ACD Friends Earthquake Relief -Durres, Albania
Beginning the night of 25 November, the rumblings and tremors alerted the residents of Durres and surrounding areas that they should be wary through the night. Friends I have spoken to slept restlessly, waking often to more shakes until finally, just before 4 am, for three minutes they endured an earthquake that would register at a 6.4 on the internationally referenced Richter Scale. Those not in the area awoke to alarming Facebook and Twitter posts from friends and relatives in the affected area, marking themselves safe and sharing their fears.
Since then, the aftershocks and subsequent earthquakes were relentless, making Search and Rescue impossible at times and destroying more homes and businesses that initially withstood the 6.4. It has been three days, and the death toll continues to climb at a rate of dozens a day. There are many more missing, presumed dead but unconfirmed. Still hundreds are injured, and thousands displaced.
Albanians are struggling to find family, friends, and so many have fled their homes, their clothes, all of their belongings and have not yet been able to return to assess the damage. Many who lived in Durres and worked at Albanian College Durres were checking in with each other and our friends still in the area, asking for one another and asking how we could help. We know well the limitations of depending on "aid" projects that suddenly started popping up, and other reputable organizations were flooded with more aid than their infrastructure could manage. Several of us then agreed to open this account in order to target specific aid to people we personally knew. Our dozens of Albanian friends have a long road ahead of them to piece their homes, lives and sense of security back together. We have asked one of our trusted friends to keep tabs on our former coworkers as they check in with one another, and have spread this Go Fund Me among ourselves and our friends and families.
At the end of December, I will be going to Durres to visit our friends and will give them the donation in cash. My own donation will supplement the 30 cent fee for every donation as well as the 2.7% Go Fund Me takes for each transfer. That way you will know 100% of what you donate will go to our many Albanian friends who have been sleeping in the central Stadium or in their cars. I will continue to update here with news reports and eventually reports of where the funding will go.
If there are any particular people connected to our ACD community that you would like to support, please let me know in a message here or on Facebook (Christy Loop Dervishi).
Who I am:
I am a teacher from the United States of America, who lived in Durres, Albania from 2015-2019.
I have been asked to describe my relationship to the people that this fund will support, and words are hard to come by. I worked with about a dozen Albanian citizens while at the school, and through the community many of the staff who worked at the school got to know about a dozen more who helped us sell our cars, greeted us with hugs and kisses when we came to their shops and stores, or who came into our homes and helped us maintain cleanliness and order in our otherwise hectic lives. At the school, I and many other foreign teachers built relationships with the local staff who worked in jobs ranging from custodial staff to Administrative leadership. In my four years with them, I got to know them so well, they feel like long lost family members. We knew their stories of living under Communism, We knew their struggles to become educated and hold onto a job that was exhausting them, we knew their hopes and aspirations for their children to become successful in their own pathways in life. Some of their children were in my childrens' classes, others would be my "person" in case of emergency and would pick me up at the airport in the dead of night. When news of the earthquake reached those of us who are no longer in Durres, we immediately began a chat group and talked about how we could help our dear friends in what had been our very close, supportive community at ACD. This fund was the result, and I volunteered to initiate it and manage the donations.
In terms of how the funds will be spent, so far we have identified the following ways. Our fund will ensure they get the assistance and relief that is needed immediately:
- One beloved member of our community of Albanian coworkers and friends died in the initial earthquake. She was an older woman who was working to support her elderly husband and disabled son. Her body was pulled from the rubble of their collapsed home, and she died soon after. Her husband survived, as did her son who was in Italy at the time getting treatment. Our fund will provide them with several months salary she would have been earning at this time, in order to ensure they can afford her funeral and other expenses that they face in the immediate future.
- Two educative staff members lost their homes. One had just purchased her home within the past year, and still needs to make bank payments on what is now a pile of boulders. The funds will assist them in purchasing new furniture and items such as bedding and household necessities.
- The rest of our community spent several nights or even a week in areas outside of Durres, grabbing emergency items if they could. Some slept in their cars, eating out in whatever cafe or restaurant was operating. The fund will support their expenditures incurred when they fled to places like Shkoder, Pogradec, Korca, Elbasan, Vllore, even Kosovo, for safety during the relentless subsequent earthquakes and aftershocks that continued to shake apart buildings in and around Durres for several days.
Once we reach our goal of $6,000, I will withdraw the fund from my bank account in the US and travel to Durres with the full amount. I will meet with my contact in Albania, a woman who has worked at the school since 2014. She has been surveying the damage at the school and noting who is safe, who is in need, and passing that information to me in regular messages. We will note who receives the funds and provide a full accounting of how they were specifically distributed, in terms of what they will be used for in this horrific aftermath of what so many have called "apocalyptic."