Pristina as seen from Sunny Hill. The power plant gives irregular power and lots of pollution.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Chapter XI
XI. Winter comes with a vengeance; Kosovo architects; Indictments from The Hague; Kosovo politics; Too many visitors; A trip home; A buddy comes to work; The PM resigns; Violence as usual; KFOR check point at Inter-Ex; Katie over the wire; Threatening phone call; Spring comes to Macedonia
Dear Friends and Family,
January was mild. The days were sunny and dry. The temperatures for January were very mild. But by the last week of the month winter came, and it came with a vengeance. Everyday for a week it snowed. Not large amounts but everyday. In Kosovo and specifically Pristina, snow removal is a low priority. The main streets are plowed occasionally but the side streets such as our street are left to await a thaw. The snow continued, but the thaw never came. The temperature began to drop and after the first week of snow, the temperature was in single digits on the Fahrenheit scale well below zero Celsius. It stayed that way for over a week. Bright sunlight and bone chilling cold. The central heating in our house which is supposed to come from Thermokos, the central heating company for the city, has not provided heat for the two winters we have been here. We rely on electric space heaters. Last winter was mild and the heaters worked fine. This year they were simply not able to combat the frigid air encapsulating our home during the real cold periods. We wear warm clothes in-doors. The rooms without heaters are unusable, the ones with - chilly.
Like everywhere, the children here like the snow. They delight in sliding down the hills, and Pristina is all hills. The sleds are wooden with steel runners, similar to those that were common in my childhood, except these are higher off the ground. Streets provide the best slopes, being free of obstacles which might bring a sled to an abrupt stop. When the children finished cars were no longer able to climb the slicked icy slopes. Stairways are not shoveled nor are the walks. My ten minute walk to work was a dangerous trek across ice covered streets, walks and steps.
The project is expanding and new consultants will come. We are adding a room onto our office for four or five staff people. We began the apartment search in February. The apartment will be shared by one of our new consultants and a group of lawyers form a large US law firm that merged with a large British law firm. They will donate 4000 hours of time to our Kosovo project. We will provide air fare and a place to stay. We will need a large apartment. Gaz and I start the search with the help of a real estate agent. One apartment we looked at was new, never lived in. The whole building – four floors, one unit per floor – all of it was new. We entered the building through what presumably was a garage; one car width wide and about four car-lengths long. The door to the apartment we viewed entered into a very large hall or entry or common area off of which were several very large rooms. It appeared that one of the very large rooms was supposed to be a kitchen, since it had a sink, range and refrigerator in one corner. Two other very large rooms presumably were bedrooms and the two connected front rooms were, well, I am really not sure. Gaz and I looked in silence. The landlord proudly proclaimed that he had three more units exactly like the one we were viewing. The lay out was unsuitable for a residential apartment, an office or any other possible use I could think of. When we left, I told Gaz that his wife Lily, who is an architect by training, was very much in need. The owners of buildings, unfortunately, are unaware of that fact. We had a nice laugh as we puzzled over what we had seen. There was another with a wrap around couch. It wrapped around three and a half walls of the living room. And so it went until we finally found a very nice unit with a landlady who still insists on visiting everyday.
The international court in The Hague continues to indict war criminals. Those from Kosovo have no alternative but to go. Kosovo is under UN control and protected by the NATO KFOR troops. The Serbs, on the other hand are able to “hide out” and the government there does little to bring them to justice. The US has recently put pressure on the Serbs to turn people over to the tribunal in The Hague. Several persons were in fact turned over. This softened the feelings in Kosovo a bit.
As a result of the elections in October, the LDK party received forty-eight percent of the vote and therefore forty-eight percent of the seats in the assembly. Dr. Rugova, the president and leader of the LDK party chose to remain as president and form a coalition with another party. The second most votes were received by the PDK party, the only other party to receive double digit percentages. The PDK was a part of the former coalition government with the LDK. The PDK is a party formed from former KLA fighters and tends to be more radical than the moderate LDK. The other KLA party is the AAK, a party to the right of the PDK on the spectrum. The AAK received about seven percent of the vote, enough to put the LDK over if a coalition were formed, and it was. The choice of prime minister was a young fellow who was described by one friend as “boyish” in appearance. I saw him speak at one event and that description is apt. The young new prime minister surrounded himself with a group of advisors who were very astute concerning political matters, making the prime minister look very progressive and reasonable. Rumors abounded form the start about the prospects of his being indicted by the Hague for war crimes.
