Kosova under my skin

When I went to Kosova with my Master's programme in January, I had the incredible fortune of meeting a generous and good-natured family, the Kastratis, where I and 3 other E.MA girls spent a week occupying 2 of the 4 rooms in the house. They normally live 7 people there - mother and father, father's mother and the 4 children Katrina, Fisnik, Visar and Loriku. Since Thessaloniki is only 4½ hours by train to Skopje and another 2 hours on bus, I promised I would come back to visit them before I leave this part of Europe. So I went.

I saw a very different Kosova this time, partly because the place doesn’t look so utterly hopeless in the spring time (or whatever it is we are having now) and partly because I had the time for the type of conversations that really teach you something. The family arranged an outing Friday evening to the forest near the city – it was like coming home, for some reason the vegetation is similar to that of ‘my forest’ back home in Aarhus. We walked and talked and listened to the birds – and turned a corner and found the former most luxurious hotel in the area in ruins. Apparently the hotel had been occupied by the Serbs, and NATO targetted it as one of their first 'enemy dwellings'. I have never seen anything like it in my life. In the dusk it looked like a pile of bricks – but with clear signs of life reminding me that people died in there. Now, being the sentimental and very protected geek that I am, it obviously made a big impression on me. Whoever these people were, they died a horrible death in there. I’ve never really understood ‘horrible death’ before but it came to me in that forest right then, and I was very afraid (of death and horrible things that can happen to you before you die, but mostly of the people who can do such things to other humans) and panicked.

The day after, I went up to Mitrovicë to have a look around with the oldest son in the family. Had an embarrassing experience with the Danish KFOR up there and am sure they’re laughing at me at least for the next month. I was lucky enough to meet some relatives of the family in Pristinë; they had fled the town in 1999 on foot, walking all the way from Mitrovicë to Albania! Bajram, the father of the family, started talking – and talking and talking and talking. He had been filming events of Kosova since 1987 so he had some incredible footage of demonstrations by miners in the north walking all the way to Pristinë to join an even bigger demonstration and also of the 38 Albanian conscripts to the Yugoslav army who were sent back to their families in coffins, apparently having committed suicide. The footage showed their mangled and beat up faces and a couple of them had been loosely stitched together after someone had stolen their organs!

On my way back on Sunday, I got stuck in Skopje, honestly an extremely desolate and hopeless place, for a bunch of hours without Macedonian money (so I couldn't go to the bathroom before I figured out how to get some). The experience turned from *argh* to *sob* when I met two of the kindest French military police officers. They both work in Kosova (at least for a little while still, being employed by the UN Mission to Kosovo means going home at the end of the month for many of the police officers). These two fellas told me stories about their work, about their lives and engaged in all my wonderments with enthusiasm. I asked and asked, and they elaborated and spoke with such humanity that it's hard to describe. I admire these humans that spend their days saving girls from prostitution through human trafficking and constantly try to improve the workings of the UN and international cooperation in general. We spent some 7 hours together in the train station and on the train and by the end of the night, my ears were ringing and my brain was blowing steam out of my ears to try to process all this new information.

As I will probably never see these two again, and I need to direct my thankful thoughts somewhere, a heart-felt gratitude goes out to all those humans out there being human, working for a better world, neglecting themselves and sacrificing other life privileges still finding it useful and worthwhile to do the jobs they do.

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of Peace must be constructed
(from the UNESCO Constitution)

Peace out....