Rreshen – Summer 1996

In the summer of 1996 I found myself working as a volunteer in northern Albania. Based in the small town of Rreshen a few of us needed to take the short trip to the nearby village of Tarazh that was about a 10 to 15 minute ride away. We needed to visit two people with the offer of temporary employment and so three of us set off.

I was in the group as I had largely overseen all our projects in Tarazh over the last year or so and knew both the lay of the land and the people. Ian came along as Team Leader and driver to offer the positions and Bertie, the cousin of our regular translator Paulin (who was engaged elsewhere) came along to help out. Bertie couldn’t speak English but everything had been explained to him just in case Ian’s and my Albanian failed us.

It was late afternoon on a hot dry Mediterranean day with temperatures easily in their 30s and there wasn’t even a hint of a refreshing breeze. The heat was stifling and the air oppressive. For some reason, that I am still not aware of, rather than using one of our regular Land Rover Defenders we borrowed an Isuzu Trooper from Les who was visiting us for the day. It is likely that Ardi our regular driver was out in it somewhere as he wasn’t available either.

We stopped off at Fran’s near the centre of the village below the large unfinished railway bridge. He was the first of our candidates and I stayed with the vehicle while the other two went inside to offer him the position. Even though I wasn’t there, I can assume that he was delighted with the offer, as he really was dirt poor and any additional income had to benefit him and his young family. He literally lived in a damp-filled single roomed shed that froze in the winter and baked in the summer.

Then we set off for Mikhail’s home which was only another ten minute drive away and with it being such a short distance I didn’t bother putting my seatbelt back on. That proved to be a big mistake.

We left Fran’s and set off up a rarely used dirt track. Knowing the village well I could guess that it probably only carried a dozen vehicles a day and half of them would have been the then ubiquitous Mercedes saloons of the 1980s and the rest being small two stroked vehicles that I would not even be able to name. They were basically an engine block with handlebars that had two wheels, one either side of the block and then it was typically attached to some kind of a trailer. It had very little power but it was enough to get around and move some limited cargo, which was usually hay or other agricultural products.

It would be fair to say that Ian was relatively inexperienced when it came to driving in such terrain and that was his undoing. From my vantage point in the front passenger seat it was getting increasingly uncomfortable as he was getting too close to the edge of the track and the ditch that was running alongside it. I have since come to the conclusion that it was because he was only familiar with driving in the UK and this car had its steering on the left hand side. Consequently, he was driving as though the edge of the car was actually where the middle of the car was, roughly in line with the gear stick and handbrake.

Sure enough we went round a relatively long right hand bend that wasn’t particularly tight and half of the car dipped into the ditch where it kept going for another few metres until it hit something solid. The car was stopped in its tracks and with no seatbelt to restrain me I flew forward and used my forehead to crack the windscreen. I then fell unceremoniously on my rear as momentum then dumped me back where I had started.

After the initial few seconds of shock we checked to see if we were all ok. I, understandably, had a bit of a headache radiating from my forehead, but other than that none of us were any the worse for wear. We then had to figure out where we were and soon became aware that the car was resting at a relatively acute angle and out of my side window all I could see was the side of the ditch.

We all clambered out of the car. Ian was somehow able to swing his door open and climb up and out onto the roadside and Bertie did the same thing. I, for my part, had to open my door window and with some difficulty squeeze out of it. Within a minute or two we were all on the roadside and looking at the damage and predicament we were in.

The car was, as we had already assumed, resting along the centre of its chassis with its driver side wheels floating uselessly in the air. When we looked on the other side the rear wheel was sitting on the bottom of the ditch, but the front wheel had been made square. The reason soon became apparent because a small concrete block was sitting there, small enough for the car to pass over, but big enough to stop the car dead. On impact it had stopped us immediately and exacted a terrible cost out of the wheel that had stopped us, even at a relatively low speed. The sudden stop was also what had propelled me forwards into the windscreen and left me powerless to do anything about it.

We were well and truly stuck and effectively in the middle of nowhere.

We started discussing options and neither Fran nor Mikhail could have been any help to us as neither of them has any kind of vehicle. The only thing I could come up with involved Moza’s brother.

Moza was a friend, probably more of mine than the others, as I was the one who worked in Tarazh regularly. She was the grown up daughter in a family we knew. We tended to refer to them as Moza’s family because she had a workable understanding of English and she was a very helpful contact as well as a pleasant person. We knew her mother and father and grandmother quite well (her grandmother really did make the best Turkish coffee ever, but that is a different story for a different day) and we knew her brother had a tractor, an ideal vehicle for at least pulling the Isuzu out of the ditch.

The problem was that only I knew the way and it would take more than an hour in the blazing direct heat of a Balkan summer and I had just had a bang to the head and we’d assumed we were only popping out so none of us were carrying any water. There was of course no guarantee that Moza’s brother would be at home nor, even if he was, that the tractor was even working or available.

It was the best idea we could come up with, but it was just not practicable and potentially even lethal because at that point I had no idea if I had really done myself some damage.

Then (and I mean literally that moment), just when we were reduced to vapidly scratching our heads we saw a tell-tale plume of dust which signified, still some distance off, an approaching vehicle.  As it got closer and the form of the vehicle began to emerge from the cloud we saw that it was a white Toyota Hilux.

We flagged it down and when I saw who was inside, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Just the night before I had been in the centre of Rreshen and heading back to our HQ on the outskirts of the town when the self-same Toyota Hilux had pulled alongside me and the driver offered me a lift. There were another couple of guys in the car with him. I had never seen any of them before and to accept the lift was considered to be unwise. It was a different matter if a large IFA or Liaz truck came along with up to 50 people in it as there was safety in numbers.

For some reason against all sense and logic I took the lift and the conversation, in Albanian was nice and polite and true to their word the dropped me off five minutes later when outside our HQ. They then disappeared into the night and I thought nothing more of it, or if anything that it would be stupid to mention to my teammates what I had done because while everything worked out they’d have berated me for being so stupid.

And now less than 24 hours later this same Toyota – the almost perfect vehicle for our needs – with the same three people had parked within a couple of metres of our stricken Isuzu. I don’t remember there being too much conversation but they took a rope and hooked it up to our chassis before easing us back onto the track and all four wheels. Then just as quickly as they had arrived they were gone.

We were left alone to replace the wheel, which, while it was wrecked, wasn’t actually that difficult to do as the bolts hadn’t bent. It took probably another 20 minutes or so. We weren’t sure of any other damage so we didn’t make it to Mikhail’s that day and just turned around and went back to Rreshen at no more than twenty miles an hour as we had no idea how good the brakes were or whether the axle or anything was bent.

Les was not particularly impressed, but remained politely objective when we brought his baby back. By trade he was a mechanic so he gave it a quick once over and concluded that most of the damage other than the wheel was superficial including the scuff marks on the bumper. Shortly afterwards Ian had another incident in one of our Land Rovers and the organisation banned him from driving for them ever again.

I was immediately aware that what happened was either the most incredible coincidence, call it serendipity if you like, or something more was at play. What makes it all the more remarkable is that I never saw the Toyota or its occupants ever again.

My conviction has only grown stronger with the passage of time.