Broken Mosaic of Prespa Lake
44 images Created 5 Sep 2014
The waters of the Prespa Lakes are shared among three countries: Albania, Greece and the FYR Macedonia. The two lakes located in a mountain plateau are separated by various political, cultural and social borderlines after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of nation states and the Cold War. The once inter-connected communities around the Prespa Lakes have long been disrupted. A once homogenous area has been transformed over the course of the last century into three highly segregated cultural communities.
While familiar with the Greek part, I have only recently visited the Albanian and the FYR Macedonian parts of the Prespa basin. It was then that I witnessed first-hand the sharply contrasting pieces of the Lakes’ mosaic. The immediately visible difference was in the natural landscape; the Albanian part still marked by the serious deforestation during the communist times; the FYR Macedonian part with the protected woods of its National Park; and the underpopulated Greek part with a wild, uncontrolled spread of nature. Invisible at first sight, the sharpest contrast was evident in the people, upon whom history sculpted three different temperaments. During the Greek civil war, Prespes hosted the headquarters of the Communist-led army. After the collapse of the front, most of the locals had leave, for some time the area was underpopulated until people from other regions of Greece settled there, resulting in a hybrid culture. In Albania, the harsh communist regime of Enver Hoxha suppressed all Albanians but especially the lake villagers that were ethnic FYR Macedonians and more likely to defect to Tito’s Yugoslavia. The situation in the FYR Macedonia was much more relaxed until the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since then, due to the economic downturn, the standard of living is steadily decreasing.
While familiar with the Greek part, I have only recently visited the Albanian and the FYR Macedonian parts of the Prespa basin. It was then that I witnessed first-hand the sharply contrasting pieces of the Lakes’ mosaic. The immediately visible difference was in the natural landscape; the Albanian part still marked by the serious deforestation during the communist times; the FYR Macedonian part with the protected woods of its National Park; and the underpopulated Greek part with a wild, uncontrolled spread of nature. Invisible at first sight, the sharpest contrast was evident in the people, upon whom history sculpted three different temperaments. During the Greek civil war, Prespes hosted the headquarters of the Communist-led army. After the collapse of the front, most of the locals had leave, for some time the area was underpopulated until people from other regions of Greece settled there, resulting in a hybrid culture. In Albania, the harsh communist regime of Enver Hoxha suppressed all Albanians but especially the lake villagers that were ethnic FYR Macedonians and more likely to defect to Tito’s Yugoslavia. The situation in the FYR Macedonia was much more relaxed until the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since then, due to the economic downturn, the standard of living is steadily decreasing.
