Drawing Dignity

By Texas Tech University

June 13^th, 2023

Born in 1978 under a communist dictatorship in Albania, Ersela Kripa had no friends as a child. Her parents were outspoken challengers of communism, so her family was politically persecuted and pushed to the outskirts of society.

“It was the most brutal dictatorship in Eastern Europe,” Ersela says. “My father was imprisoned at age 15 for writing anti-dictatorship poetry,” Ersela says. “When he got out, he met and married my mother.”

Her parents continuously fought for a better Albania and instilled the same fighting spirit in their children, which made them outsiders as well. That feeling of exclusion lingers even in her earliest memories.

“I told one of my kindergarten classmates that our family didn’t watch Albanian television because my parents said it was used to brainwash us,” she says. “Well, word got back to the classmate’s father who was a government leader, and the situation was reported.”

Ersela’s teacher told the other kindergarteners that their classmate was an enemy of the state, and should be treated as such. The teacher had the children take turns spitting on 5-year-old Ersela.

Ersela learned that day that the Albanian educational system would not be her ticket to a better life. It in fact, it was designed to do the opposite.

Ersela points out her Father in a photo.

When Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha died in 1985, things got worse before they got better. It was an intense and dangerous time in Eastern Europe.

With the rise of violence, Ersela’s parents became worried for her safety. While the 12-year-old was more than glad to stay and help, her parents decided it best to send her away. Ersela’s 24-year-old brother Artan was tasked with getting her out of the country.

Her parents didn’t want them to travel by boat; the chances of drowning were too high. Rather, they planned for Artan to take his sister to Greece by way of Albania’s southern border.

Ersela and her brother took a bus from their hometown of Vlorë to the city of Gjirokaster, 28 miles from the border.

Once in Greece, Ersela resolved to attend school–a regular school with fair grading–something she was unable to have back home. But to enroll, she needed papers.

“To get the paperwork, I had to attend Sunday School in a Greek Orthodox Church and be baptized and given a Greek Orthodox name,” Ersela says. “Once I did that, I could enroll in the seventh grade.”

So, Ersela became Stella.

Almost four years passed, and slowly, Ersela built a life in Greece. She had friends, school, steady work and even enrolled in piano lessons. The 15-year-old was finally experiencing a relatively normal adolescence.

As the afternoon sky dimmed, there was a knock on the door. Ersela immediately sensed something was wrong.

She opened the door to find two police officers.

“They had picked up Artan earlier that day,” Ersela says, slowly crossing her arms. “They asked to see his papers, and he told them he didn’t keep his papers on him while working. He said the papers were at home, so they detained him and got his address.”

The officers asked Ersela to gather her brother’s papers.

“I was terrified,” she recalls. “I grabbed whatever I could find, including his birth certificate.”

When the police read the certificate, they saw her brother’s Muslim name on it. The police allowed her to visit Artan while he was detained, but they both knew it was over. Soon, he was deported to Albania, leaving Ersela alone in Patras.

Ersela was only back in Albania for a few months before she spiraled into a depressive state. She quickly fell behind in school and struggled socially.

“Being allowed somewhere is not the same thing as being accepted,”

"The violence and fallout were worse than before,”

Desperate to get their daughter out of harm’s way, her parents sent 17-year-old Ersela to the U.S. that fall as a foreign exchange student for her senior year of high school. She boarded a flight for one year abroad–but it would be more than five years before she returned.

Her place secured–it was time to turn her attention to her dreams, and she had dreamt of being an architect since she was a girl poring over her father’s blueprints.

“I remember looking at certain objects as a child and not knowing what they were,” Ersela says. “For example, one day I saw a quarter-circle near a door on one of my father’s blueprints and asked him what it was.”

“That’s the door swinging,” her father replied. “It shows time passing.”

“I was hooked!”

“I’ll always remember the night we drove into El Paso,” Ersela says. “We came over this hill and all of the sudden you could see all of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez lit up, sprawling across the valley.”

El Paso immediately reminded Ersela of home, both in the resourcefulness of the people and the presence of the border.

“I credit taking control of my life to education,” she says, “and the best decision I’ve ever made was going into education myself.”

Through education, people become aware of their rights and resources as well as understanding their larger context, she says. According to Ersela, it’s one of the most empowering experiences a person can have. Now, at Texas Tech, she guides other young architects along the same path.