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!