The Kou family live on a busy, muddy, potholed street in an apartment building that is missing a few walls and windows and looks as if it’s either in a state of going up or coming down. Like most other neighbourhoods in Tirana, the capital of Albania, it’s noisy with kids playing and cars bumping down the road. The family has gathered in the tiny living room of their three-room apartment on a Saturday evening – mother Krisulla, father Jovan, daughter Anna, son Kristi, and Jovan’s brother, Thimi – to watch a television show made by children.
A foreigner is present – me – so Krisulla has laid stiff organza cloths of mauve and gold over the tables. She appears from the kitchen, curtained off from the living room, with bowls of peanuts, roasted almonds, plates of pretzels, and breadsticks. She beams welcome at me, though neither of us can understand a word the other says.
Thimi watches me with quiet curiosity, then explains, through the translator, that a foreigner is something new to him: “Under the regime, if I spoke to a person like you from another country, I would have lost my job. I might even have been sent to prison.”
The show begins roughly when it’s supposed to, at 6:15, and everyone jumps for a seat. Anna turns up the volume and we turn our attention to the ninety-seventh episode of a news show made by Albanian teenagers called Troç (pronounced “trotch”), Albanian for “straight talk.” On the air since February, 2001, it is one of the most popular shows in Albania, with 44 percent of the population tuning in regularly. In a country with no history of independent media and a young population (40 percent are under nineteen), it has become the most trusted source of news.
The two hosts start off discussing a school in the south of Albania that lacks a gymnasium. A young reporter interviews students who complain they have to exercise outside, even in winter. The school principal is evasive on camera. He shrugs and talks about funds and committees and budgets. Beside me, Anna, who at fifteen displays marked cynicism about promises from people in authority, snorts with contempt.
Next up is a cultural story about a museum with Albanian artifacts dating back to the fourteenth century. This pleases the parents. Anna and Kristi both enjoy a piece about a female poet, though they complain that it’s a bit long. The hosts introduce a series of outtakes showing people who have refused to be interviewed. It’s funny watching the reporters being repeatedly rebuffed, but Jovan finds it frustrating that people won’t speak out in public.
Towards the end of the show, there is a story about the appalling condition of commuter trains carrying students and workers between the port town of Durres and Tirana. The trains are rusting and filthy, there is no glass in the windows, and winter is coming. People arrive at 5:30 a.m. to find a place on the overcrowded 7:30 train. The only decent carriages are reserved for the staff. One commuter explains that she has just started using the trains. “I’ll get used to it,” she says. My translator, Anila Miria (who also works at unicef), sighs with defeat after explaining what the girl has said: “Look at her. She’s only about twenty and already she thinks this way. She doesn’t demand that the service improve, she just thinks she should get used to it.”
Later, Krisulla brings out chocolate cake and Jovan fills our glasses with Coca-Cola. The family sits back to argue about what they have seen. “It’s important that young people are informing their peers about problems in this society,” says Jovan. “But it’s still a problem that there are some kids who don’t want to speak. They have to be convinced that they have a voice and that they should air their opinions.”
Thimi is nodding. “Under the old regime, the parents of these kids [the reporters] would have gone to prison,” he says. “Troç is good; it’s helping to educate these young people about speaking sincerely. Because we still have some problems in this nation about speaking openly.” It’s a habit, he explains, formed under forty years of Communist rule and near-complete isolation from the rest of the world. “If you ask an Albanian about the problems here, he might say that there are no problems, everything is fine. We don’t think to criticize. And this is the value of Troç. It teaches people to look critically at what’s around them.”
Albania has never had it easy. Its history, from the Roman conquest of the ancient Illyrians, through invasions by Huns, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths, and the conquest by the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian Tsars, is one of almost continual warfare and anarchy.