We planned a trip home the last few days of February and the first couple of weeks of March – actually two weeks total. Immediately before that we had the largest number of visitors we had ever had at one time. We had Jan, Suren, Randy and Bob from the home office. Mitch arrived to stay for six months. Three lawyers from the law firm arrived, Sheldon, Gina and John. Violaine was here to do her thing on Civil judgments. That totaled nine. As Chief of Party, I had responsibility for all of them at one time or another. Several large meetings many small ones and I was ready for them to leave and me immediately behind them.
They mostly all left by Thursday and we were to leave Friday afternoon on the 4:45 Austrian air flight. I had a morning roundtable. We would pack and leave in the afternoon. We use paper tickets, I am not sure why but we do. Our travel agent purchased them on the prior Friday and they were DHL’d on Monday due to arrive by Thursday. Thursday came and the tickets didn’t. I called and was told they were in Skopie in Macedonia and would be in Pristina on Friday. Gaz checked via the internet and said it showed they were in Italy. In the morning early Gaz and I went to the DHL office. The tickets were in fact in Italy scheduled to fly to Skopie and arrive there at 11:30 on that day – Friday. The man did a quick calculation of time necessary to clear customs at the border and get to Pristrina and said they would be in Pristina by 4 pm, leaving forty-five minutes for us to pick them up and make the 30 – 40 minute ride to the airport. Another solution was clearly necessary. The man had a plan. He would have a DHL rep in Macedonia meet the plane and get my package. That rep would take the package to the border where a Pristina DHL rep would meet him and hand off the package which could then be easily carried across the border. It would be in our office by 2:30. At 2:45 the tickets arrived at the office. Rama brought them to the house where we were doing last minute packing, picked us up and we made it to the airport in plenty of time. The challenges of development work never end. We become more flexible, patient and tolerant the longer we are here.
One of my last tasks before I left and with only two weeks notice, was to provide two trainers for an EAR (European Agency for Reconstruction) project with whom we had worked before. Two weeks is an impossible timeframe to find qualified trainers who have the time open to come to Kosovo. Include in that, travel arrangements and USAID approval. I called my friends and former colleagues from Michigan. Al did the same. John couldn’t make it. One of my former colleagues and buddies, Ron had the time free and we hurriedly planned a trip and a scope of his work. He would arrive the last week I was on leave and would be in Kosovo for the first week of my return. Turns out that Ron and Al worked together on another international project, so the visit was a lot of fun for all of us, in spite of the hectic and disorganized work schedule. It is always good to have friends visit who can share our experiences. Appropriate description is often illusive. The smell, the dust and mud. The smog and car exhausts. The drab buildings. The trash. The crumbling infrastructure surrounded by new construction. Trash – gratuitous filth as one person described it. Manholes without covers. Broken sidewalks and stairs. The friendliness of the locals. The hidden hatreds they only expose in guarded circumstances. And the trash. These are things that have to be shared to really be appreciated.
The trip home was uneventful. The stay was short – a few days in Michigan and a week in Key West. The prime minister resigned while we were in the US. Demonstrations were scheduled for when I arrived back. They were canceled. The decision of the leaders here was to show support more quietly and to maintain the peace. The Prime Minister had gone peacefully and encouraged his countrymen to follow his lead. Today there are signs bearing his likeness and the words, “Our Prime has work to do here.” There are billboards, photocopied sheets taped to car and bus windows, tee shirts. They are everywhere. And it is all peaceful.
But this is a violent place. The Friday prior to my return witnessed two hand grenades go off in front of the UN Headquarters. After I returned an electronically detonated bomb in a dumpster was exploded as President Rogovo’s motorcade passed by. A pedestrian or two were injured, the president was unharmed. The windows in the six stories above the sports store that is several doors from the Kosovo Judicial Institute and a block from our cleaners were all blown out by the blast. This is a violent place even when it tries not to be, and it was violence as usual. Centuries of conflict, domination and hatred have taken a heavy toll on civility in this part of the world.
