After the perfect days spent in Kosovo and a tiring day to travell to Shköder, we decided to stay only one night in this big city and left the next morning to Shijak, a little city between Tirana and Durres, after advices given by people in the bus.
Shköder has been a real transition in our project.
In Shijak, Pietro a 120 kilos farmer has been our little angel, our source of energy, an amazingly friendly character.
Anyway it was not enough to make us stay. maybe it was because we were tired by 2 days of travelling, maybe because of the transition from villages to cities, we just did not get the feeling and the right atmosphere with children to play.
The day when we went to juggle, a few kids were more interested in making a mess with the balls, in stealing them more than juggling, in annoying other kids interested in learning how to play. We stayed one hour and an half and gave up. That was unfortunately our only activities with kids as the day after we left for another destination.
Anyway, fire performances went on as good as usually. People were curious about us and enjoyed the show.
Those few days, we were not so performant with juggling activities. But it gave us the opportunity to create good relationship with Pietro. We also had nice time with our friend Yoann and his brother Gwenael with whom we went to the seaside.
The third day, giving a try to make activities, facing the disapointment about having only the annoying kids from the day before, we quickly decided to move on to Tirana. Gab and Besi, Antoine’s friends living there, hosted us. So we spent one day in the main city of Albania and enjoyed the afternoon playing in a parc. First a little bit shy, after one hour playing, we were surrounded by children who played and learned the basics of our art. This fresh postive energy came at the right moment and the fire performance later in the evening, in the same parc, help us to forget our disappointment about the day before. One more nice memory about the juggling project in Albania… Now it is time to leave again: back to Macedonia.
In Struga, everybody was exhausted. It was hard to find back some energy to juggle. Especially because we felt that we were not welcomed. Sitting on the beach or moving around from one volunteers’ flat to another, we eventually decided to end the project. Maybe this was the good moment to have a break.
Anyway, to be continued…
*Je ne sais pas l’albanais!!!
