Between Accursed Mountains:
A ‘hybrid’ ethnography of commodification processes in hospitality within northern Albania
Master thesis / Cultural and Social Anthropology / Visual Anthropology Pilot Supervisor / Prof. Dr. M.P.J. van de Port
Second readers / Dr. H.J. Hiddinga & I. Plájás Student / Jip van Steenis
Student number / 10643214 Email / jipvansteenis@gmail.com
Abstract
In this ‘hybrid’ master thesis, both written and filmed, I will take the reader and viewer to two neighbouring valleys in northern Albania; the Theth and Valbona valleys. In the last decade, these historically isolated areas have developed into popular tourist destinations. I will show how the branding of northern Albania is done in quite a peculiar way: it is offered to tourists as an “undiscovered” place in which you can find some “unspoiled” nature and “exotic” customs. These labels are often also used for other destinations as well, but regarding the exotic customs in northern Albania, tourist marketers refer to the ancient code of customary law, the Kanun I
Lekë Dukagjini, of which both blood revenge and hospitality are important prescripts. What do
these coded customs mean to hosts in the context of increasing tourism, and how do they influence tourist experience? I will show that blood revenge (gjakmarrja) features heavily in tourist representations but can hardly be found ‘on the ground’. Hospitality (mikpritja) however, plays a major role in encounters between foreign tourists and local hosts. I will argue how hospitality, in the arena of developing tourism, is under influence of commodification processes and I will give ethnographic examples of what this means for hosts and tourists. Herein, I will touch upon the question of authenticity and performance in host-tourist encounters. This written account serves as a contextualising ‘behind the scenes’ of my thesis film and ask the reader to watch the film before reading it.
Keywords: northern Albania, tourism, code of customary law (Kanun), hospitality (Mikpritja),
Table of Contents Preface
page 7
1.Introduction: ‘Behind the scenes’ of my thesis film - page 8
1.1 Introduction - page 8
1.2 Tourist representations of (northern) Albania - page 9 1.3 Anthropological discussions of the Kanun - page 10 1.4 Suggesting Hospitality and blood feud - page 11 1.5 The northern Albanian as the internal other - page 13 1.6 Tourism in Albania before - page 15
1.7 Fieldwork Considerations - page 18 1.5 Concluding - page 20
2. The “lenses” I took to northern Albania:
obviously opting for a ‘hybrid’ ethnography- page 22
2.1 Why have I chosen to bring a camera along? - page 22
2.2 When have I pulled my camera out of its camera bag? - page 24 2.3 Concluding - page 27
3. Commodification of Hospitality? - page 29
3.1 Introduction - page 29 3.2 You? Ska lekë - page 31 3.3 Hospitality vs service - page 33
3.4 Money and the morality of exchange - page 34 3.5 Hospitality in the commodity sphere - page 36 3.6 Performing hospitality - page 38
3.7 Honour and shame - page 40
3.8 Overcoming stereotypes: from hostile to hospitable - page 42 3.7 Concluding - page 43
4. Conclusion - page 45 Acknowledgements - page 48
I dedicate this thesis to the people of the Valbona valley, who struggle against the illegally built hydro power construction on the fertile vein of their valley: the ice cold and piercing blue Valbonë river. It was heart-breaking to see the construction works destroying the “untouched nature” which is so important for the locals and the tourists who travel kilometres to experience it. The valley already looked different from the first day I arrived then the 3 months after. A road that was being built on the mountain opposite of the guesthouse where I was working, Rilindja, was the most haunting example – it stretched further and further, like a scar on its surface, sharply lit by the construction site lights at night. I am proud of all the people who try to stop this devastating and useless project, and I follow their activities closely. I hope that one day the corrupt system listens to them, before it is too late and the label “untouched nature” is far from applicable.
#Mosmaprekvalbonën1
‘“A guest is really a demi-god,” he went on after a while, “and the fact that any one at all can
suddenly become a guest does not diminish but rather accentuates his divine character. The fact that this divinity is acquired suddenly, in a single night simply by knocking at a door, makes it even more authentic. The moment a humble wayfarer, his pack on his shoulders, knocks at your door and gives himself up to you as your guest, he is instantly transformed into an extraordinary being, an inviolable sovereign, a law-maker, the light of the world. And the suddenness of the transformation is absolutely characteristic of the nature of the divine. Did not the gods of the ancient Greeks make their appearance suddenly and in the most unpredictable manner? That is just the way the guest appears at an Albanian’s door. Like all the gods he is an enigma, and he comes directly from the realms of destiny or fate – call it what you will. A knock at the door can bring about the survival or the extinction of whole generations. That is what the guest is to the Albanians of the mountains.”’2
Preface
Four years ago, a friend of mine returned with lyrical impressions of her travel to Albania. Funnily enough, I had never considered the country as a travel destination before. The summer after, me and my boyfriend decided to go because the country had been a blind spot for both of us. Our travel experience was great, and Albania had stolen our hearts, not at least because of all the aspects of the country that were unknown to us. The things we encountered on our travels came as a surprise; its decades of isolationist socialist regime under dictator Hoxha’s rule, its rippling mountains and the lovely hospitable people. We were self-reflective of our impressions and interested in what motivated us and other tourists alike to go to Albania. Why did we want to visit a country that we only knew by name? The unknown apparently lured us into the idea of going. For us, it was a plus that Albania was not a popular tourist destination. This gave the idea that some of the contacts we had with locals were not affected by our economic relationship with them. Something comforting for us tourists, as we like to be seen as people, not as “walking wallets”. One day we hiked over the northern Albanian mountain pass from the valley of Valbona to the valley of Theth. We stopped for a morning kafe turke and raki in a café near the pass and had a great twenty-minute chat with the man that served us. The moment I took my wallet to pay, he told us: ‘No, today everything is free of charge’. The exchange we just had with him was not being paid for and therefor “priceless”. For a moment, we felt more than mere tourists. Even when I had finished my first year of Cultural Anthropology studies before that summer, even when I had studied concepts of ‘othering’ and cultural encounters, and pondered the seemingly impossibility of ‘authenticity, I was still looking for it.
Tourism has always been of great interest to me, more in particularly how aspects of culture are presented and performed within the tourist industry. My previous two bachelor theses studied collective memory within tourism and representations of cultural identities on picture postcards. Unquestionably my master research had to be within the arena of tourism again, and upon considering fieldwork destinations I thought of Albania. The country is an interesting case, because it’s tourist industry is only recently booming and the processes which are generated by it are fairly new. Only in 2017, the year I left for fieldwork, a direct flight from Amsterdam to Tirana was established. I thought about the experiences me and my boyfriend had on our travel and got curious as to how host-tourist encounters are affected by the increasing number of tourists. I decided to go back to the Theth and Valbona valleys to see what had happened here overtime, since that one morning four years ago, when we drank our coffee and raki for free.
