Corruption

This article reiterates a bit things that have been said in conversations I've had with some Albanian colleagues here. The purpose and effectiveness of the international community here has been lost, they say. corruption prevails and those whose job it is to enforce the law haven't taken steps some think is necessary to stop the deep-seeded corruption that seems to be a part of the cultur here. These colleagues of mine are afraid of what will happen with independence is granted and the presence of the international community lessens. Many are not all that confident that Kosovo can sustain an economy, governemnt and legal system that will be for the good of the people living here.

Elections

They needed two days to do it because history has shown that Serbs are a bit apathetic politically. So the last Saturday and Sunday of October were slated to be polling days. Serbs voted as to whether or not their country should adopt the first constitution ratified since the Milosovic era. Liberals in Kosovo protested the constitution saying it was creted in haste, yet Serbian political leaders from all parties supported it. The major controversy surrounding it regarded it's preamble which declared Kosovo an integral part of the country of Serbia. In the mean time, Kosovo Albanians were not invited to participate in the voting weekend.

Any international working for the UN, US Office, EU or other international organization leading this place into a final status says that this constitution will have nothing to do with the status talks happening here. It's primarily a desperate attempt at a final attack before Serbia loses Kosovo. The desperation became clear when, in the final hours of the election, it seemed as though a majority of the people in Serbia - what was needed to participate in the voting in order for the results to be valid - were not going to the polling booths. But somehow there was a fina surge that pushed the number over the top. Voter turn-out was 53.3% and 96% of the ballots were "yes" votes. Most of what I read states what the typical skeptic would think. People without valid ID were allowed to vote, entire families voted together, multiple voting was not monitered. You can't help but wonder what measured desperate minds took in order to manipulate the results in their favor. Voter turn-out of the Kosovar Serbs was the highest among any Serbian region - well over 80%. These people need all the protection they can get, and it seems as though they believe that remaining a part of Serbia will get it for them. Check out these links for more details.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/world.aspx?ID=BD4A306103
http://www.examiner.com/a-369313~Serb_Vote_Reasserts_Claim_Over_Kosovo.html?cid=rss-World

As far as I'm concerned, all the Serbs and Albanians need is a weekend of bowling together. Forget elections, status and corruption for a weekend, strap on flourescent orange and green shoes, pick up a pink ball and roll that sucker down the alley. No one is good at this game, making it instantly humbling. And if you are good, no one else really cares because they are all having too much fun being bad at it. With music playing and a warm beer in your hand, the tension lifts, everyone laughs and the disco lights throw shadows over all things bad. It worked with 16 of my Serbian and Albanian students last week. Why can't it work with a country of politicians?!

Greek gluttony

We were going to Greece-land and no one was going to stop us. Hazel and Adria got the car and picked me up 5 minutes after my class at KIJAC ended. We were on the road heading south by early afternoon before the hoards of other internationals got off work to flee good ol' P'tina for the long weekend that marked the end of Ramadan. Hazel has made this trip several times during her 5 years in Kosovo and Adria and I were glad to be passengers in our little rented Opal. It was an easy border crossing into Macedonia for the three-hour drive around Skopje and down to the Greek border. From there is was another hour to Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki. Winding around mountains and coming down to nightfall over the Ionian Sea and the sparkling city was just what these three English teachers needed. We found our hotel and headed for the water.

Dinner the first night, as with all three nithgt, was full of feta cheese, cucumber and tomato salads, grilled vegetables, meats and seafood and red wine. It was the off season, so places were not very full. At each restaurant we were the center of attention with a flirtations Greek man waiting on us hand and foot. We stuffed ourselves with the manna realizing that our gluttony was actually pretty darn healthy. Keep on eating!!! So, while we sat, ate, drank and people watched the evenings away, we shopped the days away. The city center of Thess was a lot like 5th Ave. in Manhattan with store upon store lining the streets. We couldn't afford most of it, but definitely splurged when our frugal teacher minds were able to let go for a second. I was damned if I could find a pair of shoes that fit my feet! This problem in Japan made sense, but I thought Europe would be able to supply me with female footwear. No such luck.