Presumably as a reaction to the violence and threats of demonstrations and perhaps worse, KFOR has been taking measures to thwart major unrest. I was on my way to Inter-Ex, one of our new modern superstores, to get cat litter and a few other items. There was a KFOR soldier beside the highway behind a sign that said “slow KFOR” in three languages. He signaled via radio to another soldier at the Inter-Ex entrance. That soldier flagged the designated cars off the highway and into the Inter-Ex parking lot. The car ahead of me was waved in, I turned to shop. At the point where those of us shoppers went straight and those selected for search were diverted to the right, the car ahead was flagged by a soldier to the right, and I was waived ahead. There no fewer than twelve KFOR vehicles in a row and each had a car beside it being searched by soldiers. All passengers, men, women and even children, were standing outside, arms stretched to the side, being passed with a wand and patted down. Trunk lids were lifted, doors opened wide. The searches appeared not to be cursory. I did my shopping and left. The week following a similar check point appeared on the road to Skopje.
Katie came with Barry to do a presentation on one of our activities. Katie had been Maury’s partner for twenty years. Maury was my partner in Bangladesh and although I had not met Katie before her arrival in Pristina, I felt I knew her. She arrived Saturday and Al and I took her to dinner. The next day, Easter, she took a walk. There is rule here in Pristina that people learn quite quickly; if you walk, never look up. Broken sidewalks, missing manhole covers and any number of obstacles will otherwise be a person’s undoing. For Katie it was a wire protecting recently poured concrete in the sidewalk. In the split second she looked up to catch a view of something or another, it was Katie over the wire. For some reason, US KFOR will not treat Americans or anyone other than military personnel, at the Bondsteel base. Al took Katie to the German KFOR hospital in Prizren and she in fact had a fractured elbow (and a black and blue mouth). She returned with a cast and left Pristina by Wednesday, the first available flight she could change her ticket to.
The first call was an Albanian. I presume an Albanian, I am unable to distinguish Albanian from Serbian or any of a number of languages for that matter. The second call ten minutes later was from a stern speaking man who, in excellent English, told me to stop helping Albanians destroy Serb houses or else, “Good Bye!” Clearly this was a threatening phone call. That was Saturday before Easter. I reported it finally on Wednesday. The nice fellow who worked for the US Office in Pristrina from Ann Arbor told me that they did not protect all Americans, but I was a USAID contractor and he had time…. I was less than comforted, but he was genuinely concerned and did his job well. The call was on my land-line which is actually listed in another international’s name. Some fellow who presumably lived in my house prior to me (I have been here a year and a half). There are no phone books in Kosovo that I know of, so it is difficult to determine if it was directed toward me or not. In my time here, I have become very much at home. I know many people, both local and internationals. I am familiar with the surroundings. It is home to me. Like it is home to the Kosovars. They harbor the ethnic hatred between themselves. I have not adopted that, but things have a way of becoming personal nonetheless. I now feel more entangled in this morass and less an outsider, visiting, helping.
We have a constant stream of consultants now. Katie and Barry, plus Nial on another of our projects. Nial is a friend from my Michigan days. This week it will be Sheldon and Gina and Mathew, and so it goes. I took an overnight to Greece. Saturday morning but back for a Sunday evening meeting. As we passed through Macedonia the fruit trees had blossomed. And the forsythia. The farmers wrapped grape vines onto the wires. Snow still capped the mountain peaks, but the hillsides were warmed by a spring sun that caused the shepherds to stare aimlessly over their flocks as they grazed the new green grass. It stayed that way even after we entered Greece. The first sign one sees after passing from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and into Greece is “Welcome to Macedonia.” The Macedonian area of Greece is what is meant by the sign. To the Greeks, Macedonia is the northern portion of their country. That is a squabble between Greece and the current country of Macedonia. A squabble I am not involved in but only witness from time to time. But in either place, it was comforting to see that Springtime had come to Macedonia. It’s a new beginning. Time for a fresh start. Spring always offers an opportunity to leave the cold and darkness of the harsh winter behind. A chance to reseed, to bloom and grow anew. It seems that the most obvious of opportunities are the least seized. So it is in the Balkans.
