Was on my way out of town with a friend and we got stick in horrendous traffic. We could see fireworks in the distance and wondered what the occasion was and why we weren't invited. Turns out it was the grand opening of a new shopping mall. A fancy 3 floor clothing store on the edge of town and it was PACKED!!! And the cars parked outside weren't your lowly 15 year-old VW Golfs. Brand new Audis, MBWs and Mercedes were prevalent. And just like the other shopping centers like it, inside are Polo sweaters, 7 Jeans, Esprit bags and jackets along with other expensive western brands. Ironically, not but a few hours earlier a student of mine was making a joke about how prime time TV in Kosovo is 7 - 9 AM because no one has a job to go to in the morning.
Every time I encounter this mysterious phenomenon of apparent consumerism with peaking unemployment statistics, I have to ask and try to make sense of it. Three answers prevail. At the end of the 90s when Albanians were being run out by Milosovic and the Serbs, a lot of them sought asylum in Europe and the states. They got jobs there that paid better than anything they could get here, and have never come back. Instead, their foreign incomes come back to feed their families and generally support the local economy. Another more obvious but less complete answer is how much the international organizations here employ the locals, which is true to a certain extent. However, the percentage of Kosovar Albanians that have the education and language skills to nab jobs in these organizations is extremely small.
The third, and maybe the answer that applies to most is that the affluence seen here has a lot to do with the local Mafia whom historically, the US has supported. I have a hunch this mob culture spreads out across this entire country. Organized crime culture is a way of life that has existed here for a long time and has proven to be a viable means of survival. As a result it permeates. Even if one is not involved directly with mob activity, the family and doing whatever means necessary to protect the family is the bottom line to people here. There is an unwritten code - the Code of Dukajini - which states that if an individual from one family kills a member of your family, you have every right to retaliate on any member of the murdering family with murder, regardless of who was actually holding the smoking gun, so to speak. Every one of your actions is seen as an action done by the family. The code goes back in Albanian culture for years, having nothing to do with relationships with Serbia or any other neighbor. And when money is concerned, every penny one makes is a penny for the family. They are all in it together.
The picture above is of a Kula - a structure built to protect one family from a neighboring feuding family. There is even a room isolated and removed from the rest with a wood-burning stove - the only one in the house. Women were not allowed in this room. It was for the men only, to hide out from whoever wanted to kill them on any given day. These places are now turned into bed and breakfast places and often visited by internationals for a bit of culture. that's why I got the picture.
Feels like I bring up this topic over and over again, but I can't help it. Day after day questions I ask about the dichotomies that exist here give me the same answers. Illegal, corruption, Mafia, laundering, revenge. The US and NATO came here to save the Albanians from ethnic cleansing done by Serbs. Then, according to others, the US helped Albanian terrorists perform their own form of ethnic cleansing on the Serbs. And clearly, cultural norms that existed well before any international organization even looked at the area have a huge influence on the efforts toward independence that are being made here.
Needless to say, I go into these shopping centers and give them my business. It's a setting familiar to us internationals and we like being there. And, I have to admit my I got a bit of the New York City China Town rush when I looked at the price of those jeans that would have sold for $180 at Macy's and saw that here they were no more than $30. They don't have to be as covert here as they do in China Town. There really isn't anyone here to bust them for selling fraudulent goods. So, they build their shiny malls with bright lights and big windows showing that someone here has money,
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