Everything was closed on Sunday so we rolled out of our sea-side hotel and walked the shoreline hopping from one cafe to the next. The outdoor cafes are clearly typical of the whole Balkan region. I could not help but find the atmosphere of these cafes exact duplicates of Astoria, Queens. I must have said to my companions a thousand times how much of this place reminded me of my old neighborhood. I was always wondering how the cafes of Astoria could be completely full of people drinking coffee all day and night. In Queens that seemed strange to my non-Greek self. In Thess it was the way to live. As the sun went down the coffee was replaced by wine and ouzo a la Cavo on 31st Ave and 45th St.

The drive home seemed long. We dropped Adria off in Prizren via the Kosovo mountains which were blanketed in the fall rainbow. As the sun fell behind, it was all in flames with reds, yellows and oranges. Hazel and I said good-bye to Adria and headed for the road to Prishtina finding it was completely torn up! The arrow pointed right so naturally we followed it looking for the next arrow. The road became more of a bumpy dirt field that seemed to be going nowhere. We followed the car in front of us that seemed equally lost. For 20 minutes we bobbed up and down like boats going through hurricane waters. Who the hell created this detour?! And there was clearly no other way to go! We were tired, hungry and really pissed off at this point. Thank God it was not raining or we would for sure have capsized and sunk into a sea of mud.

But we made it back a little pit poorer, a little bit heavier and a little bit happier from our time in Thessaloniki, Greece. Check out the link to Wikipedia, which I never saw until 5 minutes ago. Knowing the history of the place was not a priority before I left for this long weekend. What I was looking for was thoughtless touring, shopping and eating. Mission accomplished!!!

Welcome

What makes a person welcome? I guess you could start with an invitation. Maybe a good history with someone will make you more likely to open your doors for them. Often times, one will be welcomed out of obligation. Duty requires one to offer an invitation when the reality is that the other is not welcome, just there because someone else ordered it.

The United Nations Mission in Kosova (UNMIK) has hit a point with a lot of people here of overstaying its welcome. Although not often stated outright, it's definitely felt in conversations with a lot of Albanians. Although many of these locals are employed by UNMIK and other international organizations, there is a sense that, after seven years, their presence has lost its purpose. One of the obstacles is the corruption that, like a cancer, has infected the independence efforts and spread into the veins of these organizations. It's halted growth and those here to make things run sm oothly aren't doing anything about it. Although still in love with Bill Clinton and the US - seen as the saviors of the Albanian people and Kosova - the Albanian locals' affection for the UN is quickly dwindling.

And of course the Serbian population, as small and isolated as it is, never wanted and still largely fight any contact with the international community here. As I went out to interview and meet the Serbian high school students that applied for my Access class in Gracanica, their disdain and indifference toward multi-ethnicity was clear from the director, to the teacher and to most of the students. On our way there, my Albanian colleague, Ardian, was dreading the visit, calling the director an asshole that only wants to be angry and hate the Albanians. Neither of us had met the guy before, but we heard about his encounter with Craig and Wendy last week. I wasn't expecting a warm welcome from the guy, but I didn't think he'd close the door on us. "You're early. Go wait outside." When the teacher found us, she immediately gave excuses for students' low English level. "Because of the bombing they did not have proper schooling . . . " I could feel Ardian's temper heat up with every word she said.

Got a new Prishtina arrival this week from Michigan, Dee the fellow ELF. She's a last minute fill-in for a guy that backed out of the program this fall - affectionately named Bob the Bailer by Adria and myself. Dee was an ELF in Turkey and Macedonia before coming here to Prishtina. She also lived and taught in Guatemala for a bit before joining the order of the ELFs. Sounded to me like an interesting woman . . . until I met here. In all actually, Dee is quite the opposite of interesting. This woman has made a living standing in front of a class, teaching them how to effectively use a language, but you'd more likely peg her as a life-long employee of the gift-wrap department at Bloomimes. Communicating with human beings is clearly not her forte. And I can thank Ardian in the US office for finding her an apartment in my building. She now lives four floors below me and when coming and going from the building, I keep the stair lights off and bold by her door as quickly as possible. At this point, my goal is to introduce her to as many people as possible in the hopes that someone else will willingly welcome and so she has other phone numbers to call other than mine.