Until next connection,
Dan
Dear Friends and Family,
January was mild. The days were sunny and dry. The temperatures for January were very mild. But by the last week of the month winter came, and it came with a vengeance. Everyday for a week it snowed. Not large amounts but everyday. In Kosovo and specifically Pristina, snow removal is a low priority. The main streets are plowed occasionally but the side streets such as our street are left to await a thaw. The snow continued, but the thaw never came. The temperature began to drop and after the first week of snow, the temperature was in single digits on the Fahrenheit scale well below zero Celsius. It stayed that way for over a week. Bright sunlight and bone chilling cold. The central heating in our house which is supposed to come from Thermokos, the central heating company for the city, has not provided heat for the two winters we have been here. We rely on electric space heaters. Last winter was mild and the heaters worked fine. This year they were simply not able to combat the frigid air encapsulating our home during the real cold periods. We wear warm clothes in-doors. The rooms without heaters are unusable, the ones with - chilly.
Like everywhere, the children here like the snow. They delight in sliding down the hills, and Pristina is all hills. The sleds are wooden with steel runners, similar to those that were common in my childhood, except these are higher off the ground. Streets provide the best slopes, being free of obstacles which might bring a sled to an abrupt stop. When the children finished cars were no longer able to climb the slicked icy slopes. Stairways are not shoveled nor are the walks. My ten minute walk to work was a dangerous trek across ice covered streets, walks and steps.
The project is expanding and new consultants will come. We are adding a room onto our office for four or five staff people. We began the apartment search in February. The apartment will be shared by one of our new consultants and a group of lawyers form a large US law firm that merged with a large British law firm. They will donate 4000 hours of time to our Kosovo project. We will provide air fare and a place to stay. We will need a large apartment. Gaz and I start the search with the help of a real estate agent. One apartment we looked at was new, never lived in. The whole building – four floors, one unit per floor – all of it was new. We entered the building through what presumably was a garage; one car width wide and about four car-lengths long. The door to the apartment we viewed entered into a very large hall or entry or common area off of which were several very large rooms. It appeared that one of the very large rooms was supposed to be a kitchen, since it had a sink, range and refrigerator in one corner. Two other very large rooms presumably were bedrooms and the two connected front rooms were, well, I am really not sure. Gaz and I looked in silence. The landlord proudly proclaimed that he had three more units exactly like the one we were viewing. The lay out was unsuitable for a residential apartment, an office or any other possible use I could think of. When we left, I told Gaz that his wife Lily, who is an architect by training, was very much in need. The owners of buildings, unfortunately, are unaware of that fact. We had a nice laugh as we puzzled over what we had seen. There was another with a wrap around couch. It wrapped around three and a half walls of the living room. And so it went until we finally found a very nice unit with a landlady who still insists on visiting everyday.
The international court in The Hague continues to indict war criminals. Those from Kosovo have no alternative but to go. Kosovo is under UN control and protected by the NATO KFOR troops. The Serbs, on the other hand are able to “hide out” and the government there does little to bring them to justice. The US has recently put pressure on the Serbs to turn people over to the tribunal in The Hague. Several persons were in fact turned over. This softened the feelings in Kosovo a bit.
As a result of the elections in October, the LDK party received forty-eight percent of the vote and therefore forty-eight percent of the seats in the assembly. Dr. Rugova, the president and leader of the LDK party chose to remain as president and form a coalition with another party. The second most votes were received by the PDK party, the only other party to receive double digit percentages. The PDK was a part of the former coalition government with the LDK. The PDK is a party formed from former KLA fighters and tends to be more radical than the moderate LDK. The other KLA party is the AAK, a party to the right of the PDK on the spectrum. The AAK received about seven percent of the vote, enough to put the LDK over if a coalition were formed, and it was. The choice of prime minister was a young fellow who was described by one friend as “boyish” in appearance. I saw him speak at one event and that description is apt. The young new prime minister surrounded himself with a group of advisors who were very astute concerning political matters, making the prime minister look very progressive and reasonable. Rumors abounded form the start about the prospects of his being indicted by the Hague for war crimes.
