Shekeled and Euroed: A Girl's Guide to coming back from the East

"Modern world don't ask why

cause modern world, build things high

now they house canyons filled with life.

Modern World I'm not pleased to meet you

You just bring me down." --Wolf Parade's "Modern World"

Back in Amurrrrrica from my 2 week hiatus in the Middle East, namely Israel and Jordan, after my brief jaunts in Athens and Belgrade coming from Prishtina. Granted, even though I was sick with a whooping cough, I had an urge to sing "Proud to be an American" when I touched down in New York (same urge I had in Macedonia using the most putrid bathrooms ever smelled 10 meters away). I had a surge of a sort of love and respect for the efficiency, organization, accountability, and other little (and big things) I had missed about this complicated, admirable, and terrifyingly powerful country. I had intended to write about "borders" (something most Americans don't encounter... ever) but something is a little more pressing.

My bank account.

Okay, not really. But coming back from the land of 4 shekel dozens of rugelah (Jewish chocolate pastry), .50 Euro lattes, and cheap 2 hour cab rides that seem expensive at the time, but end up being only $20. I was couch surfing and spending money really only on transportation and the occasional goodie, relying on the kindness of strangers to lend a car ride, a couch, or some chicken at shabbos or iftar. Oh the life of the traveler! Sounds romantic, eh?

Then I come to America. At first, I was most surprised at the lack of automatic weapons. A summer near NATO and the IDF will do that to you. The next thing I was surprised at was how efficient and accountable everything was. (Time near the Kosovo government will make you a little shell shocked coming back to America). Next, I was surprised that people generally obeyed traffic laws and did not drive next to back hoes tearing up the road with no traffic cones warning the public.

However, I am more surprised at how expensive basic living is. All that accountability and responsibility I was talking about before comes with a price. I went shopping today at Wal-Mart for some supplies. Don't judge. I don't have a Whole Foods near my house. I'm moving into a new house at school and really needed supplies like laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, toilet paper, staple foods and tooth paste. Not anything out of the ordinary.

At the check out, the boys in front of me had spent $80 on school supplies and soap for college. The Cashier, a rather plump woman who's tata's hung over the scanner, lamented the costs of underwear with the boys and how expensive it is to live. They said, "College is expensive." I said, "Tell me about it."

My turn. I scan my Tide. My non-organic dish soap. My Charmin toilet Paper. My only indulgence in all of this is a box of "Just Bunches" cereal and some Rembrandt tooth whitening mouth wash ($6.95). After all of this, and then more food and cleaning supplies, my total is $160. WTF.

The lady behind me is talking about how every time she comes to Wal-Mart she ends up spending $100. "You get your soap, your toilet paper, your tooth paste. You spend $100, get home and realize you didn't buy any food." I swipe a credit card and cringe. I can afford it and my economy size Tide is sure to last all semester, but still. That is not a pretty number.

I talk to the ladies and ask, "How do we live in America? How do people even get by if soap is $5.99 and minimum wage is $5.50/hr?" They complain about the cost of food. I say I'll become a vegetarian. Then I say I won't because its too expensive to eat fresh produce when a burrito is only $6.00 and I will spend that much on 6 apples at Gourmet Heaven in New Haven.

New Haven recently lost its sole supermarket, Shaw's, this past year. It leaves a student/poor food stamp neighborhood with no alternative other than a food co-op, minimarts, and an incredibly overpriced gourmet food store. Those ladies think Wal-mart is expensive, try shopping in a town without a supermarket, where a carton of milk will put you back $5.

I am just struck at how expensive basic living is in America (and Switzerland, where a small latte at the airport put me back about $6.50). I sometimes think, "How can we consume more when its so much more expensive??" And then I remember, "CREDIT." On my student side, I surely don't use that much toilet paper and a meager amount of laundry detergent (and I rarely do laundry...). I think I live pretty simply and do without a 32 oz. $7 Seventh Generation Laundry detergent (Tide is $6 for 50 oz.). I don't bother with dryer sheets and don't get caught up in gimic buys. Mostly because I drink coffee religiously and have a special budget for that....

In the mean time, I will reminisce about my .50 Euro lattes as I go back to paying $3.00 a latte and drinking about 3 of them a day because I am a sleepless ambitious college student, wanting to make it in this world. Doesn't that sound like a funny coincidence?

Good thing I bought a coffee maker.

Belgrade and the Theater of Necessity

In geopolitical lingo, the word "theater" describes a "region where active military operations are in progress" or more generally "a region where significant events and actions are played out." The world naturally has many theaters of this sort.

