Geographically, Kamza is labeled as a suburb of Tirana, but in reality it has built its own identity as a living archive of social, political, and cultural efforts.
In this urban mosaic of over 96 thousand inhabitants, individual stories become collective as a result of the same challenges of internal migration.
One of these stories is that of Luke Bala's family, which left Puka to settle in Kamza about three decades ago.
But their quest for a better life seems to continue: from internal migration to emigration abroad. Bala's family is facing the same situation as three decades ago in a second wave of exile as her two sons have moved to Germany and Italy.
"The decision was made by my husband who died, because the cooperative was gone, we were two families, two crowns, and life was unbearable. The husband came, took some land, built a shack, then took us, four children and me," Luke tells.
In the years after the fall of the dictatorship, many families like Luke's moved from rural areas to the outskirts of Tirana.
Her case helps to understand the development of Kamza as a city of those people who arrived and built it slowly without infrastructure and legal guarantees. Many of the constructions of that wave of migration remain informal even today.
"I didn't have everything here. There was no water, no electricity, it was a barracks room, I said 'I had a good time there!', when we first arrived. The children were small, the oldest 13 years old, the youngest 2 years old," remembers Luke.
"We started, I took the cow, I took the sheep, the chickens and the things that were there, there was plenty of land, we had something to graze on, the man left as a guard then he worked at the river loading cars with stones," Lukja continues, emphasizing that the eldest son emigrated when he was only 13 years old.
"My oldest son passed away at the age of 13, and yet little by little we built this house" she says.
For Luken, moving to Kamëz came with many difficulties, from the construction of the house to the present day where she still suffers from the lack of legalization.
"We have been submitting the papers for 19 years and the legalizations have not yet been done, they tell us to go here, go there, they will do it, they will come, nothing..." she says in revolt.
"My husband and I haven't left office without going, they'll come out now, they'll come out with these elections, these elections came and they didn't come out, because it doesn't matter, they'll come out in 2028, we'll die someday, I said, they're not coming out," Luke continues.
The sacrifice she and her husband made years ago by leaving Puka could not stop the emigration of her children, for whom, although she regrets that they have left, she says they are the only guarantee she has, since her pension does not even cover her medication.
"For a while now, I haven't even been able to afford my medicine, 130 thousand lek, just because of the children, the son over there in Germany, because when you want to retire, you're dead, 50-60 lek goes for the lights, 20 lek for water, 80 lek goes for it, even a bottle of milk costs 25 thousand lek," calculate the costs of living Luke Bala.
Luke's story is similar to one of thousands of Kamza residents, people who migrated within the country for a better life, invested their lives in building houses, but faced an inability to fully integrate, legal problems, and a second wave of emigration.
Read also:
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- "The resistance of the elderly to moving away from their roots!"
- “A Life on the Move”: The Challenges of Returning from Emigration
He completed master's studies in Investigative Journalism at the Department of Journalism at the University of Tirana. She has been working as a journalist for five years, where she previously covered issues of politics and parliamentary activity, in print and online media. She is currently a journalist at Citizens.al, where she covers various social issues related to the transparency of institutions. At Citizens.al, she leads the podcast "The Unheard" and is engaged as a manager of projects related to the support of investigative journalism.
