Notes from a Trip Part II

The fact that cell phones with Serbian networks don't work in Kosovo is symptomatic of the folly of the whole situation. Serbia wants to maintain the claim that Kosovo is still theirs, yet they won't allow their networks to function there, essentially forcing the local Serbian population to take the Kosovo carriers (which are using Monaco numbers, don't ask me why), as they are subject to Kosovo energy supplies (except in Mitrovica north, where Serbia provides well for the Serbian communities).

But we were lucky to break down at a gas station attended by an man who loved Germany and Germans. He had lived there for two years as a Gastarbeiter during the war, and earned enough to buy a small farm for his family. Wuppertal ist super! He now worked at the gas station and cared for a cow and tilled a bit of land. His life was clearly tough, but he managed.

After taking a look into the engine and cleaning off the spark-plugs, he couldn't seem to find the issue. Instead of abandoning us though, he ran across the street and called over a mechanic to take a closer look. This young man spent a good hour checking everything and concluded that the catalysator was blocked. As he was making his assessment, he handed out cigarettes, as is the custom in Albanian communities. Then, cigarette in mouth, he continued to work on the engine. I wondered to myself, how safe that really was.

While the mechanic managed to get the engine to start, he said we should not drive to Pristina / Prishtine because it could really f' the engine up. What to do? The kindly gas station attendant offer us his cell phone and we called D's friend, who's car was also at the mechanic! But she said she would go get it and come rescue us. We would just have to sit tight for an hour or so. With the falling temperature and darkness, this was a less than fun prospect.

Once again the man at the gas station showed his kindness and took us to the back room of the station, and lit the wood fire for us. For the next hour we sat there with him, talking about his time in Germany, the agriculture of Kosovo, and of course, relations with the Serb community. Wir sind alle Menchen. Wir mussen zusamen leben. He said he never discriminated against Serbs when they came to his business, but he did think they were the troublemakers in Kosovo. But he just wanted to leave that all behind and face the reality that they lived side-by-side. It was hard to tell how much of what he said was what he thought we, as Germans or Internationals, wanted to hear, and how much was his opinion. But I chose to take him at face value because I have no reason not to.

As the attendant was showing us pictures of his kids, his boss showed up. The man was gruff, old and broken. He sat next to me in the back room, rolling a cigarette, and he seemed so sad, so tired of life. He reiterated the sentiments of our friend, that people needed to get along, but Serbs were the issue at the moment. But he did it with such tragedy in his voice, that I could not help but wonder what all his eyes had seen growing up as an Albanian in Kosovo. I never found out because D's friend showed up to rescue us.

These two men had shared their space with two total strangers, and given me a valuable insight into how people were living here, at least on the Albanian side. It was clear that there were so many issues in Kosovo, and not all of them were the result of tensions between Serbs and Albanians. It seems there is a growing disappointment with the central government and the lack of progress in ten years of International administration. People were living hard lives and had only seen the top dogs get richer, but nothing much had trickled down. Then there is the issue of bad water management, lack of agricultural development despite good soil conditions and plenty of arable land, and finally Leute in Kosovo haben zu viele Kinder. Das ist ein Problem, aber ich glaube das ich Kinder haben muss. Aber nur zwei. Andere Leute haben mehr.

By now it was really cold and dark out. The mini was covered in snow, but D decided she had to try and drive it to Pristina / Prishtine anyway. So I got in the car with her friend and we drove slowly behind her all the way to the city. We made it all the way without further problems, I quickly made good friends with A, D's friend, and soon enough we were on the 9th floor of the OSCE Building, drinking with the international community, looking out over the city.

Not for a moment did the snow stop falling. Welcome to Prishtine.

Notes from a Trip Part 1

At 22.00 I got a text message from D. "Do you have a sleeping bag?" No, I don't, but I'll bring a blanket, I replied. My thoughts turned to the trip. Where was I going? I had visions of sleeping in the car surrounded by thousands of wild eyed locals and internationals. Better get some sleep now, I thought.