Somehow, Belgrade is a true theater, of both the artistic and geopolitical sense of the word.

During my time in Belgrade this weekend, I had the honor and pleasure of visiting with Borka Pavicevic, an iconic artistic, political, social, and activist figure in Belgrade for the past 30 or so years. She is an actress and theater maker by trade and part of the famed Belgrade circle of intellectuals, a now dying or disbanded breed that included Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, and Savic (who I also met) among others. Borka has an air about her. Probably 60 something, she wears slinky shifty dresses, old pearls, dons a bold dark stripe in grey hair, wears deep matte red lipstick, and never is seen without a cigarette. Her deep voice is a strange mix between an old bubby and a sex symbol. Her presence commands attention and her words reveal a depth of understanding in terms easily understood (to agree or disagree with!).

Borka Pavicevic

Today she is a leading chair at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade and an active translator, writer, theater maker, and cultural envoy in Europe and the world. She works also with the Youth Initiative for Human Rights--the most effective, organized, and professional human rights agency I've ever witnessed. They have objectives, strategies, and achievable goals to promote democracy, civil engagement, and a revival of Serbian optimism for a new option and new alternative to old Nationalistic discourses that cling to Kosovo at the expense of progress.

As an artist in a theater of operations that has seen Turks, Austrians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Russians, Internationals, the US, and more, she is very concerned with elements of identity--both as we understand and construct it. The Balkans have historically been a clusterf*ck of identities. In Borka's example: "Former professors of Marxism are now professors of religion!" Particularly now, when old religious and nationalist identities are reemerging in the vacuum of money, stability, and economy in Serbia, identity is a huge issue. She described the reemergence of these beliefs and ideologies--particularly with the Orthodox Church and its relationship to culture and even art.

One of her most memorable quotes to me was this, "A Church without belief is kitsch. Church and the theater require belief, a necessity. With a church, you can build a building and they will come when they need it. With a theater, you cannot just build the building. The people ARE the theater."

Borka, admittedly said that the Theater was mostly disbanded in the 1990s. Today, she is trying to bring it back. As she said, she NEEDS to bring it back to counteract the extremist nationalist, old-school-Serb dialog that holds back a lot of progress in Serbia. The theater gets to those people and the people are going to the theater. As a symbol of progress and peace herself, Borka is shaping a "Theater of Necessity" in Belgrade (not an official title mind you, but concept). There is an agenda in this theater (theater defined here by the people in it), an agenda to salvage, form, and show a process of forming an identity that will move Serbia forward and not keep it back.

The Theater is Necessary because Change is necessary or else Serbia will face dire economic, political, and social consequences (estimated to be on level with those of Greece's recent economic collapse.) When done well, the theater is a machine which we must desire to create and by which we rethink ourselves.

I have been reading current plays from the region, particularly those of Jeton Neziraj, a Kosovar playwright who has gained international renown for single handedly creating a theater in Kosovo, but a theater that actively helps the population rethink war, conflict, and identity. For those skeptics of political theater (I speak to those purists out there!), Neziraj's plays are not solely works of political theater, but are strong piece of literature, regardless of where you come from.

It got me to thinking about my theater. All of these artists are using the theater, not for commercial or entertainment reasons solely, but for a necessary political, ideological, and life-saving agenda. Theater, not just film, has always been a way of bearing witness to people and their actions in a way that film just does not achieve in the same way. It is a near religious experience when done well.

These artists NEED the theater they create and form. It begged me to rethink what I am creating, doing, and saying with my theater.

Immediately after talking to Borka, I contacted several dear theater making friends of mine, calling for a reform of our juvenile theater and coming to a greater intensity of purpose and ideas in what we create. What do we need in creating theater? Why do we need it? Do we even need it?

I beg of you to post responses about what you need in theater.

Responses, however random or unorganized they are, are below:

"I thought how wonderful it could be to teach kinesthetic response workshops to people all over the world. The workshops are aiming to get people in touch with their own center, to respond physically and emotionally to their own complicated thoughts and drives, in a creative, instead of destructive, way; as well as responding to others in the same ways." Timmia HF

"[Theater] goes deeper than that (or perhaps shallower), I'm talking about people like us. not every so-called intellectual is ever going to want to really think. Not every so-called artist is ever going to want to truly create and speak to God. But artists are modern-day prophets." -Timmia HF

"At Yale, in theater, and often, in class, we try to say and do things that are "necessary" because their necessity is a sign of their worth. We want to be good at making theater (or writing essays, talking in section), and surely, a
good theater-maker or thinker would produce work that is "important," "relevant," "vital," and "necessary." I do believe that this compulsive drive toward accomplishment is poison for the thinker and theater-maker. It makes the shows and the papers more boring than a pissing contest. The question is, what can take the place of that drive? If we are not guided in our thought and in our theater-making by love of praise, what are we guided by?" -Rachel P.

