Local Peace Corps Volunteer
Escapes Troubles In Albania
Helicopter helps Americans flee to safety of ship

THE scene playing out in strife-torn Sierra Leone, Africa, is a little too familiar for Justin Parmenter. Just three months ago, the Maplewood native and 100 other Americans were evacuated from Albania by Marine helicopter to an awaiting ship.

When Parmenter joined the Peace Corps in June 1995, he had no idea his service would end with a harrowing helicopter ride under threat of ground-to-air missiles.

In a matter of two weeks, Parmenter went from teaching English in a peaceful village to an evacuation that included sneaking through police checkpoints, learning that his supervisor had been shot and killed, and hustling onto a Marine Blackhawk helicopter at the American Embassy in Albania.

Albania, a Mediterranean country bordering Greece, has a poor economy and a fledgling democratic government. The Peace Corps assigned Justin, a high school English teacher, to Permet, a small city deep in Albania's mountainous heartland. It's a window-rattling hour's drive off the main north-south highway.

There he learned to communicate in simple Albanian sentences and gained a taste for fresh roasted goat and leeks. His friends, addressing letters to him simply, "Justin Parmenter, Permet, Albania," could only imagine that he was lonely.

Parmenter knew that this small Balkan country had a history of political unrest. Last year, the biggest news item had to do with the economy, which was precariously balanced on a few successful "firms," which were actually profit-sharing pyramid schemes.

One such firm, known as "Gjallica," funded the Democratic party's candidates in the May '96 parliamentary elections. In late '96 and early '97, many such firms went bankrupt.

Organizations that had promised huge profits to shareholders went out of business, destroying the lives of Albanians who had invested all they had in the schemes.

"That's when everything began to collapse," Parmenter said. "There's a village called Pagri about an hour from Permet, and I went there several times to visit a friend who operated a small wine factory there.

"He told me that a teacher in Pagri had sold his house and also his sister's house with the idea he would buy both homes back with the profits and have money left over. When that particular firm went bankrupt, he lost his mind. He went insane."

In an attempt to quell the uprising, the government showed video clips on the news that were, according to Parmenter, obviously from the archives. In footage intended to show serene streets and marketplaces, Parmenter noticed the price of eggs hadn't been that low for probably six or seven months. The news reports also warned not to listen to BBC or Voice of America radio reports, claiming that they were deceitful.

In late January, when the Albanian city of Lushaja erupted in violence and government buildings were burned, President Sali Berisha attempted to declare a state of emergency, but Parliament initially would not approve. On March 2, the declaration finally passed and the country went under an 8 p.m. curfew. All schools were temporarily closed.

How bad was the violence? "Weapons were passed out to civilians who didn't know how to use them, and who enjoyed experimenting with them," Parmenter said. "Serious weapons. Anti-aircraft artillery, tanks being driven around by teen-agers, 10-year-old children with Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

"I read about a kid who was looting an arms depot and he accidentally killed his brother . . . just fooling around with the gun."

Still, Justin felt secure in Permet: "Based on what people told me - people who had lived there all their lives and knew it very well - I had no fear at all. They said, `Nothing's going to happen. You're safe here.' "

But on March 3, when things started to boil over in nearby Gjirokaster, Parmenter decided to call Peace Corps headquarters in Albania's capital, Tirana, since he "hadn't heard from them in a while."

The Peace Corps had already cleared out, but some of the volunteers who had been stationed in other cities asked Parmenter how he was doing. He said things seemed calm, and they told him to stay put.

The next day the Peace Corps called back and told Parmenter to pack, hire a private car and travel to Korga. They told him to carry his passport just in case.

On March 9, Parmenter and his friends in Korga got a call from headquarters again. This time they were instructed to leave for Tirana.

The next day Parmenter received startling news: "I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast with a couple of friends. We had a short-wave with us and at 10 o'clock in the morning or so, they said on BBC that Permet had been taken, and that five or six civilians had been killed."

And the next day brought an even greater shock: "I was in a store right next to the hotel where we were staying, buying some bottled water. I heard a woman talking about Permet and Gjirokaster. So of course I was curious. She said that Tomor Mullaraj had been killed. That's the name of my director at the school where I taught - the guy whom I'd just told, `I'll see you soon.' "

Numbed by this news, Parmenter followed the Peace Corps' directive to stay inside the guarded Corps camp. He and friends whiled away the time playing Trivial Pursuit and singing songs. They could see tracer bullets in the sky at night.

He and the others were finally shuttled in minivans to the U.S. Embassy compound.

He describes their arrival as somewhat surreal: "Marines seemed to be everywhere with lots of big guns. The embassy compound is like a little chunk of suburban America, with American-style houses, no-parking signs, riding lawnmowers.

"It seems like you've gone back to America and almost left Albania when you get there. These people have wooden decks on their houses like they do here - except that there were Marines digging foxholes under the decks."

There were hundreds of Americans gathered in the freshly fortified embassy, from missionary families to diplomats to expatriates. The Marines began taxiing 14 people at a time in UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to a nearby ship, the USS Nassau.

One of the helicopters that took off in the hour after Parmenter's flight was fired at by a ground-to-air missile - one of the weapons that had been stolen from the arms depots. The Marines suspended the evacuation until they could eliminate the possibility of another missile attack. Evacuation resumed the next morning.

After a weeklong Peace Corps debriefing in Bucharest and a visit to his brother in Wales, Justin returned to St. Louis on March 30. Though shaken and deeply saddened about the death of his former director, Parmenter hopes to return to Albania soon to be an election monitor with the Organization of Security and Cooperation.

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