Three years before the Albanian representatives unified the Albanian alphabet in 1908 in Manastir, the five-year-old Dile Ramaj was writing the letters on the tiles as in the book "Kandime" by Naim Frashër. She was just one of dozens of students of different ages who were attending Albanian lessons at the school in the mountain village of Vitia, Stubëll.
"We started by writing some lines, sometimes straight and sometimes slanted. The teacher wrote on the blackboard, and we wrote on light boards similar to the teacher's blackboard. In the end, we erased those plaques", Ramaj in his nineties told the researcher of his fellow villager, Sara Gjergji, who was collecting testimonies of living former students and documents in local and international archives to integrate them into his study book. "Stublla with the first Albanian school: 1584-1905", Koha Ditore writes today.
"She was a sober old woman. He told everything in detail", emphasizes Gjergji, who published the book in 2014. He was curious to interview the living former students of the village school, after having read in September 1990 the diploma thesis of Professor Franë Gjergji, published in the magazine "Flaka e vellazrimin" in Skopje and in the magazine "Drita" in Ferizaj.
(You can read the full article in today's issue of Koha Ditore)
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Education in the Albanian language and the silence of political parties
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The Fair's awards, proof of the common space of Albanian letters
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"Open Window" meets young readers with the art of poetic verse
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The 1981 demonstrations, Rexhep Qosja and the state of Albanology
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The Abrnes of Zara – three centuries in defense of identity