What does she want?

"Choosing/designing projects around what I consider to be theater's greatest asset: the fact that the actor/character may fail to achieve his goal at any moment, that the 2 hours of the play are the only chance, that the audience is bearing witness to a real attempt." --Rachel P

I encourage my theatrical community to continue posting ideas (by choosing to follow my blog!!) and keep this discourse going.

Our theater must be more similar to the geopolitical definition. "A PLACE WHERE SIGNIFICANT ACTIONS AND EVENTS TAKE PLACE."

The Entrepreneurial Scene in Kosovo

Kosovo is not necessarily the first place you think of when you think "START UP." But like any new born country, you need young entrepreneurs to get things to happen (or at least raise some hell on occasion to get them to happen) . Meet Kushtrim Xhakli (pronounced like "exactly"). A young Kosovar, living in Lithuania, working on his own IT company, maker of trajnimi.com, which brought free IT education to Kosovo, later recognized and picked up by the "European Computer Driver's License" program and one of the contributors to Ipko, one of the few telecom companies and foundations in Kosovo. Yea. All that, and he is 27.

I originally intended to meet Kushtrim for coffee to talk about starting an incubator program for entrepreneurs at the American University in Kosovo. What we talked about was a lot more than that, and quite revealing of the business climate, the cultural climate, the corruption, and the frustrations in Kosovo. Not to mention, Kushtrim himself had a telling story that shunned nationalisms while upholding the basic idea in life, "TO JUST LIVE AND DO!"

We begin with business. He tells me about himself. Being bored with the rather ineffective education he was getting at the University of Prishtina, he dropped out and joined some guys at Ipko, a telecom company that is among one of the most successful, young, and innovative companies. (Recently bought out by a foreign investor for over $300 million or so). Getting the chance to build a company was rare. He began to get involved with the foundation after that, and soon enough, found himself designing trajnimi.com, a free IT education platform, which brought free IT education to Kosovo under the European Computer Driver's License program, software that taught people how to use certain basic programs (Word, excel, ppt) for business. At the time, it was hard to get people to buy it. There was private competition that would not let him enter the market. Some schmoozing with some guys in Politics (this will look good for you if you get elected), and soon everyone in the country had access to this FREE program. Over 18,000 people use it today. His project got him picked up by international news and he got involved with some Lithuanian investors. Today, he runs about 5 different projects.

One of the things he tries to do is introduce third party telecom companies into Kosovo. To him, its been like beating a dead horse. Currently, telecom is in many ways controlled by the state under a group called "PTK." (PTK has been under investigation for corruption for quite some time.) PTK is the telcom and postal authority here. The infrastructure is deteriorating and cell phone use is limited to calls and texts--for the most part in the country. Compared to the rest of Europe, cell phone capability is limited. Kushtrim comes in with investors to open up new companies. Basically, PTK officials say, "No, unless you give us money for a cut that we can take, we won't let you come in." Investors leave, disheartened by the blatant corruption and organized crime within the political parties here.

Kushtrim isn't afraid to say it. He is not afraid to point out that most of the people in the government are making a lot of money and not doing good for the country. Sadly, many of the people his age, who used to be young and idealistic, are trained in the system that has taken over "politics" in Kosovo. They are just as good and trained at taking money than anybody else.

So what does he do? Kushtrim, and a community of people like him, keep pushing the issue. He keeps building his own business in Lithuania (seeing that the Balkans can learn a lot from the Baltics and vice versa). He does not leave Kosovo though. It needs people like him. Revolutionary thinkers who know how to work through the bullshit and get something done (the program under European Computer Driver's License for example).

Patriotism for a working Kosovo comes in his blood, though not along ethnic lines--this brand of ethnic nationalism captures the minds of many young people. Kushtrim's father and siblings are painters and his mother teaches Ethics. Back during the war, Kushtrim's dad printed a magazine called, "Uprising" about independent Kosovo. It was distributed in Kosovo, but when his partner was caught and killed by Serbians (Milosevic's men), the "Xhakli" name was blacklisted by those Serbs. Fellow Kosovar Albanians next door (in the neighborhood) did not protect them, but booted them out for fear of their own welfare. They fled to Macedonia then Germany in cognito.

