An Afternoon with Kosovo Gypsies

On the third day in Kosovo I spent the afternoon with two Roma (aka gypsy) activists. In Kosovo, the Roma have been attacked by ethnic Serbs and Albanians during and since the war. They were accused by Albanians of collaborating with Serbs during the war. In fact, their interests are probably closer to the Serbs because they too are a minority. But the Serbs have attacked them too because they are Muslims and the Ashkali (Albanian-speaking Roma) speak Albanian. On the other hand, Roma have it tough in a way different from other minorities there. For one, they are generally despised throughout Europe as thieves and beggars. They are also romanticized everywhere even though the truth is a far cry from the idealized version of the fortune-telling, passionate, nomadic, mysterious gypsy.

Fact is they have families to support, bills to pay, goals to pursue. The discrimination and stereotypes make it difficult. An American tourist in Sarajevo and I were talking over coffee when he started with one of the common legends in Eastern Europe about the Mercedes-driving gypsy father who sends his children out to beg. It's the European version of America's Welfare Queen. I also recalled an anthropology student who studied the Roma in America. She said they purposely lived poor, destroyed their possessions and lived precariously because it supported their nomadic lifestyle, is part of the culture. So this is the way it works: discrimination keeps them from getting a good education, thus a good job and an equal share. The stereotypes, whether the romantic or the outlaw version, make it easier to blame the lack of opportunities on the Roma themselves.

Can we PLEASE cut the absurdities?

What a vicious cycle. “These stereotypes are killing the Roma,” said Isak, one of the Voice of Roma activists.
I met Izak and Atlan at a cafe in Gracinica (pronounced Grachinitza), about 7 miles from Pristina. We had arranged a meeting by e-mail while I was still in America through their branch in Northern California. Judging from the mature, formal tone of the e-mails, I expected much older men to meet me. Instead, Izak was 23 and Atlan was 32. Izak became interested in jouralism after a foreign reporter enlisted him to produce a radio reportage. For now he works as an interpreter for the NGOs and other foreigners working in Kosovo. Atlan was the quieter, more intense of the two. He told me how he had been sent to fight in Croatia as a Yugoslav Army soldier in 1991. “I was 18. What did I know about war?” he said. “But one day I was shoved in an airplane for Croatia. That was that. But, why should I shoot Croats?” Then he was shot in the leg. Still unable to walk, he was kicked out of the hospital and put on a bus to Belgrade. It was a stranger who took pity on the stranded soldier and helped him get out of the bus and back to Pristina. Later, his uncle and cousin were killed during the fighting in Kosovo. He said they were missing for several years before he identified them by their clothes and personal belongings. Now his family lives on his pension and the paycheck his wife brings home. They live in a small village near Pristina, about 10 miles away. But when it came time to take me back to Pristina that evening, he wouldn’t drive alone. His brother-in-law told me he tries to come home before dark so he doesn’t get stuck alone on the roads at night.

By the time we met, I wasn't sure why I was still doing the interview. It was supposed to be one of my main stories because Human Rights Watch had recently released a report about minorities in Serbia and Kosovo highlighting the precarious situation they faced. According to the report, “Ethnic Albanians and Roma, as well as religious Muslims and minority non-Orthodox Christians, are the most vulnerable groups in Serbia today. The attacks on those communities in March 2004 and afterward were among the worst incidents of violence in Serbia in recent years.”

My focus had shifted, however, since arriving in the Balkans. We were all a bit stiff and uncomfortable, even impatient it seemed. We were about to wrap up it up when they mentioned a nearby refugee camp in Blementina where Roma, Egyptian, Ashkali, aw well as Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia were living. They agreed to take me there. It was not the worst of Kosovo's refugee camps, and not the worst as far as refugee camps go in the world. But, it was bad enough. It was sooty, impoverished, and government run.
The day was icy and gray. Thick smoke spewing from surrounding factories made it even more dismal. The camp used to be a Norwegian KFOR base base, so the houses are built in the concrete bunker style. Some of the buildings are literally crumbling. They all just looked like they were sagging, ready to cave in should a strong wind blow. Outside, rungs hung from laundry lines strung up between the buildings. There were rugs everywhere. And laundry. But nothing looked clean. There is no running water, toilets or electricity. Chicken wire is strung here and there. Weeds are the only form of vegetation. The hills behind the camp were long since gouged out in the hunt for whatever mineral once lay beneath the scarred earth. The garbage strewn among the sickly weeds resembled blossoms on some sort of mutant plant. A mother and child crossed a field of concrete where weeds poked through cracks.
All I could say was "What a fucking mess." That's where they've been living since 1999. Almost seven years in a pit. The Kosovo government is building an apartment complex right next to the camp for36 families, but that doesn’t take care of all the families – or the other camps scattered on the outskirts of Pristina. No one is forcing the families to stay in the wretched camps that were supposed to be temporary. They want to go back to their homes, but it’s too dangerous. They fear attacks by Albanians or Serbs if they do. And no one really cares one way or another what happens to them. If the attacks are reported, they are treated as misdemeanors by the authorities – if the authorities do anything at all. Unlike other minorities - Hungarians, Serbs, etc. - there is no mother country to speak up for the Roma. They're on their own.