1. Introduction – ‘Behind the scenes’ of my thesis film
‘Tell your friends or family that you’re off to Albania, and you’ll likely receive a shock
response: “Isn’t it dangerous?”, “Isn’t there a war going on there?”, and “Is that even in Europe?” are some of the most common. Speak instead to those who have been, and the associations with the country’s name become infinitely more positive – you’ll hear of rippling mountains, Ottoman architecture, pristine beaches and endlessly hospitable locals. Following decades of isolationist rule, this rugged land still doesn’t seem to fit into the grand continental jigsaw, with distinctly exotic notes emanating from its language, customs and cuisine. Pay a visit to this beguiling corner of Europe now, before it garners the popularity it deserves’. – Rough Guides3
‘The ‘Accursed Mountains’ (Bjeshkët e Namuna) offer some of Albania’s most
impressive scenery, and the area has exploded in recent years as a popular backpacker destination. It’s a totally different side of the country here: that of blood feuds, deep tradition, extraordinary landscapes and fierce local pride. It’s absolutely a highlight of any trip to Albania, and indeed, it’s quite extraordinary to get this far removed from modern life in 21st-century Europe’. – Lonelyplanet.com4
1.1 Introduction
With lines taken from these tourist representations of (northern) Albania, I open my film and introduce my topic. I will unfold this written thesis accordingly, by using the timeline5 as a
guideline for my writing structure. Why have I pointed my camera on these rough mountain meadows? Why have I chosen to open the first few minutes of my film with this landscape? And why have I infiltrated it with the above cited lines? The questions will be approached in this part of my thesis. This written thesis functions as a contextualising “behind the scenes” of what I have shown the viewer, and now reader. I will share the background research that informed my filming, the questions that guided it, and the decisions I took during the editing process in order to convey what I have seen and found out. These visual anthropological
3 Source: https://www.roughguides.com/destinations/europe/albania/ (last visited 28-02-2018, differs from the original text found in 2017). 4 Source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/albania/the-accursed-mountains/introduction (last visited 28-02-2018).
considerations will be discussed in chapter 2, but first I will discuss the preparatory study I did of tourist representations of northern Albania, the processes of othering that are at the heart of these representations, and the historical context relevant to my study. I will also briefly address my fieldwork.
1.2 Tourist representations of (northern) Albania
So first, let me discuss what we encounter in the two texts above. Albania has developed into a popular tourist destination in the last decade. It was hard to visit the country during its socialist period, and not popular for mainstream tourism during its unstable post-socialist phase. Because of this long period of isolation Albania is still relatively unknown for potential travellers today. Texts such as these may be the first ever introductions of the northern Albanian region to the potential traveller, when browsing on the internet. Looking for future travel destinations, he or she may be tempted by the above. The lines are not unique, and I have chosen them exactly because of that quality to describe the generalised branding of (northern) Albania within tourism that I have come across in my research.
The branding of northern Albania struck me as peculiar and raised my curiosity. For what is suggested by: “Endlessly hospitable locals”? “distinctly exotic notes emanating from
its […] customs”? and “blood feuds, deep tradition”? I soon learned that these phrases refer to
an ancient northern Albanian code of customary law, the ‘Kanun I Lekë Dukagjini’. This customary law with rules of self-administration and self-regulation governed the Albanians of the North for centuries. It was first written down in the 15th century, though mostly still orally
transmitted, and was operative until the building of the nation-state in 1912, when aspects of it were overruled by state laws. The Kanun describes every aspect of human life and is built upon four important pillars: honour (nderi), hospitality (mikpritja), right conduct (sjellja), and kin loyalty (fis). Blood feud (gjakmarrja) is an important prescript of these laws, as well as keeping honour (besa). Today, the Kanun is still influential in the northern region and beyond (Mustafa 2008, Sadiku 2014, Schwandner-Sievers 2012, Voell 2003). While the central government officially makes the rules, the Kanun affects many norms and values. For example; the common idea of how to welcome a guest in one’s home. Throughout times, while many features of the Kanun faced change, as Schwandner-Siever argues, socio-cultural norms of hospitality appear not to have changed at all (2012: 18).
1.3 Anthropological discussions of the Kanun
Before I dive deeper into the tourist representations of the Kanun, I want to briefly discuss the representations of the Kanun in recent anthropological discussions. In the decades following the fall of communism, a lot has been written about the Kanun in relation to crime and/or violence (See for example: Mustafa 2008, Sadiku 2014, Schwandner-Sievers 2008, Voell 2003). Schwandner-Sievers, a scholar that frequently published on Kanun culture since the early nineties, acknowledges this trend and notifies that: ‘while the Albanian ‘establishment’ grew increasingly concerned about the image of their national identity abroad, many of the foreign anthropologists were specifically interested in internal contestations and conflicts within post-socialist identity politics’ (2012: 17). I however, have chosen to focus on the hospitality feature, because, importantly, when it comes to tourism the blood revenge only appears in tourist representations, not 'on the ground'. Locals hardly discussed blood feuds with me unless I started about the topic. What I was told by the people in the valleys, the killings mostly belonged to the past.
Yet, a Dutch man I had met by chance in the Tirana cable car, who happened to be from a Catholic Rehabilitation Organisation that worked with prisoners, told me that many people were still affected by blood revenges today. According to him, numbers raised to about 20.000 people, of which also direct family members were counted in, for example, relatives who had no income now that their family head had been killed or locked in. But, he said, it was very unlikely for me to meet anyone who was involved. After three months of doing fieldwork, I have met only one person who survived a revenge killing, and only had I heard about his story from somebody else. I can confirm that the cases are kept away from (foreign) strangers.
By discussing 'mikpritja' (hospitality) instead of 'gjakmarrja' (blood feud), we might move away from the stigmatizing framework concerning the Kanun in academic readings of it. Even though, these readings are often anti-stereotypical, other aspects of the Kanun have never equally been given attention to, and a one-sided ‘problematized’ discussion of the code of customary law is represented within anthropological science.