Naturally, after such experiences, Kushtrim is far from being an "Albanian Nationalist" and has, in his mind, more important things to do than argue who was in Kosovo first--an common discourse here. Kushtrim is, however, a patriot. He needs to bring in companies, bring in investors, and get past the bullshit that is plaguing Kosovo both on the international and domestic fronts. He sees the beauty and possibility of this New born Place ("way less boring than a place like Denmark or Sweden!" as he says). He won't give up on Kosovo. He holds Kosovo and its people accountable for what is happening there now.

In the mean time, he will live a humble life that Facebook pictures won't reveal (Portugal, London, Geneva, Monte Carlo). Traveling to San Fransisco next week, he will take on the giants of "Venture Capitalists." ("Not too different from Kosovo politicans" a friend told him. He should be fine).

His advice to Kosovo? "Just DO something with your life!" Its not about serbs or albanians, its about living a decent life, regardless of who or what or where you are. DO something! CREATE something! He is a living example of alternative life, education, and credentials.

The life on the unworn track is far more interesting after all.

ICJ Decision: Thoughts

July 22, 2010 marked a historic day for Kosovo when the International Court of Justice declared that Kosovo's Declaration of Independence was not illegal under international law. That night, the streets were riddled with Kosovo and Albanian flags, as youngsters partied, now having a new excuse to go to clubs on a Thursday night.

Yet, what are the implications? I sat in a cafe, watching the live proceedings on Al-Jazeera in English with my classmates, and one fascinating Serbian intellectual (who used to hang with Derrida and Foucault). The proceedings could bore anyone to sleep. Regardless, we all got beers and smoked cigarettes as if it were a sporting game. Barnaby Philips from Al-Jazeera gave commentary from a top the Grand Hotel Prishtina as if he were giving a play by play in football. The Hague looked like something out of Kafka: tall, menacing wood panels, with green felt adorning the judge's stand, and men dressed in large black robes with lace kerchiefs, an old man reading the proceedings as other judges remain silent.

Suddenly, it says on the screen that Kosovo's Declaration of Independence was legal. Cool. But we are skeptics in the audience. No statement on status? No statement on independence itself?

You see, the Court only decided on the legality of a DECLARATION of independence, not on Kosovo's status as a nation, or legality as an independent state. From the ICJ:

56. … The Court is not required by the question it has been asked to take a position on whether international law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo unilaterally to declare its independence or, a fortiori, on whether international law generally confers an entitlement on entities situated within a State unilaterally to break away from it. Indeed, it is entirely possible for a particular act ⎯ such as a unilateral declaration of independence ⎯ not to be in violation of international law without necessarily constituting the exercise of a right conferred by it. The Court has been asked for an opinion on the first point, not the second.

So, essentially, this was a question on a declaration, not on the rights assumed to be exercised under it.

Yet still, the BBC, Al-Jazeera and other news stations immediately slate the event as Kosovo's Independence is a legal matter itself.

Some concerns:

I wonder now, if other nations will use this as a prompt to actually declare independence, under the assumption of having a legal precedent, when in fact, the legitimacy of their statuses could be rather flawed. Meaning to say, if the declaration is legal and they take it as an exercise of the declaration is legal, what could this mean for the future of their states? To be honest, how feasible is it for the Basque region to declare independence? Did the ICJ open Pandora's box?

Next, Serbia shot itself in the foot if it was expecting a statement on status of Kosovo by asking the wrong question. They, instead, got a Kosovo Favored 10-4 response that Kosovo's declaration was legal. Naturally, asking a question on the status of Kosovo might have been premature, especially when it is such a tenuous topic in Serbia at the moment. If they have voted on the status of Kosovo, and it was favorable, would the country go into serious political discontent? Already, there is an economic system in place that is heading towards what Greece looks like, and they choose to focus on the status of Kosovo, instead of perhaps putting European integration ahead of status...

As one Serb told me upon the declaration, she was happy for Kosovo. Kosovo deserved this, but she wept for her own people. As she said, they keep on concentrating on Kosovo when we are already a poor country. They won't let it die and it is killing our nation and preventing us from joining the EU and perhaps salvaging ourselves. I want to change things in Serbia, but I'm losing a battle. Serbia, even with the ICJ decision still chooses to ignore their statement and pursue this cause of Kosovo when it is not worth it. Its a huge waste of Money. I hope to tell my children someday that I helped change Serbia, but if this hard-liner attitude keeps up, I may just tell them I left Serbia for their sake.