We planned a trip home the last few days of February and the first couple of weeks of March – actually two weeks total. Immediately before that we had the largest number of visitors we had ever had at one time. We had Jan, Suren, Randy and Bob from the home office. Mitch arrived to stay for six months. Three lawyers from the law firm arrived, Sheldon, Gina and John. Violaine was here to do her thing on Civil judgments. That totaled nine. As Chief of Party, I had responsibility for all of them at one time or another. Several large meetings many small ones and I was ready for them to leave and me immediately behind them.
They mostly all left by Thursday and we were to leave Friday afternoon on the 4:45 Austrian air flight. I had a morning roundtable. We would pack and leave in the afternoon. We use paper tickets, I am not sure why but we do. Our travel agent purchased them on the prior Friday and they were DHL’d on Monday due to arrive by Thursday. Thursday came and the tickets didn’t. I called and was told they were in Skopie in Macedonia and would be in Pristina on Friday. Gaz checked via the internet and said it showed they were in Italy. In the morning early Gaz and I went to the DHL office. The tickets were in fact in Italy scheduled to fly to Skopie and arrive there at 11:30 on that day – Friday. The man did a quick calculation of time necessary to clear customs at the border and get to Pristrina and said they would be in Pristina by 4 pm, leaving forty-five minutes for us to pick them up and make the 30 – 40 minute ride to the airport. Another solution was clearly necessary. The man had a plan. He would have a DHL rep in Macedonia meet the plane and get my package. That rep would take the package to the border where a Pristina DHL rep would meet him and hand off the package which could then be easily carried across the border. It would be in our office by 2:30. At 2:45 the tickets arrived at the office. Rama brought them to the house where we were doing last minute packing, picked us up and we made it to the airport in plenty of time. The challenges of development work never end. We become more flexible, patient and tolerant the longer we are here.
One of my last tasks before I left and with only two weeks notice, was to provide two trainers for an EAR (European Agency for Reconstruction) project with whom we had worked before. Two weeks is an impossible timeframe to find qualified trainers who have the time open to come to Kosovo. Include in that, travel arrangements and USAID approval. I called my friends and former colleagues from Michigan. Al did the same. John couldn’t make it. One of my former colleagues and buddies, Ron had the time free and we hurriedly planned a trip and a scope of his work. He would arrive the last week I was on leave and would be in Kosovo for the first week of my return. Turns out that Ron and Al worked together on another international project, so the visit was a lot of fun for all of us, in spite of the hectic and disorganized work schedule. It is always good to have friends visit who can share our experiences. Appropriate description is often illusive. The smell, the dust and mud. The smog and car exhausts. The drab buildings. The trash. The crumbling infrastructure surrounded by new construction. Trash – gratuitous filth as one person described it. Manholes without covers. Broken sidewalks and stairs. The friendliness of the locals. The hidden hatreds they only expose in guarded circumstances. And the trash. These are things that have to be shared to really be appreciated.
The trip home was uneventful. The stay was short – a few days in Michigan and a week in Key West. The prime minister resigned while we were in the US. Demonstrations were scheduled for when I arrived back. They were canceled. The decision of the leaders here was to show support more quietly and to maintain the peace. The Prime Minister had gone peacefully and encouraged his countrymen to follow his lead. Today there are signs bearing his likeness and the words, “Our Prime has work to do here.” There are billboards, photocopied sheets taped to car and bus windows, tee shirts. They are everywhere. And it is all peaceful.
But this is a violent place. The Friday prior to my return witnessed two hand grenades go off in front of the UN Headquarters. After I returned an electronically detonated bomb in a dumpster was exploded as President Rogovo’s motorcade passed by. A pedestrian or two were injured, the president was unharmed. The windows in the six stories above the sports store that is several doors from the Kosovo Judicial Institute and a block from our cleaners were all blown out by the blast. This is a violent place even when it tries not to be, and it was violence as usual. Centuries of conflict, domination and hatred have taken a heavy toll on civility in this part of the world.
