Walk of Hope Update

Day Ten

OK, so today is actually day ten of the walk and I now have a big "two-day hole" behind me. I was called back to Tirana to conduct some business on Wednesday so I did not walk that day, and then I decided to stay overnight in Tirana to give my knee and my Achilles tendon another day's rest as well. I rode back to Lushnje with Sedika and Jola from SHKBSH in time to be there for the meeting that we had to inform the Lushnje area churches about the issue of trafficking. I think the rest did me good, but I have to admit that I felt a bit lost not walking those two days. I now have a hole about 50 km in the middle of my walk too, and I feel a certain amount of pressure to go back at some point in the future to walk that stretch so that I can honestly say that I have walked the length of the country. We leave Lushnje behind somewhat reluctantly as the team from OM there have made us feel so welcome and have really made us feel at home. Their facility has been perfect for us and it has been a tremendous blessing to be there.

Today we started out on the northern end of the city of Fier. It was decided that today would be a fairly light day, and it was. We walked about 14.5 miles and went just over halfway to the next city which is Vlore. I tried a different pair of shoes - the third pair I have worn so far. I wish I had been wearing them from the very beginning! My tendon did not give me any problem and my knee was pretty good all day too. Thank God for Advil and good shoes! We did have a pretty stiff headwind for part of the walk today which made conversation difficult, and a large section near the end had almost no shoulder, necessitating single file walking. We crossed over the Vjose River then brought our picnic lunch back and we ate on the bank of the river. The sun was shining, in contrast to the last two days when Richard and Tom walked in rain a good portion of the days. Tom said, "What is it? Matt comes back on the sun starts to shine again?" I said, "Yeah, my wife says the same thing!"

One of the villages we walked through today has been cited in official reports as having had 28 girls trafficked out of it in the last year. Can you imagine 28 girls from your community vanishing? Some of them sold into the sex trade by members of their own family, in part due to extreme poverty? As we walked, we prayed especially for this village and for the girls who have been taken out of it.

Tomorrow we walk into Vlore and probably a little ways beyond. It should be another relatively easy day, and we are told that some of the local believers will likely join us as we come into town. This will be fun.




Day Eleven

Day Eleven of the walk and things are going fairly well still. We arrived in Vlore this morning about 11:30 after walking through what I think is some of the prettiest country we have walked through yet. The road winds through slightly hilly country and is lined by majestic old Eucalyptus trees. The trees made me homesick for Australia and had me looking around for a kookaburra or two. I do not know what I would have done had I heard one! As we topped the hill over Vlore, we could see the sea and smell the orange blossoms - all in all some very pleasant walking this morning! Richard and I swap stories as we walk and the time passes very quickly.

We called ahead to Darryl Snyder to give him our position so when we got into Vlore proper he was walking towards us. We had hopped from some of the local church members to join us but it was still a work day so none were able to come. We should see some tonight at an informal meeting we will have at their church. Darryl walked us into the city center, showed us the church location again (we will be sleeping there tonight and tomorrow night) and I took a much needed potty stop before drinking a coke and moving on out again. We walked along the water front in view of the port, and I couldn't help but wonder how many people have been trafficked out of this port or other points along this section of coastline. Vlore is kind of known as a mafia place and our Albanian companion was telling us about all the mafia, prostitution, drugs etc that are here or pass through here. As we walked, Richard and I again prayed for the Light to shine into the dark places here and for people to be freed from their bondage - be it physical or spiritual.

We stopped to eat lunch at a pizza place right on the edge of the sea. It has been cloudy all day, but warm and no rain so we have been thankful for that. After eating we continued along this beautiful section of road, winding around curves, climbing small hills ( a prelude to the mountain we have to climb in the next couple of days!). We also had to battle the winds! WOW - they were pretty strong and sustained along various parts of the trek today. At times I though the gusts would almost knock me down, but I leaned in and we pressed on. Richard took a pretty good lead again so much of the walking after lunch was solo stuff. We made it to about 4 km from a village called Orikum and then called it a day. Total today is about 16 miles (24-25 km), but I am not entirely certain of that since my GPS ran out of batteries about 2.4 miles from the end of the days walk. (We measured that portion in the vehicle as we drove back to town!) The knee mostly did great except for some pains on a couple of the downhill portions, but some of the blisters are growing! My newest one about doubled in size, so I need to do some doctoring tonight. I'd post a photo, but I don't think you'd really want to see it! I might get lucky and be able to post this to my blog at an internet café tonight. We'll have to see.


Day Twelve

I woke up this morning about 6:20 or so after a rather strange and not so pleasant dream. When I looked over to my left, I noticed that there were only two of us sleeping in the room instead of the three of us that started there. Apparently I was the heavy snorer last night and I drove one of the guys out into the other room. Kind of embarrassing…

The day dawned clear and warm, promising a good day of walking. Darryl and Debbie Snyder, a couple of the missionaries here in Vlore, brought us some homemade Apple Butter Coffee cake. Sunshine, warmth, coffee and coffee cake - what more could a guy ask for? We spent the night on the floor of one of the meeting rooms in the Bashkesia e Ungjillit after having a good meeting with them last night. The Snyders introduced us to another great Vlore treasure - the Fshati Sandwich. It was so good I think we are all eager to go back and get another one tonight! We hid our gear in the church's storage room so that it was out of the way for their service and then headed out to our starting point for the day.

The weather was so nice I decided to walk in shorts, and I was not sorry! We started out continuing our walk along the beach, but then after the village of Orikum we headed inland and started to climb. We walked up a beautiful valley with steep hills on either side. On one side we looked up and very faintly we could still make out the letters "PPSH" - it stands for "Partia e Puntoreve e Shqiperise" or "The Workers Party of Albania" also known as the Communist party. Under the dictator, there were several places around Albania where the letters were written in big white letters on the hillsides - a great reminder of the party of Uncle Enveri. We continued up the road and were soon passed by a large group of cyclists and their support vehicle. I have to admit, that I almost wished I was riding instead of walking! (Particularly when they came back past us some time later, riding very quickly with no effort downhill!) It was kind of cool to see the riders go by. The road is very quiet most of the time so we could both walk on the pavement all of the time. At times the climb became much steeper and by the time we stopped our walking after 13.5 miles we had climbed over 1800 feet. We stopped fairly early, but most of today was gravy anyway. We are pretty well ahead of where we had projected ourselves to be by this time so things continue to go well over all with the walk. I have to admit, that today I was the reason we stopped when we did. The climb had gotten particularly steep for a stretch and I just kind of bottomed out. I could tell that I needed to get some food and water into me pretty quickly in order to go on. After eating we decided not to walk any more today due to the heat and the climb. Tomorrow we only have about a mile and a half to get to where we will stay the next two nights, so we will likely climb well beyond there and knock several miles of the next day's walk.

Tomorrow we walk more then take Tuesday off and await the arrival of two more friends from the UK who will walk with us the last portion of the walk. The knee did well as did the Achilles tendon (after the first mile or two) and my blisters have not developed anything new today. A good day of walking, and a good bit of sun today too!