I weep for Serbia, not because they lost this battle, or even for losing Kosovo, but because they won't give Kosovo up and concentrate on other issues that are more in their power to change.

A Serious Cafe Experience

Sitting in comfy white deck chairs, outside a Corbusier-esque building, with black window linings and Janis Joplin rockin in the background, bullshitting with some hip, well dressed college kids, you would never think that only 11 years before this place, Kosovo, would be suffering from a bloody war.

Yet despite the posh cafe environment, don't for a minute think the conversation is fluffy and as white as the furniture. I'm sitting in a cafe with my friend Gresa, and her friends, Edon, Kaltrina, and Besart. We begin talking about how cool Kaltrina's heart shaped pupils are, and about how Besart goes to school in Pittsburgh at RMU. Yet our conversation falls into something serious and honest: what is it like living in post-war Kosovo? what do you think about it?

Our conversation has trips and turns, coffees and cheesecakes. While some conversations (as we've seen) can get very Nationalistic and political in Kosovo, these level headed, visionary, brave, and extremely well dressed (!! hehe) college kids reveal what they think. They came, interested with my blog, but eager to debate a few points. I told them my frustrations, but after they gave me theirs. The dialog, abridged here, could not better sum up an honest Kosovo experience:

Me: So I told you how the bullshit, the corruption can get to anyone here in the development community. You read the blog. What do you guys think? Tell me what I should know. The table (and cheesecake is yours).

Besart (B): You get used to the Bullshit. After hanging out with the bulls for so long, you get used to it. But for me, once I left Kosovo to Pittsburgh to go to Robert Morris University, the bulls looked like ants from afar, and then once I came back, I was not used to the bull's and their shit. I was depressed for a month, wrote poetry. People just hold a lot in, get used to the bullshit, then explode on things, like the panel. At a certain point, when one thing is done well, you almost don't believe in it because all you hear about is corruption in the papers.

"You might not have seen worse, but for many people, they might not have seen better."

At this point, Edon comes in. He has a great kind New York accent, but is all about Kosovo. He does graphic design, art, and other projects. He is about images and focuses on the significance of the Albanian eagle in his analysis.

Edon: "I think if you wanna understand it, you gotta go WAY back, I mean WAY back."

We then proceed to go into milestones in history of the regions. For those of you who don't know the history, here is a brief overview of what we looked like:

"6th century, we say Serbs and Albanians meet. We, Albanians, lay cultural heritage to the Illyrians, who had been living in the area. From the white pure hats we wear, we get the name, 'Albanoid'. The Balkans have always been the site of conflict between East and West. So the mentality, of 'Protect you own because the enemy is coming' might have developed. Its not even about serbs and Albanians, its just about keeping yourself safe from any intrusion. So time passes, Slav rulers invade. Later still, the Ottomans.

"Now, our national hero, scanderbeg"

Me: "Now, who is this guy? Everyone claims him as his own! Serbs say he's serb, Albanians say he's Albanian."

Edon: "He was Albanian. When the Ottomans came, Albanians fled to the hills and 'stayed with the eagles' hence how we got the Double headed eagle"

Me: "Wasn't that also a Russian, slav symbol too?"

Edon: "I mean, sure, but its very Albanian. Our language, which we call 'Shqiptar' literally means 'Eagle'. Symbols have brought us together and united us in times of adversity. We trace this back to Scanderbeg. Fast forward. Albanians are converted to Islam in the Ottoman empire. The Ottomans are defeated, Austro-Hungary comes from the North. Nationalism is growing anyway, all over the place. Thanks to France, haha. In 1912, the serbs, Bulgarians, and others team up against the Ottomans. But Albania doesn't join the alliance. why? One, we aren't Slavic, our language is completely unrelated to ANY other language, kinda like the Georgians, the Basque people."

Gresa: "Yea, when I worked in Disney World on work-study, we used to make bets on whether or not Brazilian or Albanian was a stranger language. We won."

THE 20th CENTURY

Edon: "But once again, in 1912, Albania got its own country. Once again, this Albanian eagle arises. Once again, war strikes though in WWII, Nazi Italian occupation, you know the drill."

Besart: "Now you know how we have dark hair and aren't pure white Albanoids... haha"

Edon: " Anyways, I mean, once again, later on, Albania fights back. After the creation of Yugoslavia in the 40s, Albania is a separate country. However, a lot of Albanians are living in Kosovo, which is part of Yugoslavia. Kosovo is not a republic, but rather under Serbian control. Under Tito, things were fine, but once he died, it got back for Albanians in a Slavic nation. Everyone wanted their own nationalism. Under Serbian Milosevic in the 80s and 90s, Albanians really suffered in Kosovo.

