By Dodë Melyshi
Memorie.al / Kastrioti and I were childhood friends. Peers. Eight years in a classroom. The beginning of the 90s separated us all and in different states. Therefore, since then I had rarely met him, very rarely. With a fleeting greeting, as only immigrants in the rush of time, always insufficient, know how to do. This August was different. Two mornings in a row, we drink coffee in Rrëshen. Not long enough to go deep, but long enough to understand. And to understand why he had thousands and thousands of followers on social networks. And to understand his projects, which focused among others on a live TV channel on the network.
With a simple, honest, essential and direct, promotional language, with a subtle and healthy irony, he understood something that many pluri-graduates never manage to understand: how to reach the masses! How do you get to the taste, need, emotion and desire of the common man?!
How is it possible to take advantage of the binomial: birthplace-community?
Evidence of the fact that talent, genius and creative spirit, before being taught in schools and universities, are born together with man.
Coherent and transparent with oneself and with others, key elements to determine success even in laudable humanitarian initiatives. The property that few belong to.
When we heard the news of his death, we were in the car together with Tanushi, my peer and close friend. We covered those 15 km. path we had programmed, like numb. Unable to speak with me, only by exchanging some syllables. We didn’t believe it!
He passed away a few days ago.
His heart had “betrayed” him, twice, – we were told. But we are left with a legitimate and lingering doubt in our brains, that the total lack of a health system in Albania, where the human life is in the first place, had betrayed him.
If that boy had been in any country in Europe or even the Balkans, he would have been saved, obviously.
In Albania, human life is worth very little, less than half. Less than the take-off of a helicopter, less than the missing apparatus of an ambulance. It is often zero.
It is enough to enter a simple pharmacy and you understand the absurdity of Albanian healthcare. Like it happened to me a few days ago. In front of me a man not yet old. He asked for some aspirin. “Do you want tacipirin too?” – says the pharmacist. They knew each other of course, but that doesn’t mean anything. The first time he said: no, no, then hesitantly he said yes.
The pharmacist divided some grains and gave them to him. Those there pharmacies are not only sold in packages but also in grains or bags. Just like in 1990, when we were a little more than teenagers, we thought proud to show the world that we know how to smoke cigarettes, at the kiosk in front of the gymnasium that a saleswoman, who sold open cigarettes, with numbers, without a package.. .!
“Do you want tacipirin too?” – said the pharmacist to his lordship. I was speechless. I couldn’t stand it, and I told him that; Tacipirinas are not candy, and maybe you need a cardiologist’s prescription for them…!
This is how our Albania is.
“The state has fallen here” – is the daily ritual heard on everyone’s lips. It is distinguished by health, by order, by the lack of vision to program a dignified future, by the unscrupulous greed of those who govern it. The state has fallen, and the country is being abandoned, massively.
“You see, there are no more youth here, not even young couples, there are not even women giving birth to a new generation. They are all running away,” a friend told me.
On the ferry on the penultimate Sunday in August, which marked what we call “the close of the summer holidays,” as it danced over the blue waters of the Adriatic, toward Italy, those very waters between the sky and the sea, my thought went to my friend childhood that was “surrendered” five days ago!
And the other thought about the belief that I was leaving behind, an in-existing state, standing, as far as eye and cheek, prey of jackals and extortioners, ruined since its structure. Together with his health system, terribly unworthy! Memorie.al