1.4 Suggesting Hospitality and Blood feud
Hospitality and blood feud are features of the Kanun that reappear in tourist representations over and over again. These customs are stereotypically used to describe the people of the North, and I have examined many more expressions and representations of them than the ones I have
used in my film. The two sources taken from the websites of travel guides Rough Guides and Lonely Planet do not discuss prescripts of the code of customary law by referring to its origins, the Kanun. I have found others, that go more into depth, which do, but could not place these in my timeline. Let’s have a look here at a part of the BBC travel page, which is quite bluntly titled ‘Blood Feuds in Albania’s Accursed Mountains’;
‘Many of the Malësori adhere to the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, a set of traditional
Albanian laws that evolved from ancient Illyrian tribal customs; they were codified in the 15th Century and were revived again in the 1990s after the fall of communism. The
code has four pillars: honour, hospitality, right conduct and kin loyalty, and they apply to both Christian and Muslim Albanians. This is where the Malësori’s incredible hospitality stems from. It’s why late one night, after I got lost trying to find my way back to my lodging, a Valbonë villager graciously gave me a ride to my guesthouse at 1:30am, chuckling when he discovered I’d gotten lost in a village with one road. Another morning, when we’d knocked on the door of a neighbouring house to ask if we’d missed the furgon, the young man that answered immediately made a call and waited with us until it arrived. There is a warmth that pervades the townsfolk here. But in addition to reflecting democratic and humanistic values, and placing an enormous emphasis on hospitality, parts of the Kanun have been the source of controversy among Albanians, notably the gjakmarrja, an obligatory blood feud – akin to an Italian vendetta – that requires one to commit murder in order to salvage honour lost by a previous murder or moral humiliation. Even if a traveller is murdered (which would be highly unlikely as Albania is especially safe), the traveller’s host has to avenge his or her death. It’s estimated that in 2014, roughly 3,000 Albanian families were involved in gjakmarrja’. […] ‘It was hard to imagine any sort of blood feud when I arrived at Quku i Valbonës, one of several clusters of farmhouses in Valbonë. The village was immaculate, green and woodsy. The smell of wild plants and burning wood filled the cool crisp air. I couldn’t walk a metre without hearing a birdcall or seeing a butterfly. The nearby Valbonë Valley National Park, an 8,000-hectacre Alpine wilderness, contains thousands of wildflowers species, at least 145 types of birds and healthy populations of wolves, bears and wild cats. How could this place of eerie beauty and natural splendour also be one of vengeance?’– BBC6
The author of this online travel writing piece from 2015, places his experiences within the commonly known framework of the people and the region. Why does he conclude that the driver that helped him out, did this out of a genuine deed of hospitality? And why would he imagine ‘any sort of bloodfeud’ when he arrived at Quku i Valbonës? Travel reporter Tom Waes, of the Flemish television show ‘Reizen Waes’, focussed on the same two aspects, hospitality and blood feud, in his journey to northern Albania. In the 45-minute episode he visits a family to enjoy a traditional hospitable meal and after visits a man who is involved in a vendetta. The two encounters are introduced as following;
‘After a day of driving we arrive at the North of Albania. The most traditional part of
the country, where people live according to century old customs. And those, are even written down in a book. This book. The Kanun. It is a 500-year-old law, which stands above everything, above the normal law. Herein, it is written down exactly how to behave as a northern-Albanian. How one needs to sell a house, take care of the cattle, how one needs to arrange a marriage, and, very special, how one needs to receive guests. Here, ‘chapter 18: The Guest. Rule number 1: The house of the Albanian belongs to God and the guest’. So today, I’m God’.
‘As I have noticed before, in Albania there is often a dark side to things, also to the
Kanun. You would not tell, but here, in this beautiful landscape, hundreds of families live in fear. That all, can be brought back to this chapter of the Kanun. Page 172: “Blood is paid for with blood”. Blood revenge: a terrible custom, that lives and lives forth’7.
These examples come from different sources of tourist marketing, and they all refer to Kanun practices in the branding of northern Albania, albeit in different ways. Hospitality might be something the tourist will experience; blood feuds however are practises the tourist most likely will not encounter. It surprises me that a travel program such as Reizen Waes or a tourist guide like Lonely Planet choose to mention blood feud nevertheless. As the BBC reporter questions in his article: ‘How could this place of eerie beauty and natural splendour also be one of
vengeance?’ Do these tourist marketeers mention blood revenge to sensationalize northern
Albania? Or to “exoticize” the customs of northern Albanian people? And if this was their
intention, why would the tourist be interested to visit a place described in these terms? Maybe northern Albania appears authentic by it because these customs distinguish it from their home-societies. The codes of blood revenge suggest something that Van de Port calls a ‘life-as-it-really-is’ (2004: 12). Albanian vengeance is associated with gun violence, blood and ultimately death. Van de Port talks of ‘registers of incontestability’, that are ‘experiences with which there is no arguing’ and thereby suggest authenticity (Ibid.: 14). ‘Gjakmmarja’ could be seen as such, and this may be the reason for tourist representations to present blood revenge to the potential tourist, as it highlights an idea of, in contrast to their home-societies, a world where ‘a sense of’ the, as Van de Port phrases it, ‘really real’ is (still) findable. In other words, a sense of ‘real’ that is looked for beyond the ‘contingency of their [other] reality definitions’ (Van de Port 2011: 8).
1.5 The northern Albanian as the internal other
I mostly looked at contemporary sources, not older than a couple of years, as this was also the time that Albania came into the spotlights as a tourist destination. Schwandner-Sievers discusses the travel writing of Robert Carver, who’s ‘The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania’ (1998) constructs an image of northern Albanians as ‘exotic strangers in thrall to the Kanun’ (2008). Schwandner-Sievers shows how Carver’s “exoticising” travel-imaginations of North Albania are not unique and in line with ideas that circulate in other realms such as: European politics and (foreign) popular culture. The travel-imaginations of the northern Albanian region that I discuss in this thesis, are not only found within tourism, they also exist elsewhere. Schwandner-Sievers discusses the concept of ‘Albanianism’, which refers to the powerful generalising of Albania and Albanians as the ‘Other’ (2008). Albanianism is a sub-category of ‘Balkanism’ as described in the work of Todorova (1997), which in turn could be seen as a geographical adoption of Said’s concept of ‘orientalism’, which adequately applies to the Balkan region;
‘as a system of thought [that] approaches a heterogeneous, dynamic and complex human reality from an uncritically essentialist standpoint; this suggest both an enduring Oriental reality and an opposing but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient [JvS: or in this context: Balkans] from afar and, so to speak from above’
(Said cited by Todorova 1997: 6).
According to Schwandner-Sievers, blood feud practices are one of the central elements of ‘Albanianist’ thinking, as the killings suggests a violent nature of Albanians. Since the Kanun is mostly linked to northern Albania because of its decent, the North of Albania can be seen as the “other within the other within the other”. I remember a hitchhike I took into the valley with two young Albanian city boys who were about to spend a relaxing weekend in the mountains, but nevertheless referred to the shepherd who blocked the road with his crossing cattle as a
malok (‘those from the mountain’), a nasty swearing word for mountain folks. I had come across
this discriminative attitude from non-northerner-natives more often. It is an example of othering “the other other”, or, as they are fellow-nationals: the “internal other”.
It is interesting to see that features of the north which are seen by some outsiders as primitive or backward, as for example keeping livestock, are projected positively as authentic and deep traditional within tourism. As cited in the introduction of my film, Lonely Planet sketches this accordingly with their concluding sentence; ‘It’s absolutely a highlight of any trip
to Albania, and indeed, it’s quite extraordinary to get this far removed from modern life in 21st
-century Europe’8. For most foreign tourists, the image of a shepherd crossing the road with his
dozens of sheep would be a beautiful one to be pictured. Have a look at the following Instagram post (Fig. 1) posted by a tourist who gave it the hashtags; #shepherd
#sweetchristthisplaceisglorious #mountains (among others).
Fig. 1: Instagram post of 21st October 2017 by a tourist of Valbona shepherd Arif Kadris with his cattle.