We set out at 0630 from Belgrade in a 1996 Mini; the morning was cold and the sky light grey. I was surprised at how many people were on their way to work at that time. More, it seemed, than at 0800, a much more civilized time to be stirring. Neither of us had checked the weather, and ultimately there would have been no good reason for it, our plans were set. We were going to Kosovo come hell or high water.

The E75 heading south is a flat, boring road passing through equally dull and flat country-side. We passed the time talking about work, D's job application, and going through her CD collection. The mini held its own well, and though I had to jam my wallet into a small gap in the dashboard to keep the stereo from disconnecting, we drove in relative comfort. Our musical influences for the drive ranged from Cake's Fashion Nugget and a Beastie Boys mix, to Bertold Brecht's Die Dreigroshenopa, and I ate a lot of kikiriki. Just past Nis the sky grew dark and snow began to fall; it wouldn't stop until we were in Mitrovica two days later.

While the road became more interesting as we passed into the Presevo valley, the journey was largely uneventful. We turned off the highway at Bujenovac and made for the border. The road leading to Kosovo was in bad shape and to hope for a snow plow was folly. Fortunately the ground was warm enough that most of the snow melted into slush, and anyway, there wasn't much chance of building up speed on these roads. We climbed steadily in the short distance between Bujenovac and the border. But it was enough so that had the feeling that we were passing into Moriea from Rivendale. I looked around for hobbits, but only saw stone faced Serbian Police officers. Crossing the 'administrative line' was rather painless, thanks in part to the Dip plates on the trusty mini. From there it is a short jaunt through the demilitarized zone to the Kosovo border. Again we passed with no hold up. The Kosovo guard, upon seeing D's Italian passport, remarked buona sera. Neither of us informed him that it was only 11.00.

Once inside Kosovo I felt like I was going somewhere I wasn't supposed to. As if my parents had forbidden me to go, but I snuck out and went anyway. The difference is also instantly tangible, not just because of how the villages are organized, but because of the massive international presence. In the 45 minuets it took us to get to Gnjilane from the border, we passed Italian Carabinari trucks, UN SUVs, and EULEX jeeps. In addition to this, D pointed out what the ethnic composition of each village was we passed. But in most cases, you could tell by the flags. The Serbian 'enclaves', generally set slightly back from the main road, had large Serbian flags hanging down over the entrance, while the Kosovo-Albanian villages were littered with Albanian and American flags. At times these two flags were attached, like conjoined twins. I wanted D to pull over so I could give a short speech about flag code (the conjoined American and Albanian flag being a major violation...), but after seeing some of the burned out Serbian homes, I thought better of it. But the reality was that there was total segregation, and nowhere did the two groups meet.

Our first top was the OSCE field office in Gnjilane, where D. used to work. I was amazed to find that the "field office" was almost the same size as the entire mission in Serbia, at least from the staff presence. Over coffee, pizza we had conversations with the transport director and a program assistant from Democratization. These two men sat at the same table, and conversed with one-another as if it was normal. One was Albanian, the other a Serb. They were right, it is totally normal for two people to have a conversation. It is only when you introduce nationality / identity as a factor meant to influence their interactions that you have problem.

We left the field office around 1430, passing UNMIK, Ukrainian KFOR, and US Military installations on the way out of town. Each warned that I would be instantly kidnapped if I took any photos, so I looked straight ahead and smiled. We made it half way to Pristina / Prishtine before needing to fill up on gas. Once the car was fueled, D got back in and turned the key and ... nothing. We were in the middle of nowhere, without functioning cell phones (because Serbian networks don't work in Kosovo) and now without a functioning car.

All around us the snow kept falling.

Quote

Here is a quote Treasury Secretary Geither:
"Our hope is that we can work with Europeans on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight, so we don't have a balkanized system at the global level, like we had at the national level," Mr. Geithner said.

Interesting use of ‘balkanized’... Brings to mind near / far away argument, that somehow we all understand the what the term “balkanized” implies, without actually knowing what it is. As K.E. Fleming argued, “the Balkans are both fully known and wholly unknowable... To Balkanize after all, means to divide; or fragment, along absurdly minute and definitionally obscure grounds.”

