As I mentioned before, travel takes a lot of time as the roads are horrible and when we climb into the mountains it really gets interesting. There are no guardrails and the drop offs can be dramatic. The scenery can be breathtaking, but all eyes are on the road since there are kids, donkeys, sheep, rock slides and of course other traffic taking wide fast turns. We have an Albanian driver because there are no road signs, and we often have to ask directions because signs are truly non existent. It's also best from a risk management perspective to have a native driver.
Every trip is something of an adventure.
The first stop is to an established camp to deliver some paperwork to a family seeking to go abroad for medical treatment of their son who needs eye surgery as he is nearly blind since birth. The problem is correctable but not here in Albania. While there, we allow a number of the refugees who have contact numbers to make satellite telephone calls. Again our task is to help re-establish contact or communication between family members or do detailed tracings for the vulnerable groups that I mentioned in my first report. When visting any camp we ask about conditions in the camp and then pass on what we hear to the organization that supports the camp.