Winter times in Fushe Kruja

Fushe Kruja city is very rainy these days. Spring has brought many weather challenges and who feels it the most are the poor communities who live in cold houses, without any heat, shoes or proper warm clothes. It has been four months of winter now, and the weather conditions are not facilitating the Roma community of Fushe Kruja to get started with their work. Women and men cannot work collecting metal scrub or selling second hand clothes because of the heavy rain; they don’t have shoes or even coats to be protected and they get sick very often. Sometimes they try traveling even in the rain, going from village to village and sleeping in tends, but there have been cases of tends flooding, lack of work and thus lack of incomes to continue the travelling. 

Many Roma families that live in Fushe Kruja community tried starting their work by going to Shkodra to sell second hand clothes ( North Albania)  but they came back saying that Buna river had come out of its riverbed and had destroyed all what they had in their self constructed tends situated near the city. Many Roma families came back to Fushe Kruja sick and angry because of this happening and they were really sad because every year, in Shkodra, where many Roma people work, there are many river flooding. (http://www.adra.al/2010/12/flooding-in-shkodra-people-who-have.html)

Paola, one of Reflect Students, 12 years old, was to Shkodra for two months to help her parents work. She came back at the reflect centre last Monday (29 March 2013) saying that they were caught up by the river water at 4 am in the morning and they got really frightened. All their personal clothes and tend materials were destroyed and they had to come back to Fushe Kruja. “I was frightened when I felt the tend started moving and the water entered from below it. I couldn’t even put my feet on the ground”.

She is happy to be back and to have the opportunity to come to the ADRA centre and continue her learning. She misses school very much but she doesn’t have a choice: her family needs her.

Now Paola and her family are in Fushe Kruja just for a few weeks, waiting the weather to get better and re- start their journey.