People and Plants in Lëpushë Traditional Medicine, Local Foods and Post- Communism in a Northern Albanian Village
CHAPTER 2 People and Plants in Lëpushë Traditional Medicine, Local Foods and Post- communism in a Northern Albanian Village Andrea Pieroni Introduction This is the story of a village and its surrounding alpine settlements in a very remote, mountainous area in upper Kelmend, northern Albania. This story tells of the people who have remained in this place since the fall of the communist regime in 1991, either because it was so special to them that they did not want to leave, or because they could not fi nd the means to migrate, either legally or illegally, to the United States or Western Europe, as most of the other inhabitants of northern Albania have done. It also tells of how the villagers have managed to provide their own healthcare as they continue living in the mountains, sustained by their cows, pigs, potatoes, cabbages and corn, while facing the dramatic collapse of their national economy and their institutionalized health and transport systems. This is the brief story of their traditional medicine (TM) and local foods, of their interactions with their natural environment where they gather wild plants for food and medicines, and of the gender relations prescribed by these traditional practices. It also tells of the dramatic changes this village has had to face since the end of the communist era. This story, like every story, expresses a personal view: it describes what I myself have observed and refl ected on, and is therefore undoubtedly biased by my own subjectivity. People and Plants in Lëpushë | 17 Albania Albania is located in the Balkan Peninsula, and bordered by Montenegro and Kosova in the north and northeast, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the east and Greece in the south.
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