The best open door I've found so far was the Sunday brunch buffet at the Danish KFOR base. In order to boost morale, the Danish military here offer their soldiers an amazing breakfast buffet every Sunday. They have extended the invitation to any international living in Kosovo, military or civilian. A group of us took the 45 minute drive, gave a passport to the heavily armed security guard and walked directly to the mess hall where we payed 8 Euro for one heck of a spread! The hall was filled with Swedish, French and German military as well as randoms like us. Would the US military welcome people in like that? I think not.

As a whole, I have felt very welcome here so far. Albanians, most Serbians and the international community have found reason to open their arms to this stranger from the states, for whatever reason. All of these communities can be very selective, however. To not be welcomed by any one of them could get in the way of quite a bit of life here. Makes me realize that eventually it will be my job to be welcome to people that come here. Keep the Karma positive.

English Access

So, I've spent the better part of this week with Craig Dicker - the Regional English Language Officer for the Balkans/Eastern Europe. He is basically in charge of every ELF like myself in the entire region. He bases himself in Budapest, but calls Prishtina his second home. He taught English here back in the 80s, met his Kosovar Serbian wife here, married her here and had the most ethnically diverse wedding party I've every heard of. It's amazing they were able to keep it blood-free. Craig knows everything there is to know about the area and teaching English here. AND he's a damn cool guy from New York City that used to teach at JFK High School in The Bronx. He's only in Kosovo for a week and I'm lucky he's basing himself here in Prishtina, allowing me to spend more time with him than most might.

One of the main projects we've been working on since he got here is the Access program. Craig says he doesn't get too excited about things anymore, but this program has got him fired up. It's very ambitions and something the head of the mission here is going to be looking closely at because it is the ethnic outreach that is so difficult to accomplish around here. We went to meet with directors of two high schools in the Serbian enclaves of Prishtina - Gracanica and Llapllesello - in order to discuss their participation in the program, which includes bussing students from thee communities into Prishtina - Albanian territory - twice a week for an English class which will have some Albanians attending.

The US office has had time to stroke and director at Llapllesello, discuss this program and build trust with him. 5 of us were at that meeting which included doing shots of rakia (plum whiskey). The relationship with the director at Gracanica was not yet stroked, resulting in a very different meeting. Only Wendy and Craig went in to meet him while the rest of us waited in the car. Swarming him with all 5 of us could have been a bit intimidating. Over an hour later, they came out looking like they barely won a fight with a pack of dogs. What needed to happen, and clearly did, was for this man to vent to these two Americans about what their people have been through in the past 7 years. He pointed to his secretary sitting in the other room and told of how she watched every one of her brothers get shot in their home at point-blank range by a group of Albanian thugs. He said that every person in that school had similar stories, and they continue to live in fear. These things have happened even during UN occupation and "protection." The leaders of the community answer to Belgrade, but even the Serbs give them little if any protection from afar. In fact, there is a "Belgrade installation" whose presence is in the community in attempts in block any efforts made to integrate the Serb community into the general population. These people are alone, afraid and this guy has a hard time trusting an American effort to teach their kids English with Albanians.

We'd like to have a Roma contingent in the program, but finding these kids is going to be difficult. They are basically the "gypsies" that live in small bunches in these Serbian communities. They attend Serbian schools until the 8th grade when most of them drop out. The few that have continued to high school have parents with trust issues as well, that is if their parents have not been killed.