THE 90s

"Growing up in the 90s Albanians did not have the right to go to school or use public benefits. We were marginalized. It was like Milosevic wanted us out. Cops would walk down the street, we would get scared and run away or else they would beat our parents up for fun. They wanted us to go back to Albania. "

Me: " Why?"

Edon: ....."Because they wanted more territory."

Me: "Okay, but there is more to it...."

Edon: " Of course, but this is generally speaking. Albanians were makin' a lot of kids. No Condoms back then. Only 3 kids?? Anyways, once again, the ALbanian flag comes back to keep us united and strong against others."

ON HISTORY

Me: "But up to this point you gave me landmarks, not really why things happen. You are trying to explain this Albanian unity, but history is not fact. Its the facts you choose."

Edon: " I mean, yea. But you asked about unity. This is the history. This is how we keep together. History."

Conflict

Edon: So 1994, KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army began to fight back against oppression by Serbs headed up by Hashem Thaci. Things heat up, until 1998-1999. Now it gets bad. You know about the massacres that start international attention. Thats when shit happened.

Gresa: I remember hearing about how NATO was gonna start bombing. The war was starting. We left to Macedonia. We were refugees. I was just a kid. People were even getting killed at the border at the neutral zone. It was hard. You get through to Macedonia and the press attacked! They had not been let inside. I remember being hungry. Were you hungry?

Besart: "Day 6? I felt really shitty. Hundreds of cars were at the border, but Kaltrina's dad let us pass them."

Gresa: "I remember not sleeping for 48 hours."

Me: "Why did you think all of this was happening."

Gresa: "It was hard to say. I was young. It was hard to understand. Kosovo is rich in resources, and a lot of Albanians were actually very well educated. Before, they went abroad, like our fathers and Grandfathers, they went to Sarajevo, Zagreb, Germany, even Belgrad during Tito to learn. it was just our generation that suffered, but our parents made sure we were educated. We weren't all poor!"

Edon: "You are lucky you got out. I was stuck in Kosovo. I remember 3 months, staying in the same apartment. No food, water, electricity. My mom was fluent in serbian. She would go out, dressed up as a beautiful serbian woman and get us food. she would come back with bread. The windows, I remember, were covered so no one would know and no snipers could get us. Sometimes, paramilitaries would come, dressed in masks, cowboy hats, military gear. They would beat up your parents.

"Yet I remember during this time, I would draw a lot. I had a notebook and would draw Albanian Eagles and NATO soldiers. My mom found a drawing once. She was so angry, saying it could kill us. I still have that drawing.... "

Kaltrina: "I remember too, this first and second floor thing. We would all want to stay on the same floor together. The brave people stayed on the second floor. It was harder to get out. Also with airstrikes. It was safer below. The sky was like morning...."

Besart: "You would also never know. Your Serb neighbors would turn out to be paramilitaries. When we left to Macedonia, we were stopped by some. One turned out to be our neighbor. He helped us by telling us a better route to leave so we wouldn't get hurt."

Gresa: "Guys, Danielle and I have a paper. We should get going."

If only you were there to hear this. There is much to learn. Call it raw material for short stories, but here is text for you all in the States to chew on.

More importantly, the calm attitude. These students, sitting in a cafe in Prishtina, listening to Janis Joplin, are the future. They are my anti-bullshit factor. My anti-drug. The composure... like they were telling childhood stories.

I have much to learn from such composure.

Announcement of New "Voices" Series

Suddenly realizing that more people read my blog than I imagined, I feel a higher call of duty to provide unique perspectives and stories about the people who "move" Kosovo.

This is also an attempt to amp up my own writing and chronicling of lives, people and places. I understand that my writing here has never been (and never admitted to be) professional pieces, though I definitely do all I can to present accurate facts and figures. I am, I repeat, 20 years old, not a professional journalist, but rather a person in showing pictures and places.

So. Look out for a new "WOMAN OF MANY NATIONS." Someone who does more than tweets fun tidbits, but also more mature content. More than Mom and Dad apparently read this (the blog was originally started for them to keep track of me...) I never knew the scope of my audience until now, especially in Kosovo.

Check out my new "Voices" Series. Certain posts about the lives in stories of individuals that show society. I'm not trying to do politics. I'm simply trying to show something you would not see otherwise. I'm trying to experiment with a type of writing that is not journalism, but almost contemporary story telling. I promise no more cheesy snoop dog, kanun comparisons!

Get ready!

