Dear Friends and Family,
It is interesting watching a new country grow. I say country, but that is a word we never use here since Kosovo’s “status” has not been determined as of yet. “Country” is not a politically correct word to use in relation to Kosovo. The Serbs consider it a province of Serbia as it had always been. The Albanian Kosovars want it to be a country if it cannot be the fifty-first state or a part of “Greater Albania” (“Greater Albania,” “Greater Serbia,” and “Greater Macedonia” all overlap one another, ethnic conflict should be no surprise then). We say things like “Kosovo wide” or “across Kosovo” but never “country.” Status determination is promised soon. But even as status awaits, the society moves forward. Fueled mostly by international money from the resident internationals here in Kosovo doing work, like myself, and from expatriate Kosovars in neighboring countries working and sending money back, the local economy seems to be flourishing. Unemployment is still a major issue as is low wages, but construction is booming. It isn’t just through the new construction, prosperity reveals itself in other ways. I have already spoken about the super markets that have sprung up in the past year; Maxi Mart, Ylli bec; Ben-af, Inter Ex, the Scandinavian store with household goods and teak furniture, to name a few. There are other things that have come on the scene as well. On Bill Clinton Boulevard a video bill board went up several months ago, then another. Now there is a third on the Skopje road near the Victory Hotel. There is tree planting in the tree lawns next to the street that passes our office. Little by little, almost unnoticed by us locals, modern society is taking over Pristina.
A couple of weeks ago my bosses were here from Washington. We were at a meeting with the USAID Mission Director. He advised us that literally moments before our meeting the former Prime Minister’s brother was shot and killed in Peja. This is the Prime Minister who is now in The Hague awaiting trial for war crimes. All of his family members were involved with the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) in the days during and leading up to the war. One brother was in fact killed in the war. It is “rumored” that the KLA leaders became the crime bosses after the war. Regardless if that “rumor” has merit, the brother was shot and killed execution style by drive by shooters. When incidents like that happen everybody holds their breath. This could have been the incident to throw Kosovo into another riotous melee. It wasn’t, but there were a few days of tension.
I don’t know where the money comes from. Some say “don’t ask.” I live in a neighborhood of homes that have become desirable among those fortunate enough, through whatever means, to have money. My original landlord quickly sold my house to a nice family – Nick the young dentist making 200 euros per month working at the government clinic, his parents who are retired and his brother in Italy. The father was a teacher in Kosovo under the communist regime and taught something he wasn’t supposed to. Before he was arrested, some friends in the police department tipped off one of his friends who tipped him off and he went to Albania with his wife in the night. Now that the war is over here and the Serbs are gone and Albania is “open” again, the father came back to Kosovo. Nick, born and raised in Albania, came along with his wife and child. It is the brother in Italy who came up with the money. The price was 220,000 euros, I thought a bit steep. The brother works for a trucking firm in Italy where he provides the company with Albanian workers who work for less than Italians. Both the company and the Albanian workers appreciate the services of the brother, and, as a result, he has the ability to take care of himself and his family in Kosovo.
Things being what they are both here and in Albania, the brother decided to sell this house and buy property on the Albanian coast to build a hotel. He sees the infrastructure in Albania improving and resort areas becoming more accessible on improved roads. He sold this house for 230,000 euros (just over 300,000 US dollars) to a local guy who is a clerk in the faculty of economics (clerk in the school of accounting) at the University of Pristina. These are cash deals since banks here rarely make mortgages at this point. This is clearly one of the “don’t ask” situations since a clerk in the University likely makes a salary of less than 200 euros per month.
My new landlord never saw the inside of this house except for the time he came to meet me after he had bought it. He knows my neighbor. My neighbor convinced him to do some remodeling which he told me would be “drainage work” in the backyard. I live on a hillside so my basement opens to the outside, but the grade has never been taken totally down to the level of the basement floor. There is a small patio at that level only. First the workers came and cut an opening into the back wall below the garage and began digging the dirt out from under the garage. The dirt filled the back yard. Then came the backhoe and my satellite TV was sacrificed as the dish was turned in to allow the backhoe to work. The fences came down; fences I paid for and installed for Olga. The dirt was taken out. Not just what was removed form under the garage, but all the dirt down to the level of my basement floor. In the process the sewer lines were cut and effluent ran into the yard, the telephone line was cut several times (all my utilities are buried) and my generator was moved so many times that something got messed up and it began to not work when the electricity went off.
Then the rains came. For two days it rained. The garage was built after the house and not really attached to it in any meaningful way. The foundation for the garage, of course, did not go to the same level as the basement since it, until now, did not have an excavation under it. The garage, its weight resting on rain soaked the clay soil did what should have been expected and sank. At its roof peak the garage is now about six inches from the wall of the house.
I began looking for new housing. The landlord has yet to receive a rent payment from me. He agreed, either from our pleadings or from lack of money, to stop the project. At present, he reinstalled some fencing, propped the garage, reconnected the sewer, fixed the generator, had PTK (the phone company) fix the broken cables to the house and leveled the yard. I had the guy from Daxa fix the satellite dish. I have TV, telephone, twenty-four hour electricity and Olga has her yard back. She misses the walks four times a day, but not the confines of the basement. It still isn’t pretty, but I can live here again.
There are no inspectors for building in Kosovo. We added a room to our office to accommodate our expanding staff, but no inspector ever showed, no permits were ever issued nor were any zoning boards consulted. Some of these requirements may exist, but they are universally ignored. Thus apartment buildings get apartments added to their roofs and my landlord tries to add a room under the garage. It is all a part of modernization in this place that is desperate to become like the rest of Europe. Progress moves faster when there is no regulation. The problems get fixed later, if at all. Whole neighborhoods are being built around Pristina and no roads exist to service them. Severely rutted dirt paths substitute for streets in these new developments. Efforts are later made to convince the municipality to pave the roads.
The weather was nice and I took a drive in the country to look for a greenhouse I was told about. It’s springtime, and I wanted to plant some flowers. I passed through Shtimje and turned to go to Ferizaj rather than heading for Prizren. A couple kilometers out of town it was on the right. Very much like the greenhouses in US, it had bedding plants and a variety of large tropical plants for use indoor. I bought a couple of plants for the front porch. I turned right out of the drive to go on to Ferizaj
A short distance down the road was a KPS (Kosovo Police Service) and KFOR check point. I was directed to pull off. I have been stopped before so I know the drill. I rolled down the window; the young policeman asked for my “da-koo-ments” I gave him the vehicle papers. He asked to see in the trunk, but I did not understand him. The young KFOR trooper in army greens, automatic weapon at the ready, spoke to me through the passenger window; “He wants you to open the boot,” he was not British but his English was good. I was also asked to get out of the vehicle while the policeman went through the trunk, KFOR soldier by his side. They were looking for stolen cars, illegal goods and weapons. I had nothing to worry about, but it is disconcerting nonetheless. The incident made me remember there was a bloody riot last year, that there was a deadly war five years ago and genocide for several years before that. It made me remember that I get danger pay to be here, and it was a reminder why. I continued on to Ferizaj, inexplicably ill at ease until I was able to immerse myself in the excesses of the western-style Ben-af store.
Until next connection,
Dan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)