Balkans has truly become a metaphor for collapse, dysfunction and chaos when it is being used to such an absurd degree: as an explanation that the US financial system was in a mess he alludes to the collapse of the Former Yugoslavia. Incredibly derogatory towards the region in question, yet totally acceptable in mass media. In the language he uses, he suggests that the US and Europe (i.e. EU) work together to stop the ‘Balkans’ syndrome from harming the civilized order. Yet, is it not the ‘civilized’ (i.e. Non-balkanized) people which in fact created this “balkanized system”? How fitting is this as its own metaphor for the actual attitude of the West towards the Balkans, both historically and now?

The full article where I found the quote is in the Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/26/business/regulate.php

24.03.1999 - 24.03.2009

Today is the anniversary of the NATO bombing in Serbia. Ten years ago today NATO began its campaign against Milosevic.

At 12 pm the air raid siren went off and the people are now gathering all over the city. They are gathering in front of the bombed out buildings. Later there will be an anti-NATO rally in the central square.

Amalgamation

St. Paddy's day in Belgrade at the Three Carrots, where the Guinness is really bad and over priced. A couple of guys were dissecting my nationality, and no answer was good enough, except that there was some Irish blood in me from my Gran. "Oh, that is to bad" they kept saying. On of them had been in the Balkans since things went south in the early 1990's. It's amazing how many internationals you meet, who are like this guy. Partly it is the work, I am sure, but there seems to also be something attractive about being in 'conflict' regions.

"It's the Wild West out here." He said this as if we were a million miles from 'civilization', not in the heart of Belgrade, a cosmopolitan city. When I think of Wild West, I think of Deadwood and Clint Eastwood, not Kneza Milosa or Boris Tadic. One might be forgiven for thinking that about Pristina and Kosovo, but Serbia? He listed things like the bad driving and danger of crossing the road as to why he thought this was the Wild West.

~~

Aleks and I were talking about how to do what interests you in life, and still make a living. You have to bring the system to your interests, he said. We used the example of TKV, a local artist, who is doing great street art, and basically making some money doing what interests her. It's not so much that she created a demand, rather, she focused on what she liked to do and then found a way to sell her skill.

It is no easy thing to do, particularly for a social scientist, who can't do much with his hands, except tap on a key board! But I was thinking about this conversation again last night as I listened to Moondog. Moondog made his own music, his own instruments and his own clothing. He was fiercely independent from mainstream music and society, but he lived as he wanted. He is an example that you can do whatever you want, or, as Aleks put it, an example that being crazy is really beautiful. 

Email exchange

I sent out a farewell email to some of my closer friends at work and in Belgrade before leaving Friday. I noted how I had grown and changed, etc... and I illustrated this point with the adage that a person never steps in the same river twice, because both s/he and the river are changed... here is one of the replies I got:

"...that actually is empirically tested in quantum physics, where it's impossible to know the "true" location and speed of a given particle as our very own observation of said particle inevitably changes one or both of these sizes.

"Things evolve man, and we all evolve along with them. Nothing evolves alone, and the actual "measure" of such evolvement is given by the interaction with everything else. "

The long walk home...

... as the fat lady sang.

Today I completed my work at the Mission and said farewell, or vidimo se, to all my colleagues. On Monday I go back in for a few hours to send a couple emails and go through the check out process, and then I will be officially done.

But today was really the "last day" at work. I think some people expected me to be sad, looking for emotion in my voice and face. Certainly I am going to miss the people at the office, many of them anyway. I will also miss the work, because even though I have some reservations about what is actually going on with "development" work (at least of the philosophical level), I did well, and I learned a great deal.

But sad is not the right word. I have grown a lot, learned a lot and experienced a lot; I have grown close to many of the people I have met through work and outside of work. In Belgrade I have been at my best and my worst, and I have been fortunate for all these experiences. In a sense, I am actually happy because I am aware of how much I have gained by being here.

There is undoubtably anxiety as I still don't have another job lined up yet, but I am not sad. I am thankful for all this.

For the love of God, tell me what to do!!