Internal Conflict: Keeping your head with your heart in Kosovo

When I try to tell my parents over Skype what I see here, the first thing they may ask "Are you safe? Don't cause trouble. Don't get hurt."

Don't get hurt.

C'mon. This is Prishtina. Generally speaking, a safer place than New Haven, CT. But sorry to report, I have been "hurt" here.

Look, I'm not going to pretend that I am "hurt" more than someone who actually experienced the war. Not for a minute. However, let me explain.

Truth be told, trying to understand a conflict is not as easy as passive observation. It takes a desire to understand suffering, hate, violence, strategy, injustice, defense, aggression, economics, politics, law, and power. To see all of this played out on a daily basis, even 11 years after the war, and 6 years after major uprisings... well, lets just say it takes its toll. It hurts the most optimistic of optimists. And I tend to be cynical.

In reaction to injustice, corruption, hatred, defensiveness, and politics, I feel a strange sense of idleness, inability, frustration. I get angry having been thrown into a room to discuss (for 9 hours each day) the politics of conflict, listening to who was hurt more, and seeing the anger and frustration between Serbs and Albanians in the classroom (some of whom had family members in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and had family members die either from airstrikes or people). After a while, the anger, frustration, prejudice, and politics get to you. You can no longer passively sit, watch, and understand. Unless you (as the "western observer") check your emotions from time to time, they can consume you. At a certain point, your blood boils and reason is lost. Then you realize, "Shit son! This is conflict!"

Let me explain a day in my life here to elaborate:

Friday: A panel between two journalists, one Serb, Nenad Maksimovic and one Albanian Kosovar from the BBC, Arber Vllahu, and the moderator, a Kosovar Albanian, Behar Zogiani. The panel is "supposed" to be on how to conduct ethical, unbiased journalism in a warzone.

The speech begins with Arber saying that what happened in 1999 was a "genocide." He goes into a description of his personal experience of people being tortured, and wounded.

Yea. The room gets heated. The Serb rebuts with numbers (a quick fact check follows by everyone in the room). Then, all of the Albanian Kosovars in the audience sit up in their seats, start shouting out loud at the Serb, trying to convince him it was a genocide, or ethnic cleansing. A genocide, defined by article two of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.". I am not here to tell you what I think about whether it was a genocide or not (Noam Chomsky, for instance says no). There is no UN ruling or court ruling that what happened in Kosovo was a genocide. However, the Jews in the audience are getting frustrated and upset that the "G" word is applied to something they think it is not. Everyone has a conflict, an experience, a suffering, or a side to defend. Both my friend Anastasia and I ask if the moderator could clarify the argument. He had let it go unchecked up to that point.

As the conversation continues, you get more attempts at "who was hurt more and why" in the conversation. The politics in the room are heating up and soon some of the staff of the university chime in their two bits. A lone Serbian student in the room asks for respect--it was Milosevic, not him or the journalist on the panel, who conducted the horrors of 1999.

The BBC journalist is trying to uphold his unbiased view towards news. The Serbian is trying to not be the "ugly Belgrade Milosevic lover" in the room. I get so fed up with "I AM AN UNBIASED JOURNALIST" defense that I ask about the media's role in the 2004 uprisings, where 3 Albanian kids drowned in a river. The TV blamed it on the serbs and consequently riots broke out, hundreds of churches were destroyed and people (mostly serbs) were killed or thrown out of their houses. HOW can media be unbiased in a place where Albanian flags and Serbian flags still mark territory as if Kosovo itself did not exist? I get the confession, "MEDIA IS BIASED IN KOSOVO" straight from the horses' mouths.

The question remains, "Why did I want such a confession? Why did I feel so angry at both parties for their fighting?"

I leave the room wanting to crawl under a table. My blood is boiling with a frustration, "DON'T THEY REALIZE THIS FINGER-POINTING IS WHY THEY ARE STILL SUFFERING?" I can try to empathize, but I want peace. There are frustrations running all over the place by westerners in the class who just do not know what to think or do now. When you have never had to experience war, empathy may be there, but how much do we really understand the psychology of war? Its easy for me to see this, but I did not have an uncle shot by Milosevic's guys or a church burned.

Fast forward to later in the day. I'm already sweating bullets. I'm riding a cab to a group of Serbian refugees who live in shipping containers (and have for 11 or 6 years, 1999 or 2004 being the move-in date). They sit on their "porches" and usually share cigarettes, jokes, and grievances. Most are old Serbs, still fighting land disputes with Albanians.

