Rruga Barakadave is a road close to our house. We have several favorite shops along this road and it is a big part of our daily routine. Here’s a short list of the places we frequent on this road:
- bread store
- favorite suflaqe (fast food) place run by our friend Fredi
- favorite pizza place
- Matt and Cindy’s house
- Soda shop where the owner calls us by name
- Austin and Tyler’s bus stop
Presently, it looks like a war zone. Over the years, people have built additions to existing buildings or built illegally outside of the zoning guidelines. In recent years, as progress mandates, the government has cracked down on these illegal buildings and torn them down as they prepare to widen and pave new roads. We can see the ultimate good in the development but it is a painful process. We have literally seen the front half of buildings torn down while people’s clothes are still hanging on the back of the door. The day after the first wave of demolition, we saw a woman crying on the street as she surveyed the damage to her store, her family’s only source of income.
These were some of the first shots we took from our car. You can see the piles of rubble and people trying to clean up. Most buildings here lost the front 3 meters (yards) of their building.
Stay tuned this week as we show more of the progress and changes.