Blood feud practices are also contrastingly used by tourist marketeers in a positive imagination of northern Albania and North Albanians, whilst urban and southern Albanians assign Kanun practices to its internal others; the northerners (Schwandner-Sievers 2008: 55). Stereotypes can be used positively or negatively, depending on the context in which they are being used they can give rise to either xenophobia or exoticism (Leerssen cited by Schwandner-Sievers 2008: 49). In tourist representations, northerners are sketched as traditional and almost in savage sense by bringing up the concept of blood feud without informing and contextualising this custom. With this, marketing tries to charm tourists by inviting them to a place which is often looked for in tourism; something other, something authentic, something that I have described earlier by the concept of Van de Port: really real. As if the northerners, with their ancient customs, are the true Albanians.
As MacCannell describes in his work Staged Authenticity (1973), hosts are perfectly aware of the search for authentic experience and will construct their tourist settings accordingly. Because these settings are consciously constructed, an authentic experience is an impossible one to reach out for. But, the search for it energizes a fantasy, even if it embodies an impossibility. As mentioned earlier, blood revenge is something no tourist will likely encounter, not in stories or practices. In foreign tourist representations, as seen above, these stories exist though. The tourist settings in northern Albania are “constructed authentically” according to hospitality, which I will discuss at the end of this introduction.
The first people that I give voice to in my film are Mathias & Jeanne, two French tourists in their early thirties. They had travelled to Albania five years before and came back to revisit it. Self-reflectively they discuss the concept of ‘exoticism’, which is for them something that attracts them in choosing northern Albania as a destination: ‘this way of life in mountains we
don’t know’. Also, the fact that they find the North not too touristic is appealing to them. But
we see doubt in the interpretation of their travel wishes, when a silence drops in the middle of their argumentation before it continues. Jeanne scratches her legs, somewhat awkwardly, and Mathias rolls his eyes. Their silence and agitated movements speak for the discomfort of tourist’ longing, for is what they looking for to be found? Mathias & Jeanne self reflectively doubt the authenticity of their travel, yet still, they look for something like that.
1.6 Tourism in Albania before
Before I dive into contemporary developments any further, I should devote some words on an important part of recent Albanian history, its socialist period which lasted from 1944 to 1991.
Before all the tourists arrived in the north of Albania, there were other external developments affecting the code of the Kanun. Under the paranoid regime of dictator Enver Hoxha, no religion was accepted and the northern Albanian code of customary law was cruelly suppressed (Schwandner-Sievers 2012: 18), though scholars believe aspects of the law, such as the more normative features, were continuously practiced throughout the Hoxha-era (Mustafa 2008: 88) and even embraced by the regime and incorporated in state ideology (Schwandner-Sievers 2012: 18).
Albania was relatively isolated during its socialist period. Under the leadership of dictator Enver Hoxha, from 1944 till his death in 1985, Albania took a ‘Stalinist’ course. Albania had alliances with socialist unions such as Yugoslavia (1944-1948), the Soviet Union (1948-1961) and China (1961-1978), but eventually Hoxha aimed for an isolated state, since other states were perceived as to have deviated from the correct ideological socialist path (Hall 1984: 544). During these times, it was very hard to visit the country as a foreign tourist. There were some tourist facilitations, but they were all run by the state and strictly controlled by the official state tourist company ‘Albturist’ (Hall 1984). Tourists were preselected so that no journalists, clergy or citizens of the United States, USSR and China were admitted (Ibid.: 547). Dictator Hoxha stated that; ‘The people’s republic of Albania is closed to enemies, spies, hippie tourists and other vagabonds’9. The provided travels were “package” holidays, which meant
that every aspect of the travel was prescribed, much like the tourist possibilities in contemporary North-Korea. It was also arranged that no other Albanians were met other than the Albturist tour guides, another xenophobic and paranoid arrangement that suited Hoxha’s path to his ideal socialist state. Albania gave low priority to foreign tourism (Ibid.: 543), and the actual number of visitors, about 2500 in the beginning to about 30.000 annually at the end of the regime, was kept relatively small compared to Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union.
So, from 1944 until the collapse of the regime in 1991, Albanians could not receive foreign guests in their own homes, which can be seen as ironic in the light of the important hospitality feature of the Kanun. The north of Albania was hardly included in the state itinerary, and only Theth has been described in an Albturist guidebook10. Theth and Valbona both had
state hotels, but they were mostly used by party officials or locals. As far as I know from my informants, there has been no foreign tourism during socialism in these valleys untill the reopening of the borders.
9 Citation Enver Hoxha quoted from exhibition panel in museum BunkArt 2, Tirana. 10 Source: https://www.galabri.com/foto/pdf/touristguide.pdf (last visited: 28-2-2018).
In the nineties, during the transition period, new tourist businesses were developed, but these were counteracted by two important factors. Firstly, the transition period to democratic regime caused economic instability and insecurities about land possession, which was followed by a flow of migration. And secondly, the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the huge pyramid investment schemes in 1996, leaving many investors completely bankrupt, which led to a series of riots and another cause of mass migration (Musaraj 2011). In the nineties roughly 800.000, then about a third of the population, migrated to neighbouring countries such as Greece and Italy (Mai & Schwandner-Sievers 2003: 941). The migration flows are seen as another cause of negative stereotyping of Albanians in the receiving countries (Schwandner-Sievers 2008: 49). And the instability of the country caused a negative image to the rest of the world, and also damaged tourism infrastructure and attractions. These two factors influenced the potential growth of the business and the number of foreign tourists (Hall 2000: 37). Locals told me that during the nineties only a dozen of foreign tourists visited the Theth and Valbona valleys, which were during that time even harder to reach then today, because the roads were bumpier and tourist information about the places was hardly accessible. Travel book writer Gillian Gloyer send me her notes on Theth and Valbona for the first Bradt guides on Albania, the editions of 2002 and 2005. According to her back then, there was nothing of touristic interest. ‘The scenery in Valbona is marvellous, but the village itself is slightly depressing’ she wrote down after her first visit. In 2005 there were only 4 rooms specifically suited for tourist11,
and in that same year Gloyer was one of the first non-locals to attempt the Valbona pass to Theth. This is very much in contrast of what the hike is, twelve summers later, today: the most popular track of northern Albania.
The turn of the century brought economic stabilization, and about 300.000 tourists travelled Albania annually at the early 2000’s12. Under the leadership of president Edi Rama, a
social democrat, Albania achieved a candidateship for the European Union. The country also has a fairly constant economic growth of which tourism is one of the biggest contributing sectors13. Today about 4 million tourists visit Albania annually14. The Dutch embassy in Tirana,
describes this increase: ‘Every year more and more people focus on Albania as a holiday destination’. Though they mention that still: ‘It is maybe one of the few destinations in Europe where mass tourism barely exists’. Albania is mentioned on plentiful lists of “must-visit
11 This was in the Rilindja hotel, the first offical hotel in Valbona and the place where I volunteered as a receptionist.
12 Source:
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/frontlines-novemberdecember-2016/locals-take-reins-albania%E2%80%99s-tourism (last visited 28-02-2018).