I'm in another transition phase. After eight months in Serbia, it is certain that I am leaving at the end of the month. The question of "what's next," which is what everyone is asking me, is still unclear. Since this is not exactly an ideal time to enter the job market, and because I missed all the deadlines for getting into a graduate program or law school, I'm sort of treading water. Well, that is not entirely true, because I have the Roma paper to write and the ANS Conference to attend at the end of April. So my next weeks are well defined: writing and travelling. I suppose that isn't so bad. But it is the large black hole of unemployment in the post ANS period which is bearing down on me.

But what is the point of writing this? Simply that I find it interesting that I do not see the "freedom" (whatever that means) I currently have as a blessing, but rather as a curse. I mean, I am really free to go anywhere and do anything, yet all I want is for someone to come along and tell me what to do, to give me a job and define things for me. I remember a quote from my good friend Brian who said something like 'we want our freedom only so we can give it away to someone else.' I have to agree with that on many levels: personal and political. For me, thus on the personal level, I hate to be to confined and tied down by material things and jobs, yet when I experience that sensation of being so free, I run for cover and the 'safety' of belonging to something, and thus being tied down again, etc...

You can see this play out on a political level too. People were so eager to be 'free' of Bush, that they went and gave a huge mandate to Obama, rather than trying to reclaim the problems for themselves. Ok, maybe you can argue that in a democratic system the vote is essentially the individuals power to dictate how they think the problems need be addressed. But you can also say, particularly in the American two party system, there is very limited choice, and voting is just shifting power from one side to the other: thus freeing yourself of one party only to rush into the other one. I think this analysis is particularly relevant during the financial crisis (as it would have been following 9/11 also), where Americans are particularly frightened and looking for help. Obama really has a huge amount of power, because the citizens have given him a mandate, and no politician will seriously challenge him at the moment.

But we can also look at places like Kosovo and Montenegro and make a similar assessment. Both of them were so eager to get away from Serbia, thus in a sense freeing themselves of Belgrade. But both expressed immediate intentions to join the EU, thus giving up their sovereignty and adopting EU laws, practices and standards. In order to enter the EU, they must give up a significant amount of power to Brussels. In Kosovo, the situation is even more complex given the power of the EULEX, NATO et al. The international community essentially ruled by decree from 1999 until the declaration of independence in February, 2007, and today they still have control over virtually all the infrastructure and institutions, building them in the western image.

What this tells me is that we don't really like to be totally alone, that there is something of a heard mentality still in us, despite the supposed 'hyper individualism' of Western culture and globalization. I am free to go anywhere, yet to really do that would be to break from the group to which I belong, and renounce, to some degree, the desire to join another one. Just like with Kosovo and Montenegro, it is a precarious position to be in and can be very uncomfortable (because it is not the norm, and visibly sets you apart). Thus it drives me, and the Kosovars and Montenegrians, right back into the arms of another group, which can come in the form of a job, a relationship, a graduate program, EU membership, an ideology, etc...

On being sick

For the last month (well, two months if I am honest...) I've been running myself into the ground for various reasons, and things have been getting much busier at work as we approached the crescendo of the Model OSCE Project (which is running today and tomorrow). But I have not be compensating by taking care of my physical and nutritional needs (and let's not even talk about emotional...). So, when I awoke on Friday morning, trembling, sweating, I thought, 'here we go. Payback.'

Sure enough: flu. As I careen towards the last two weeks of my internship, and the last four weeks in Serbia, and with no job prospects at all (yet) despite lots of attempts, and with no fixed place to go, or return to, I've been feeling low and mean. The flu, and my swollen tonsils, of which I am reminded every time I swallow, now seem to mirror the general malaises of my mental state. Perhaps it was because of this mental state that I was more susceptible? Or maybe it was just that I ran to long on empty, and thus on Friday, my body said enough.

In any case, I am on the mend, I didn't miss work, and I didn't take any significant drugs beyond aspirin to cure myself. This tells me that the old immune system is still in good shape. And now, as I feel good enough to go out again, I realize another added value of the occasional, non life threatening illness: I recover feeling better than before I got sick. The forced rest and added sleep was time for my mind and body to rebalance. For now, I feel lighter and don't feel so worried about what comes next.

I put my faith in the Dao and stop trying so hard.