From Sarajevo to Serbia to Kosovo

I'm getting caught up on some writing from the trip. It was a real bitch to type on some of the foreign keyboards and sometimes there just wasn't enough time. Here is a bit about the trip to Serbia and Kosovo in mid-November.

Before I left for Serbia, Bosnian friends advised me to be low-key about being an American. There are some hard feelings toward America because U.S.-led NATO strikes hit the Serbs three times during the Balkan wars. I took a shuttle to Belgrade instead of the bus. After the ride to Srebrenica, I wasn’t up to another bus ride so soon. I had few worries about traveling to Belgrade, despite well-meant warnings. It surprised me that such misgivings still lingered among the Bosnians. I got it from the Serbs and Kosovars too, only the fear goes much deeper.

The shuttle was a white van driven by Olga, an attractive, tough, middle-age blonde who chain-smoked the whole way. It was like being locked up in one of those ashtrays that trap the smoke for six hours. One of the first things I noticed getting off the train in Belgrade were buttons and trading cards of Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and Karadzic, like the war memorabilia sold near the Vietnam and Lincoln memorials. Only these three have been indicted for war crimes for their part in Bosnia’s war. Later I noticed a large photograph of Milosevic mounted on an apartment façade near Republic Square. But I never figured out why it was there. He’s not tremendously popular. I don’t read Cyrillic either, so who knows. I found a cheap place to stay, Hotel Royal, with zebra stripe blanket and satellite TV. After roaming the city until dark, I had a beer which drank half of then smuggled the rest up to my room to watch CNN international. It was just nice to be on my own in a sizeable city for a while.

Before I left for Kosovo, a woman I was chatting with at a Belgrade cafe was visibly upset when I told her I was going there. "Be sure to wear your U.S. passport on your forehead because you look like you could be a Serb girl," she warned. My taxi driver refused to believe me that buses were running to Pristina. The Serbs are surrounded by anxiety-provoking stories stemming from the 1998-1999 Kosovo war and previous attacks against ethnic Serbs in the breakaway province. The Serbs attacked Kosovar Albanians in 1998. That’s when the international community intervened via NATO. They didn’t want another Bosnia on their hands. Then the Albanians turned around and attacked the ethnic Serbs. The intervention wasn’t so swift then. It was all pretty brutal and the land bears witness to the rage. Burned out houses dot the landscape and even the smallest village is split in two between the ethnic communities. I am currently writing a few pieces about how the Balkan wars stemmed, in part, from independence movements, that were made worse by the international community’s intervention. It was too much, too soon. Today, the push by Brussels and Washington to anchor the former Yugoslavian countries to the European Union is setting off tensions because the anxiety of ethnic Serbs are not being considered. Whether their anxiety is founded in reality or not, ignoring their fears won’t solve the problems that led to the wars in the 1990s. Of course, they didn’t have to start ethnically cleansing broad swaths of land where their ethnic brethren lived. The pillaging and killing and burning were definitely not necessary. So, they’re paying the price now because sympathy for them is pretty low.

Actually, the bus ride to Kosovo was a bit strange because the riders were trying to figure out where I came from. I wasn't offering any definitive information, so when they finally found out I was an American at the border checkpoint, they wondered why the hell an American was going to Pristina, the capital city. When I explained my profession they just nodded as if to say, "Ah, of course. A journalist…another journalist..." They weren’t friendly and I got a strange feeling from them. One guy was staring at me the entire trip. When he lay on his back and kept staring at me (oh man! A wanker, I thought) I gave him a look that said, “Do you have a problem?” When he learned I was American he started staring at me AND his UNMIK passport. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted to communicate to me, but I did realize that the Kosovars are neither here nor there. They don’t have their own state, but neither do they belong to Serbia. Not since the war. The province is run as a U.N. protectorate.