13 Source: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/albania/gdp-growth (last visited 28-02-2018).
14 Source:
destinations in 2018”. As cited in my film, Rough Guide says: ‘Pay a visit to this beguiling
corner of Europe now, before it garners the popularity it deserves’. Unquestionably, the
tourism in Albania is on a tipping point.
Fig. 2: Screenshot of film. The building which stands in the centre of this frame and in the qender (centre) of Valbona
is the old socialist hotel. It was mostly used by party officials and locals. It is in ruins today, because it is not clear who owned the building after the end of socialist rule.
1.7 Fieldwork considerations
In my research, I have looked at ways of how the two aspects of the Kanun that are highlighted in tourist representations, hospitality and bloodfeud, reappear ‘on the ground’. How do these ideas of hospitality and blood feud influence tourist perceptions of northern Albania? And how do these ideas from tourism influence hosts? I travelled with my camera to the Theth and Valbona valleys, the most popular mountain regions of North Albanian for tourists. Theth and the connecting Shala river valley have been internationally associated with and known for the conducts of the Kanun as early as the writings of the likes of anthropologist Edith Durham (High Albania, 1909) and writer Rose Wilder Lane (The Peaks of Shala, 1923).
I volunteered as a receptionist for Rilindja, the first official guesthouse and camping of Valbona (established in 2008 by local Alfred Selimaj). I checked guests in & out, answered
their questions and incoming emails, and showed them hiking tracks. At the same time, I got in touch with the staff, which mostly existed of Valbona natives. I also worked for Catherine Bohne, an American citizen who has been active in sustainable tourism development of Valbona and the wider region for the last 8 years. For her, I photographed all guesthouses in the valley for an update of the frequently used website www.journeytovalbona.com (below are some examples of these photographs, to give an impression of the guesthouses in the valleys). These volunteer jobs gave me multiple insights in the nature of tourism of the region and great connections to hosts and guests. Stronza suggests that researchers who study tourism should take into account perspectives of both hosts and guests, and according to her, research to tourism is too often one-sided (2001). With my work I was able to pursue that. On my days off I hiked between mountain peaks to visit different guesthouses to talk to their hosts and guests. In total, I have visited all the 35 guesthouses in the Valbona valley, stayed over at about 10, and visited many frequently in return. In Theth I have visited 5 guesthouses and stayed in one for a week in total. I had 10 formal interviews, all recorded on film, but mostly informal conversations off-the-record.
The main question that informed my empirical research was: How is the Kanun, a code of customary law prescribing both hospitality and blood revenge, used by hosts within the tourist industry of the Theth and Valbona valleys (northern Albania), and how is this perceived by tourists? The vignette below, that I have written down in my fieldwork diary, shows my encounter with the topic in an introductory way.
Tirana, capital of Albania, mid-june, 2017.
On my second night in Tirana I met an interesting guy in the hostel. He was a French self-made mountain tour guide in the North, and he had just come back from 3 months of work within this region. I talked with him about my research subject, and he seemed somehow very emotional about it. He said he thought about the effects of tourism a lot, and that he thought that it was harming the traditional Albanian hospitality. He gave me an anecdote of one really busy day in the Valbona valley. He looked for a place to sleep but could not find it anywhere. This was when he thought: ‘from this day it’s over’, now hosts won’t be able to just sit down with their guests over a cup of coffee to share some thoughts with them. According to the tour guide, with this much tourists visiting the region, a more “Western” kind of service industry manner would take place of the traditional hospitality. He referred to the popular track between Theth and Valbona as
the “coca-cola track”, after the recently opened cafés on this route, and the increasing popularity. That night, when the guide had expressed these feelings and opinions with me, is when I first thought: ‘so this topic of mine, is a topic’.
1.8 Concluding
The focus in my film turns to the emotion this mountain tour guide expresses, and particularly his feeling that the growth of tourism haunts hospitality. The tourist representations of northern Albania, as discussed earlier, emphasise the hospitable nature of northern Albanian hosts. How does this influence hosts behaviour, and how does it influence tourist expectations? Is hospitality being commodified? Are questions that eventually mostly got my interest and primarily motivated my fieldwork research. It is also the direction my film turns to, as hardly any tourist informant knew about the Kanun aspects of blood revenge and almost all discussed hospitality instead, like the German couple in the second interview of my film.
In the following chapter, I will discuss my visual considerations. Why and how did I take on a visual anthropology? After this discussion, I will continue to follow the timeline of my film and the topics that are being brought up by, that is, the commodification of hospitality.
Fig. 3: As volunteer, I made photographs of all the 35 guesthouses in Valbona valley, and some in Theth, for the information
website www.journeytovalbona.com. This is a selection of these photographs to give an impression of the different tourist accommodations. From left to right, top to bottom: Guesthouse Avdi Isufi, Stani I Arif Kadris, Rilindja (where I volunteered as receptionist), Perperimi, Bujtina e Valbones, Bar-Restorant Relax, Arben Selimaj Guesthouse and Guesthouse Kol Gjoni.
2. The “lenses” I took to Albania: obviously opting for a ‘hybrid’ ethnography 2.1 Why have I chosen to bring a camera along?
I find it difficult to formulate what motivated me in doing a ‘hybrid’ ethnography. As a visual artist, that choice felt like a ‘natural’ one, and it is hard to question the, to me, obvious decision to bring my camera on fieldwork. When I do formulate what I think ‘it is’ that drives me to use a camera, I see how dry my words sound in contrast to how happy I feel to capture things visually. Writing about this practise is an analytical translation of something I ‘feel’ instead of ‘think’ while doing it. I believe the difficulty of formulating my motivation lies in my background. My choice does not stem from a transition, whereas for many anthropologists taking on the visual is something they choose after having done research with words. I however have never made this transition, as my background is in visual arts. Within visual arts I always had to conceptually question why I used a specific visual language, but never why I would opt for visual language in the first place. Nevertheless, in this chapter I will try to analyse choosing a ‘hybrid’ ethnography, and the choices that come along with this decision.
Before Mattijs van de Port and Sanderien Verstappen set up the Visual Anthropology Pilot as part of the Master Cultural and Social Anthropology, I did not feel the urge to apply for the regular master program. After hearing about their visual pilot plans, however, I did sign up. An anthropology without a visual approach does not feel ‘complete’ to me, and I know I could not have done the same research without it. But why did I feel it was so necessary to bring a camera along to my research?
Partly, I cannot describe my choice to take on a visual approach, because part of this decision is made with an intuitive understanding. It is an excitement, a joy and adrenaline when something is explained well to me with images. It makes me sit on the edge of my chair and I can only utter something like ‘ha!’, ‘tsss…’, ‘oh…’ or ‘wow!’. This is maybe similar to the “punctum” quality, as Barthes describes, a photograph can have: the piercing quality of a picture that goes beyond analytical consciousness, as contrastingly the photographic quality he calls ‘studium’ does (1980: 26-27). I would feel amputated not being able to show at least what the guesthouses in the Valbona look like, as I do on the previous page. These are shortcomings I experience when reading written ethnographies that lack any visual material. I have learned that words are signs and symbols, but they transmit knowledge in an entirely different way. My choice for a hybrid thesis is essentially a ‘desire to communicate fieldwork findings more fully’,
as Van de Port motivates the search for alternative mediations and is driven by the ‘communicative promises’ that particular media carry (forthcoming: 4).
