‘Monkeys’ on guard

Cuddly toys are Albania’s defence against the evil eye

The weather-beaten forms of cuddly toys hanging from buildings are a common sight in Albania. Suspended from the eaves of houses, they sway gently in the wind. The bodies are distorted, storm-drenched and smut-stained. Rabbits are hung by their ears, chubbier animals suspended by wire garrottes from half-finished buildings. In Albanian they’re called majmune, meaning “monkeys”, the word used for any soft toy. Travel blogger Marianne van Twillert photographed a variety of examples and reported seeing “dolls, puppets, teddy bears and... even one of the Teletubbies”, often accompanied by the red Albanian flag. Elizabeth Gowing reviewed a random sample of houses in three Albanian suburbs and found a visible majmune suspended from approximately one in eight buildings. Homeowners reluctantly admit they are installed as protection against the evil eye. “It stops the evil eye seeing our money,” said one man outside his bustling furniture workshop.

No one seemed to know where the idea for protective toys came from. Garlic, too, is commonly used to ward off misfortune, here, as elsewhere. At one house Ms Gowing visits, there’s a plait of it hanging on the outside of the building, tangled up with three soft toys and a ram’s skull with horns, a protective talisman that goes back “to our forebears” according to the householder Gjylsime. The garlic is probably also an ancient tradition – but according to her and everyone else interviewed, using soft toys against the eye started only in the 1990s “with democracy” – they never featured in the socialist utopia of Enver Hoxha. These monkeys, then, are the household gods of capitalism. BBC News, 2 Aug 2015; Living in Montenegro blog (montenegro-for.me/2013/05/ riral-albania/)