Pristina turned out to be a great town in its own way. Residents were kind and warm and friendly. The city smelled like a blend of goat cheese, diesel and the aroma that comes from wood burning in fireplaces. It had that culturally mixed, chaotic feel that Sarajevo and Brussels have. However, the Lonely Planet tour book let me down for the first time there. I don’t really follow the advice closely but the book said Euros and Dinar are accepted. Not so. I landed at 4 a.m. at the deserted Pristina bus station only to be told by the taxi driver that he only took Euros. “No Dinar. Euro only,” he said adamantly. Well, I had two Euros left and the ride cost five. So I cajoled him into taking 450 Dinar and my last Euros. I figured he would do it because there was no one else there to rip off at 4 a.m. But, in Gracinica, a muddy village about 7 miles away where one of the famous Orthodox monasteries is, the Dinar is the currency. Euros are accepted only reluctantly and I had to make a fuss to get my change in Euros instead of Dinar. (I was heading back to Pristina and did not want anymore of the inflated currency that NO one will exchange – not even the Hungarians. When I tried in Bosnia they practically snarled at me.)

I would like to go back to Serbia. I went there dismissive of Serbs and learned that even if I don't want to hear or agree with what I hear it's important to listen. It’s hard to understand their perspective sometimes because sometimes it’s founded on national myths, fear and isolation. But I could say that about a lot of other nations, as well. After all, there are few cities in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. Villagers there can be just as backward as Americans in small U.S. towns.

Culture Shock

As the days pass, the figs are ripening and the Magnolia trees readying themselves for their wintertime bloom. It is always such a miracle when the burgundy and white petals burst open while all else in the garden lies dormant.

I am slowly readjusting to the time zone and to Berkeley - domestic culture shock.

Just as I was cursing the town for its lack of humor or charm, I saw the following: a bicycle driving in the street along a line of parked cars with a wheelchair chugging along to the left - almost directly in the center of the street. They paid me and my multi-ton automobile absolutely no attention, didn't bother to move out of the way. How Berkeley can you get? The dingy cafes that serve coffee in paper cups bother me more, as does the self-righteousness that permeates residents' attitudes. But then it doesn't really matter as long as the Magnolias bloom and the figs are sweet.

London to San Francisco: HOME

December 6, 2005
I am home! Bliss: being with my babies and my sweet, sweet John; fast Internet on my own laptop; a good cup of tea sipped in my big warm bed piled with pillows while listening to Bob Dylan; watching Luna the black cat pounce on imaginary mice from the old chair in the back yard. Traveling is a lonely enterprise sometimes. The one thing I missed most was the warmth of another body against mine. Not just hugs and handshakes, but embraces that hold love in them. One day, when I scooped up a tiny farm kitten a feeling of absolute longing for a human touch gripped my heart. It helps explain why I have so many photos of an otherwise unremarkable kitten. To paraphrase one song (a favorite pasttime of mine): I missed my darlings while I was out finding myself.

My feet are a total wreck and I have barely slept in two days. But it feels so good to land and put down my pack. I left Brussels a little reluctantly yesterday morning. The last night there Marie-Rose, Angela and Rene took me to a cozy little place in the student quarter, Le Campus. It hit me suddently as we were sitting there chatting how much I would miss them and miss being in Europe. Life really is more civilized there. Hard to describe right now though.

I met up with Nishan in London in the afternoon. She has a rented flat in East London. The first time for me out that far from the center of the city. We had a good lunch, some beer and then hit the town - Covent Garden - at night. How fancy to go out with friends from SF in London. We drank a bit too much wine and unfortunately I got started late on the tube, which closes down around midnight. To top it off I forgot to get off at the stop to connect to the train out to Nishan's place - she got off to go meet up with her Kosovar cutie but I forgot I was supposed to change trains there. I couldn't get a train back to the right station either because they had stopped running. So I got the last (pfew!) bus going in that direction.

At 1 am I found myself driving through London on a red double-decker bus that dropped me about 8 blocks from my destination. Pretty much everything outside of the center of the city shuts down around 11 pm so it was a bit eery.

Then, as I rounded the street to the flat, there was a pack of FOXES prowling the street.

That is about the last thing I expected to see on a London street. We just have racoons around here. They were scary too because, I figured, if one attacked me it would be a really bad situation. I stomped thinking that would scare them off a bit. Instead they growled at me then started barking. Bad move. So I moved to the other side of the street and walked fast.

What more can I say? I am dirty, tired and happy to be back despite the mountain of mail waiting to be sorted. Berkeley is always a letdown upon arrival, though. What a putrid little town. I could not be happier to have made the trip, though I am scared to look at my bank balance. I stopped keeping track exactly because in Serbia and Hungary the withdrawls were for thousands of whichever currency. $1 = 210 Forint, for example. I got so sick of paying hundreds of Forint for things like a cup of coffee or tens of thousands for the flat. But it was worth every penny whatever the case.

Now I am headed for a shower to wash off the accumulated grime. I think my big sweater will have to be burned. In fact, I threw away the big woolen scarf in London. I no longer needed it there and it was really getting a little funky. I can still smell the odour left from the fire we had out at Samir's father's house in Visegrad. I wonder if the walnut he let me plant there will ever grow.