However, another part of the understanding I have of my decision for the visual is more easily explainable, and visual anthropology has taught me to inform and analyse my intuition. ‘Why would I film the tourist-host encounters in northern Albania? How would I film that?
What can film show of this?’ Are questions supervisor Mattijs van de Port asked me to answer.
First, I will make an attempt to answer the “why”. I have asked the ‘reader’ to first be a ‘viewer’, and see, before I contextualise any further. This is, because I am in favour of associative knowledge sharing, a technique that is more commonly found in visual arts. Visual anthropology lends itself for this technique, because of the layered intertextuality that is created with words, images and sounds. An example of this may be the opening scene of my thesis film: the rough mountain meadows of the northern Albanian Alps infiltrated with lines taken from tourist representations of the region. Yes, I use a voice-over, to present these guidebook texts, but I do not clarify what I mean by them. It is up to the viewer to make the connection between the two and to read the message of the “layered-ness” that I create by this editing choice.
This is also something that MacDougall describes with the concepts of ‘being’ and ‘meaning’ (2006:1). Being is the reality as it appears to us, and meaning is the assigning of an understanding. The images of the rough mountain landscape might fall under ‘being’, as the landscape just is, but with the infiltration of tourist representations I create a meaning and introduce the direction the film will take: an unfolding of these representations. Within my filming and editing decisions I tried to balance the more subjective or reflective ‘meaningful’ images, to the ‘being’ images. How? During my fieldwork period, I made sure to shoot enough
b-roll footage, that is, images that I use in between the more meaningful shots such as densely
informative interviews. A good example of a ‘being’ film is Sweetgrass (2009) by Harvard Sensory Lab scholar Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash. It follows a shepherd with his sheep on the mountains and highly emphasizes on an overwhelming image quality. The film is taken as example by Grimshaw to sketch the ‘aesthetic turn’ in visual anthropology (2011): one that is not afraid any longer of using the aesthetics which are similarly seen in visual arts.
Needless to say, I was not afraid in the first place of aesthetics in my project, and I likewise wanted to aesthetically emphasize the surroundings of the Theth and Valbona valleys. The overwhelming mountainous nature is the first reason tourists come to visit them, and I felt it was necessary to share this with a viewer who has not been there. I also wanted enough footage of the ‘human landscape’, such as how the houses and tourist facilitations look like. I
made sure not to make these frames too clean or picturesque, like the tourist would mostly want their photos to be, but to show this human landscape as it appeared to me in the valleys: messy and chaotic, as old ruin like and bright new structures stand right next to each other. Now let me move on to more of those ‘considerations of a filming anthropologists’.
Fig. 4: Stock photo15 of the camcorder I have bought for my filmic encounters: as if it is made to shoot footage of the tourist scene, the stock photo shows an image of an apparent touristic destination on its LCD screen. The camera market is strongly focussed on the tourist consumer – as also discussed by Urry & Larsen with the concept of ‘Kodakisation’: ‘Kodak in effect invented tourist photography through developing a new system, assembling together a novel set of material and social relations’ (2011: 170) The concept of presentation in tourism lends itself for a
visual inquiry. Vision is central to tourist experience as Urry argued with his concept of the ‘tourist gaze’.
Additionally, many aspects of tourism are ‘visually objectified or captured through photographs, postcards, films, models and so on’ (Larsen & Urry 2011: 4). Contemporary digital techniques such as digital cameras, smart phones and tablets continue to increase the visual impact in tourism even more, while the internet facilitates worldwide circulation of photographs and films through social media. Though, it is not only in the field of tourism that vision has a central place: it is argued that visual images are of growing importance in contemporary everyday life. Following this trend, scholars who study cultural and social life increasingly use visual research methods to do so (Pink 2004, Rose 2014).
Fig. 5: Photo of me up on the mountains recording the valley with my set; camera, microphone, dead cat, headphones
and monopod. (Taken by Annie Nguyen).
2.2 When have I pulled my camera out of its camera bag?
I will now move onto discuss two ‘considerations of a filming anthropologist’ as written up by Perle Møhl (2011: 227):
- What does the camera ‘‘do’’ to the world and to the anthropological project? - What shifts of form, what mise-en-scène take place when the camera sets in? In short; what are the consequences of a filming anthropology regarding the research process? I will approach Møhl’s questions with my filmic considerations in the field. One important choice was not to start filming informants until I achieved a sense of rapport. What I did start filming with, in the first month of my fieldwork, was the nature of the Theth and Valbona valleys, as argued before, I understood this as an important feature of its tourism and the imagery of the North. Most of the footage I brought home picture the rough mountainous landscape, and the human landscape that resides in it. In my film, I give time to show the importance of the overwhelming landscape by starting off with a few-minute long devotion to it. I want to let the viewer enter this different realm, as it also physically takes a few hours to arrive to these isolated meadows in real life (to be precise: a 10 hour hike up from the valley down below).
A relatively small amount of the total footage I took back from the Theth and Valbona valleys consists of observations of people, or interviews. It is in my personality to be humble, and thereby I became also a humble researcher. I guess I was scared of what my camera did sometimes, as it constantly made explicit what my intention was in the social encounters I had. Funnily enough, Møhl ascribes this explicitness as a powerful aspect of the camera and being a filming anthropologist (Ibid.: 229). I guess I could have agreed with him if I would not have been an unexperienced (student) researcher. There were many informal moments with people that gave me valuable data for my research question, and looking backwards reflectively, I have been far too considerate with asking if I could film those moments. I have often been dependent on writing still; jotting down notes in my fieldwork diaries about these informing moments. Would I have pulled my camera out of its camera bag more often, the people I worked with could have become indifferent to it. For now, the moments I did pull my camera out, to document people and what they had to say, were set mostly. Sort of like the mise-en-scène Møhl describes in his article, a Goffmanesque ‘front- and backstage’ was made by me (Ibid.: 230). I made the ones in front of the camera conscious of when I was recording and when not, in other words, when the situation was “framed” by my camera, and when the rec-button was off. I staged these situations, sort of, by framing people, putting them in front of a nice-looking background. I then questioned them about things we had discussed beforehand in a more informal setting. Those moments became collaborative moments, as also Møhl positively
mentions (Ibid.: 231); in which people were more aware of taking part in my research, thanks to my camera, more than the times when my camera was stored away in its camera bag. Those moments I pulled my camera out, people were more aware of their participation in my project. With this quality Møhl ascribes the epistemological character of a filmic anthropology because filming is not simply mediating the already acquired knowledge, the filmic process itself can become an approach to the field (Ibid.: 228).
