• The Rubbish-Picker's Wife

  • An Unlikely Friendship in Kosovo
  • By: Elizabeth Gowing
  • Narrated by: Elizabeth Gowing
  • Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (8 ratings)

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The Rubbish-Picker's Wife  By  cover art

The Rubbish-Picker's Wife

By: Elizabeth Gowing
Narrated by: Elizabeth Gowing
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Publisher's summary

This is a true story of living and learning - being confused and comforted - with the excluded Ashkali people of Kosovo; an account of the challenges and delights of what happens when you find your community but it's a long way from home.

Hatemja, a rubbish-picker's wife, lives in the poorest community in the poorest country in Europe. When Elizabeth Gowing is befriended by her, the women learn with, from and about one another. How can you find the best rubbish pastures for scavenging? How can you free children to go to school rather than to go out begging? How do you then convince the local school to accept them? Can mayonnaise deal with head lice? How best to teach the 36 letters of the Albanian alphabet? How would Facebook help evacuate a family from a rat-infested hovel? How do you make baklava? And through it all, how do you maintain a precious friendship that's helped you find out the best you can be?

©2015 Elizabeth Gowing (P)2016 Elizabeth Gowing

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  • 05-13-17

Personal, warm, insightful

A wonderfully crafted story of how one person, with a big heart and a can-do attitude, can change the world...one child, one family, one mahalla, at a time...and then change many many more people, in Fushe Kosova and around the world. Elizabeth's story is one you read about with amazement- and you'll feel it in your heart. Read this and you will feel like you live there, with every muddy step, and your life will be changed after this journey to Kosova.

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