My last night with Craig was spent sitting with the other ELF here discussing in detail what and how exactly to handle this class of students. If we don't build trust amongst these students, the Serbian students will quit and the program will implode. We discussed how, in the first days, discussion cannot get even close to any topic that might be ethnically charged - food, family, holidays. The students will naturally enter the class and sit with their own kind. Do we mix them up right away or let them be separate? We cannot give these Serbian students any reason to feel inferior, threatened or less than their Albanian peers. One wrong word could send them off. And the possibility of anger flaring and students getting physical is of course possible. Such a delicate situation that could go so wrong. But, if done carefully this could go so wonderfully right, and I can't even explain how excited I get thinking about that. This could turn out to be the only minority outreach program the US Mission here has done. Honestly, the pressure is on me to make this work. It gives me chills!

Border Crossing

Check out the news article link. It's is from Al Jazeera and I think does a good job of explaining what Serbia is up to right now. It seems as though they are quickly building their defenses up against the inevitability of Kosovo independence. A vote on a new constitution that had to pass by two-thirds was passed unanimously. Included in the constitution were words "reasserting sovereignty over Kosovo." Serbian authorities don't care if UN talks on Kosovo's ultimate status are still happening and apparently they don't care that a good number of Serbia's citizens don't agree with this hasty political move. They will not give up this place.

The relationship between Serbia and this UN administered territory of Serbia (Kosovo refuses to consider itself part of Serbia and Serbia refuses to let Kosovo stand alone) all makes it very interesting for anyone to cross the border separating the territory from the country. A common practice of the internationals around here is a "stamp run." This is a day-long venture over the borders of two countries and this territory. It begins with a 2-hour drive into the city of Skopje in Macedonia. The trip to Macedonia involves a border that can be crossed pretty freely, as long as it's not a holiday weekend with every single UN/EU vehicle lined up and headed for Greece. On these days a good deal of time needs to be allowed - a bit like waiting for the big roller coaster at 6 flags on Memorial Day weekend. On any other occasion, these vehicles are often allowed to jump the line and cross through, no problems, which was the case for us. Skopje is the destination of choice for the simple luxuries one cannot find in Prishtina. Our time there started with McDonald's and moved on to the local shopping mall with clothing shops worth spending money on. Here also exists a supermarket where a desperate soul can find soy milk and soy sauce!! Oh my stomach is so happy right now. The architecture of the city is a bit like Prishtina - very communist-style cement block buildings with a smattering of glass-pained, more modern looking office buildings. There is a river with a very charming foot-bridge that crosses over to a castle-type structure on a hill surrounded by minarets. As with Prishtina, but on a much larger scale, there are cafes with outdoor seating lining the streets that are full of people drinking their macciatos, lattes and OJs. Not sure where these people will go when the snow falls, but I'm sure it will be a much smokier existence within walls.

The whole idea and purpose of the stamp run is, after power shopping in Skopje, to cross the Macedonia/Serbia border in order to get a Serbian stamp in one's passport. This way, for the next month, one can cross the border from Kosovo directly to Serbia and come back without any problem. So the routine goes from Kosovo to Macedonia to Serbia, acquire the stamp and then head back into Kosovo. The woman that drove the four of us is an EU tax employee here, so r car had EU plates making this, I think, a bit easer than if we took a car with Kosovo plates. The border crossing from Serbia into Kosovo was a bit unique. Once you leave Serbia, there is about a 5 mile stretch of beautiful, undeveloped road that winds through the mountains. This "buffer zone" seems to keep a safe distance between the two borders and apparently NOT the place to jump out and throw the Frisbee around - flying objects not welcome. In a few months, who knows what will happen of the stamp run. Serbia might not ever every allow anyone who has ever been in Kosovo to cross into their borders.

A Swede, an Irish and two Oles took a road trip through two countries and a UN occupied territory, ate McDonald's, bought some jeans and soy milk, listened to good music and enjoyed what was a mostly a beautiful scenic drive through mountains of the Balkans. I can't help but find quite a few parallels this all has with my time in Japan. Prishtina is my Iida, Skopje is my Nagoya and driving through the mountain ranges in a car of people from around the world speaking English is equally beautiful and good laughs on an Asian island and in a UN occupied European territory.