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.