Presumably as a reaction to the violence and threats of demonstrations and perhaps worse, KFOR has been taking measures to thwart major unrest. I was on my way to Inter-Ex, one of our new modern superstores, to get cat litter and a few other items. There was a KFOR soldier beside the highway behind a sign that said “slow KFOR” in three languages. He signaled via radio to another soldier at the Inter-Ex entrance. That soldier flagged the designated cars off the highway and into the Inter-Ex parking lot. The car ahead of me was waved in, I turned to shop. At the point where those of us shoppers went straight and those selected for search were diverted to the right, the car ahead was flagged by a soldier to the right, and I was waived ahead. There no fewer than twelve KFOR vehicles in a row and each had a car beside it being searched by soldiers. All passengers, men, women and even children, were standing outside, arms stretched to the side, being passed with a wand and patted down. Trunk lids were lifted, doors opened wide. The searches appeared not to be cursory. I did my shopping and left. The week following a similar check point appeared on the road to Skopje.
Katie came with Barry to do a presentation on one of our activities. Katie had been Maury’s partner for twenty years. Maury was my partner in Bangladesh and although I had not met Katie before her arrival in Pristina, I felt I knew her. She arrived Saturday and Al and I took her to dinner. The next day, Easter, she took a walk. There is rule here in Pristina that people learn quite quickly; if you walk, never look up. Broken sidewalks, missing manhole covers and any number of obstacles will otherwise be a person’s undoing. For Katie it was a wire protecting recently poured concrete in the sidewalk. In the split second she looked up to catch a view of something or another, it was Katie over the wire. For some reason, US KFOR will not treat Americans or anyone other than military personnel, at the Bondsteel base. Al took Katie to the German KFOR hospital in Prizren and she in fact had a fractured elbow (and a black and blue mouth). She returned with a cast and left Pristina by Wednesday, the first available flight she could change her ticket to.
The first call was an Albanian. I presume an Albanian, I am unable to distinguish Albanian from Serbian or any of a number of languages for that matter. The second call ten minutes later was from a stern speaking man who, in excellent English, told me to stop helping Albanians destroy Serb houses or else, “Good Bye!” Clearly this was a threatening phone call. That was Saturday before Easter. I reported it finally on Wednesday. The nice fellow who worked for the US Office in Pristrina from Ann Arbor told me that they did not protect all Americans, but I was a USAID contractor and he had time…. I was less than comforted, but he was genuinely concerned and did his job well. The call was on my land-line which is actually listed in another international’s name. Some fellow who presumably lived in my house prior to me (I have been here a year and a half). There are no phone books in Kosovo that I know of, so it is difficult to determine if it was directed toward me or not. In my time here, I have become very much at home. I know many people, both local and internationals. I am familiar with the surroundings. It is home to me. Like it is home to the Kosovars. They harbor the ethnic hatred between themselves. I have not adopted that, but things have a way of becoming personal nonetheless. I now feel more entangled in this morass and less an outsider, visiting, helping.
We have a constant stream of consultants now. Katie and Barry, plus Nial on another of our projects. Nial is a friend from my Michigan days. This week it will be Sheldon and Gina and Mathew, and so it goes. I took an overnight to Greece. Saturday morning but back for a Sunday evening meeting. As we passed through Macedonia the fruit trees had blossomed. And the forsythia. The farmers wrapped grape vines onto the wires. Snow still capped the mountain peaks, but the hillsides were warmed by a spring sun that caused the shepherds to stare aimlessly over their flocks as they grazed the new green grass. It stayed that way even after we entered Greece. The first sign one sees after passing from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and into Greece is “Welcome to Macedonia.” The Macedonian area of Greece is what is meant by the sign. To the Greeks, Macedonia is the northern portion of their country. That is a squabble between Greece and the current country of Macedonia. A squabble I am not involved in but only witness from time to time. But in either place, it was comforting to see that Springtime had come to Macedonia. It’s a new beginning. Time for a fresh start. Spring always offers an opportunity to leave the cold and darkness of the harsh winter behind. A chance to reseed, to bloom and grow anew. It seems that the most obvious of opportunities are the least seized. So it is in the Balkans.
Until next connection,
Dan
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