from the waterfall, that’s waiting below. When I do, I have a moment, rising out of the water and catching my breath, where I feel fearless.