I also stimulated participation by mostly conducting double-interviews, as I liked my interviews to be a dynamic conversation rather than a one-dimensional inquiry. I wanted to break with the normative ‘talking head’ shot, that gives the speaker a dominant voice in documentaries. My approach shows that the answers a person gives, is also just his or her point of view, as we see the thinking expression on the face of the other person, forcing us to realize that other answers could have been given (see example of the film in the still below in Fig.6). Hereby, we cannot assume that the people that I gave voice to in my film, represent the tourist. The multi-interview makes the viewer conscious of the multiplicity of opinions that surround the topic being discussed.
At other moments, I go further than showing “situatedness”, by even showing ‘staged’ moments or images. I use performative still-lifes as intermediate scenes in-between subject chapters. (See for example, those used as film stills on the cover of this thesis and Fig.5). I display a keychain of the lock-in-tower, the Kanun book, a guestbook, a novel by Ismail Kadare, a postcard with the caption hospitality. These are associative windows that I use to guide the viewer into a certain direction. A filmmaker that inspires me for this approach is Agnès Varda. The timelines in her documentary films are rich because she uses more than merely the essential shots. In her film ‘Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse’ (2000) she uses the personal and the random, yet creatively combines it to an associative whole of her subject. During my fieldwork period, I visited the Kosovar documentary film festival Dokufest and attended a screening of ‘My Own Private War’ (2015), a film by an earlier film teacher of mine, Lidija Zelovic. Her film also takes on a mosaic style, and in it, she travels many places and times to make up her personal story about the Sarajevo war. In my thesis film, I, similarly to Varda and Zelovic tried to gather images, words and sounds to edit one “mosaic” of commodification processes that occur in the growing tourism in the Valbona and Theth valleys. I chose not to make a character-driven film, or to give voice to the goings of one guesthouse, but rather take in bits and pieces from here and there. The outcome of my mosaic-like film is much like the character of my fieldwork, in which I was moving through the mountains from one guesthouse to the other.
Within this mosaic style, I decided to incorporate found footage to create another level of intertextuality by means of ‘recycling’ fragments as Russell suggests (1999: 238). For example, the images taken from Albania’s official tourist marketing commercial16 (See
screenshots Fig.11), where a “local host” in Theth, approaches “two tourists” to come share a raki with him. A dramatic nineties-Hollywood-trailer-like voice-over emphasizes the hospitable character of the Albanian host with the words: ‘Come as a traveller, stay as a guest’. With this example, I want to show the commodified presentation of hospitality. Other found footage that I incorporate, is the video clip of Stresi and Anxhelo Koci17. Their ‘me fal 2’, a love rap, came
out in August, and was the first ever music video shot in Theth. It was a real summer hit, and I heard it blasting from speakers in the cafes in the valleys and up on the mountains. When my informant Adenis showed it to me on film, on the mountain pass from Valbona to Theth, I found a place on my timeline for it. To me it speaks of the local love of the mountainous landscape, for it is not only the tourist that thrives for it, it is also the “baddest” rapper of Albania that chooses this decor. By repositioning the tourism commercial and the rap video clip within my own timeline, I have appropriated, or, “recycled”, them within the mosaic of the montage. The hip-hop song also brings the documentary to today; as is discussed within my thesis film, the influence of the growing tourism on hospitality, is a development that is taking place now. The images that I edited under the song are images of hiking tourists on the popular Valbona-Theth mountain pass – it is these people that Arben & Adenis Selimaj have invited to come to their valley, and it is these people that they hope to grow in numbers. This scene marks the closing of my thesis film. It is followed by the French couple that opened the conversation in the film, questioning what the future will bring, and Theth-native Nik Harusha on his çifteli singing about the tourism that brings him work, but only about enough money to buy him a coca cola in the cafe during his break time. With this sentiment I close my film, as the commodification process of hospitality may be discussed, but it has to be considered in the light of today’s poverty.
Nik Harusha’s song is not translated, and it would be hard to understand the literal meaning of the song without being able to speak his thick Thethian Gheg accent. Still, I have chosen to not translate his song, nor anything else in my film, or to clarify anything else with headings or additional titles (such as names, ages or professions of people). I did not want to distract the viewer with additional information, as I found that it would be “saturating”: as if the filmmaker is like a God who knows all and will explain all. The viewer hereby enters the
16 Link to the full commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUU_MKTET_o (last visited: 28-2-2018) 17 Link to the videoclip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq6gtvdiKTc (last visited: 28-2-2018)
world of the Theth and Valbona valleys as a tourist, not being able to make everything directly understandable.
2.3 Concluding
In this chapter, I cannot discuss all choices I have made in filming and editing, but I hope to have shown my intentions by discussing some important aspects As I have argued, I see my film as a layered mosaic of images, words and sounds. The film presents a totally different angle of my research project than this written part, but I consider them as one functioning whole. The written component is a further analysis and contextualisation of the phenomenon that is portrayed by the film: it serves as a ‘behind the scenes’ look. This master thesis is a hybrid work, but like Van de Port argued: ‘there are only hybrid anthropologies’, as research methods are based on vision and films produce ‘an endless stream of words’ whilst being ‘analysed, discussed and criticized’ (forthcoming: 3) – much like the attempt of this document.
Fig. 6: Screenshots of film: showing examples of double-interviews and thinking faces next to the talking person.
3. Commodification of Hospitality? 3.1 Introduction
After discussing methodological considerations in the previous chapter, we continue following the steps taken in the timeline of the film. From the rough mountain meadows of Maja
Gjarpërit, down into the Theth valley where we discussed ‘exoticism’ with two French tourists,
we move onto the tower that stood in the backyard of where the interview with the French couple took place. An Albanian leaf whistle guides us to the steps of it, where two German tourists discuss the Kanun as introduced to them by the popular novel ‘Broken April’ (1982) written by the famous Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare. The man discusses the rules that appear in the novel, that a guest is almost like a god according to the rules. When I ask him if he thinks that the Kanun is still alive, he answers that he feels something of this hospitality when he enters a house. I then let Gita and her cousin Sokol Koceku, two heirs of the last Kanun-judge of Theth, speak about their feelings of contemporary ‘mikpritja’. The vignette below shows what took place before and after my filmed interview with Gita and Sokol;
Theth, northern Albania. Some days near the end of august, 2017.
I walked the most popular hiking trail, the Valbona mountain pass to Theth, to visit the Kulla e Ngujimit. This defence tower is one of the last standing of its kind. It is the bloodfeud tower, lock-in-tower or tower of self-defence. A tower of many names that now houses a museum on the Kanun. I came to discuss the Kanun rules of hospitality, or ‘mikpritja’ in Albanian. I decided to sleep in the neighbouring Mark Zef Koceku’s guesthouse, run by the son of the last judge of the Kulla, Mark Koceku, and his daughter Gita. I wanted to approach Gita Koceku for an interview on the Kanun in the next-door tower, since I learned that she was the only family member who spoke English well.