Life Comes One to a Customer

As the cross-European trip winds down I can feel the changes it has had on me. There are many small ones - for one, I now have some recipes that will relieve John of his kitchen drudgery and I can navigate just about any computer keyboard thrown my way (the characters are always in a different, annoying place) . But the biggest two are deeper.

For one, I lost that acute self-consciousness plaguing me for years. Sitting unwashed on a bus right next to someone will do that for a person. Second, my tolerance for absurdities has been wiped clean. Voltaire once wrote, "Atrocities will continue to happen as long as people believe in absurdities." I tend to agree, especially after a day in Srebrenica, the living memorial to the darkest moment in Bosnian and U.N. history. The graveyard where just some of the 8,000 civilians slaughtered during the war are buried stretched as far as the eye can see. I read a letter later written by the then-mayor published by The NY Times or some other paper asking the U.S. to simply obliterate the town. He wrote that anything would be better than the hell everyone was living in. I recalled the protests in America that took place when NATO used force in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. There were better ways to end the war but anti-war protests was not one of them. How naive. People really don't want to believe that people are capable of genocide; of dispicable crimes that reduce humans to outlets for pent up anger and fear.

Sadly it is true that such things happen. I used to hold diplomats in high regard. But I understand now that they are middlemen for lies when national interests are more important than people. War is the breakdown of international law and diplomacy. But breakdown is inevitable when the scaffolding is constructed of lies, of political expediency and interests.

If you read this you will surely say, Ah, a diatribe. I could write something subtler and ironic. But what is the use? More attractive packaging - something that attracts the eye? The truth is the truth no matter how it is wrapped.

Budapest to Brussels

Bliss in Brussels...From Zagreb to Budapest felt like being in a straight-jacket for 5 days. I feel like I did in Sarajevo: alive among the living. To some extent that means smoking is allowed inside. More civilized.
I left Budapest on the 30th - whatever day that was. My travel companion Mats the Swede parted ways after a day of sightseeing in Buda. First, we trapsed out to the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold to a park full of retired Soviet statues. The Hungarians put them as far out of sight as possible. Tells you a little about their transition from communism: moderation and relief. Just get rid of the bastards and move on by sticking their vertical likenesses in an appropriately desolate spot. Anyone willing to travel the hour or so by tram and bus can get to know the despised Soviets who sat on the Hungarians for 50 some years. Hungary has been an EU member since last year...they weren't taking any chances after what happened in 1956.

Of course, I speak not of experience but from reading and listening to people there. I felt sorry for the old lady running the concession stand (red Lenin candles, Trabi models and tins with labels reading "The last breath of communism") bc she has to listen to Soviet propoganda songs all day. No wonder she was so surly the second time I asked for the bathroom key. She snarled something in Hungarian that I interpreted to mean, "What do you need the bathroom for again. You already went once since you got here." She seemed to think I was on a personal mission to inconvenience her.

After freezing at the remnant sale of the iron curtain we headed over to the famous Gellert thermal baths. What a contrast. Not as hot as expected but who can knock bathing in the equivalent of the Taj Mahal with an open air view of the rain above. I thought people were staring at my new tattoo, but after looking at a photo I begged an Australian to take (oh how tourist!) I think it might have been the fact that my rented swimsuit (500 florint = $2.50) was practically transparent when wet. That is, the 3 hours we were there. So they were getting a peep show instead of a taste of American feminism. All I can say is that couples alone should visit such a romantic place.

We ended up at Katapult cafe around the corner from the flat for a bottle of Ergi Bekaver, Hungary's famous Bull's Blood wine. It is red, hearty and ubiquitous. After Mats had to leave for the airport a young jazz musician escorted me to hear some of the cities best jazz musicians. He said the jazz scene is ruled by gypsies - the first time they are on top of anything but people's shit lists.

The next day I wandered all over the city. Hopefully one day my feet will recover. I really don't know why, but for some reason orange hair is the rage in Budapest. So is smooching in the parks. Dogs are also quite popular, as are the homeless and completely destitute. Amazing what 15 years of capitalism can do for a place. I guess those folks camped out around all the ridiculously chic restaurants did not see any of the $20 billion that the US, Europeans and Asians pumped in since 1995.

Finally on the 30th I jumped on the Metro to the bus station to catch my coach to Brussels. It was hard to leave bc Budapest was the final station for me in East Europe. I considered hopping on a bus to Sarajevo. I didn't and could feel the strings being cut as the bus pulled out of the station with a doddering old woman talking at the top of her lungs, a crazy, smelly man who kept playing air trumpet and two extraordinarily loud Hungarians chatting - all in the immediately surrounding seats. The voyage only got worse the next morning. But I have mastered the Balkan art of coffee drinking, at last. I am proud to report that I drank a cappucino and promptly fell asleep.