The first night, I made a shameful mistake. I arrived at the guesthouse with Ilir Selimaj18, the young horse guide that had taken me over the mountain range. Mark Zef
Koceku was sitting on the other side of the table with him, discussing something in Albanian which I did not understand but tried to understand, because Mark looked at me while he was speaking. I asked Gita, who was also at the table, what he was saying.
She explained that Mark offered his hospitality, because he knew Alfred Selimaj, Ilir his cousin, and he could sleep and eat here for free. Because Mark looked at me all throughout his speech, and because I was also associated with Alfred through working for him in his Guesthouse Rilindja, I thought this also applied to me. I turned to Gita, uttering: ‘No, but this is too kind, I cannot except your offer, I will pay for my stay’ – an awkward statement which still did not feel comfortable for me, but which I had to make at almost every guesthouse I stayed. She said that Mark did not mean this applied to me, the hospitality applied to Ilir, because he was like family to them, and that I would have to pay. I told Gita I was sorry for the misunderstanding, of course I had to pay and I was more than willing to do so. I had gotten so used to getting things for free in the Valbona valley, and so used to the phrases I needed to state in order to accept the hospitality, that I almost acted automatically. I felt horribly ashamed and hoped the family would not think poorly of me. My remark could make me a “cheap Western tourist”, who takes advantage of northern Albanian generosity, or at least takes it for granted. This was my first night, and I was planning to stay at least four more. Because of my embarrassment, I did not dare to ask Gita for an interview that day. Ilir and I shared the same room, and before going to sleep, I discussed my feelings with him. He told me that, either way, Mark did not show his hospitality correctly. I asked why, and Ilir explained that he had not used the right words, and that the offer did not feel warm but rather, more or less obligatory.
The following day I asked Gita for the interview during a walk she guides for tourists to the Grunas waterfall. I walked behind her on the narrow hiking path when I made my request. It felt slightly strange, as she did not look at me while we talked. I wanted to see her facial expressions to have an easier communication. She replied that she could do it, but that she also had her doubts. Would I want her to do it for free? She stated she that she was a guide, and it was her work, and she could use the money. I told her that I was a student, and normally did not give money for interviews, but that I understood this was more like a guided tour for her, so that I could give her something. She was also curious to the topics I wanted to discuss. I told her I was interested in stories of the Kanun, and she replied that she might not be the best person to ask. What would people think of them, when they heard the several brutal stories? The stories would sound strange to outsiders. If someone breaks the honourable code, other families have the right to punish. Chaotically she started sharing unfollowable glimpses of
examples that included the burning of houses and the killing of families because of breaking the Kanun rules.
Later, back home, she changed her opinion and told me it was very important for her to be hospitable and wanted to be my guide. Also, she understood that I was a student, so I did not have to pay for the interview. This was only after she asked me about the specific topics that I wanted to discuss with her in the interview, of which, as I explained, hospitality was a part.
After my interview request, Gita and her father Mark started to treat me differently. Whenever I sat down in their courtyard, jotting down field notes in my diary or reading a book (funnily enough, Broken April at that time), they would offer me something, something extra. One day Mark brought me two apples and a peeling knife with a smile. ‘Te böfte mirë’ (enjoy) and ‘Faliminderit shumë’ (thank you very much) was all that we could exchange, as I did not speak much Albanian and he did not speak any English. Mark disappeared into the house again and his daughter Gita came by my table and said: ‘My father is taking care of you’ – ‘Yes he is’ – ‘You wanted to see hospitability? This is hospitality’ – ‘There you go’, I replied. The encounter felt strange, as if Mark and Gita had just “performed” hospitality in front of me. Why would they want to make sure that the apples Mark had brought me were seen as a sign of hospitality? Would I also not just experience the hospitability without them making it clear to me? And would it not have been perhaps more, “pure”, or, “authentic” as tourists like to phrase it?
3.2 ‘you? ska lekë’
I have had countless uncomfortable experiences of exchange during my fieldwork period. The above is one example out of many others, and I will discuss it further in a subsequent paragraph but firstly, will look into my overall experience. It was never clear which role I took within the “exchange game”. I was neither tourist nor guest, as I was a student researcher on the subject of tourism and at the same time also a volunteer for Catherine Bohne and Alfred Selimaj. Many people offered me their hospitality because of my connection with them, and almost everyone I met knew both of them. Some who were connected closest to Catherine or Alfred, offered me their services for free.
For instance, the family of Arben Selimaj, who I got to know through photographing their Valbona guesthouse for the new website run by Catherine Bohne. I frequently returned to
their house because I made good contacts, and they kept inviting me. Arben kept saying: ‘Katrine (Catherine), shumë mire (very good). You, very good’ with a smile and thumbs up, pointing at me: ‘you, ska lekë (no money)’. I tried several times to offer them the right amount for my food and stay, but they would never accept it and I learned I should not try any longer as it was a disgrace of their gift. ‘Don’t even start about it’, Arben’s wife Ferije would tell me on yet another attempt, with a determined look in her eyes. ‘Sorry’, I replied, embarrassingly with puppy-eyes. Upon discussing their hospitality with Catherine, I asked her why they would offer me all this for free. I had eaten and slept several times at their house. Catherine came with an interesting thought: it might be that they felt happy to share something with someone they got to know more closely. As tourists come and go, and I was a face that stayed around for three months or so. Catherine thought they had the urge to share their hospitality but could not give it for free to the tourists visiting their guesthouse. Whenever they could give it for free, to others more than mere tourists, like me, they would, happily, as being hospitable is honourable for them.
This honourability stems from rules of how to treat a guest as written down by the Kanun, but this reference might not mean too much to them today. Being hospitable is important without a clear connection to the ancient prescriptions that coded it. But, does it mean if one pays for their stay, that one cannot share their hospitality? When I ask Gita & Sokol what the changes are within today’s hospitality compared to before, they mention that taking care of guests is not any different to ‘përpara’ (before). Only today ‘one has to pay a price for the service’. Could that claim be true? I can recall one other awkward encounter that could be used to approach this question. I visited the guesthouse of Tahir, 1100 metres up in the two-house village of Kukaj upon Maja e Thatë, to photograph it for Catherine’s website. I also decided to stay over, for my own experience, as Catherine and Alfred advised me to. They both thought Tahir might be an interesting ‘figure’ for my research regarding hospitality. I was invited by the tipsy but friendly Tahir in his living room to watch MTV video clips together. We did for some minutes, sharing his incredibly strong raki and the very few mutual words we knew. Upon asking where the bathroom was, he made clear I could use their private bathroom, not the guest bathroom. This was one of the distinctions Tahir made between me and the big group of Israelis that also stayed over. Another, was that I had to have my dinner in the living room with his family. Only, they were not eating, they were in my company watching me having my dinner. The morning after, I asked for the price of my stay. This time, Tahir looked at me with less-friendly eyes, and kind of coldly he told me the price. The same price the other guests had paid. I was kind of surprised to be honest, as I thought I would not have to pay for a dinner which I