One woman, Toni Schmilka, has been there for 6 years. In 2004, a group of Albanians brutally beat up her husband and kicked them out of their apartment. Today, an Albanian lives there. When her husband went back later (even to collect bills in his name there...), he fought with the Albanian. He had a heart attack in his car from the stress, and died. Toni is now fighting a legal battle for the land, but all of the judges are on vacation and there are way too many cases like hers for anything to happen quickly.

The refugees may have families in Serbia, but they do not live with them. Many of the refugees are older, very sick, in need of medicine, and more. They do not go hungry but eat moldy bread. They cannot get jobs. Even Kosovar Albanians cannot get jobs when 40% of the population is unemployed, and its worse for Serbs. Soon, KEK, the Kosovar power plant will start charging them for electricity. KEK does not employ Serbs and will be privatizing soon, so no hand outs to Serbs. The Serbian government does nothing for them. The Ministry of Returns and Refugees in Kosovo does nothing.

All I could do for these guys was share some fancy Djarum cigarettes I brought for them. Its about the nicest thing someone has done for them in a while. I didn't want to make any more empty promises.

The thing that angered me even more was the man with 7 children who moved there 3 months ago because of a land dispute with a brother serb. He was shouting at his wife and demanding that my russian friend Anastasia get Russia to do something for them. His daughter was dying of brain cancer.

So I sat there, angry at the Serbs, the Kosovars, the Albanians, the Serbian government, this asshole who could not take care of his 7 kids, all the while, this blind girl dying of a brain tumor traced the lines of my Orthodox cross bracelet. She pulls me close to her and kisses my cheek when I leave. I look at the eyes of a Canadian girl with me. The sense of inability, confusion, and frustration was enough to make me call a cab early and leave.

Later that day, a man came up to me in a cafe, shouting at me in Albanian. I didn't know what to do. Later, I found out that he was upset that I was an Albanian who did not speak Albanian. That I was forsaking my people. That I should be ashamed at my inability to connect to my people. I had enough.... I told him I was an American so he should just speak English to me or leave me alone. Apparently I look like an Albanian.

Later again, a man grabbed my sweater in the street and I screamed at him. I suddenly was filled with so much rage.

I can only tell you that later that night, someone asked me what I was doing in Kosovo. I was too emotional to answer. Even to someone I love, I lashed out, "I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT! I FEEL SO FRUSTRATED I CAN'T TAKE IT HERE! I HATE THE POLITICS! I HATE THE LACK OF ABILITY! I HATE THE ALBANIAN NATIONALISM! I HATE THE SERBIAN INABILITY TO HELP THEIR OWN REFUGEES! I CANNOT STAND THE POLITICS OF EVERY CONVERSATION! I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING HERE SO DON'T ASK!"

Later, I calmed down. I realize what I was doing. I was beginning, ever so small and minutely, to understand conflict. I was understanding pieces in the chess puzzle of conflict, and not just as another law student studying Kosovo from afar, but as a human being.

I started writing a short story.

How do you keep a mind and heart in check? How do you keep your head when conflict and violence are not there "to make things clear," but rather confusion, frustration, nationalism, hate, prejudice, and pain that you don't understand? I had been feeling these things and the fact that I felt them scared me.

I realized that I would have to continue observing, feeling, hurting, but making sure to keep my perspective. I really am learning something and understanding some of the most ugly and beautiful interactions we humans must face.

I know I have not expressed every "side" here, or everyone's experience. I have listened to the grievances of Albanians from the time before 1999. I have visited Reycak and seen the graves of the massacre there. I have listened to Serbs talk about their houses being burnt down and their husbands beaten to death in 2004. I have listened to Albanians tell me about how they watched their families killed in front of their eyes by the hands of Milosevic's army.

It hurts me. I cannot deny it. Of course not as much as they have. The first problem a "third party" faces is the feeling of inability, the feeling of the need to take sides in order to "help." Feeling these frustrations, seeing the suffering, all of this hurts you. You can't understand why they cannot understand that these ethnic hatreds are what perpetuate conflict. Yet at the same time, you know they that even though they may know this, psychology is a funny thing. Death and war does hard things to the mind. Hurt continues.

What I have written here has not come to any conclusion on "who was right and who was wrong." I only wanted to show the mental difficulty of all sides in trying to move on (or understand) after conflict. This is written for those abroad, who have not seen such things as Kosovo. Those Kosovars here, (whether you are Albanian, Serb, Turk, or Egyptian), please understand that I do not want to take sides. I only want to show something to those at home that this conflict is not so easy as they may think. I'm sorry if I have offended anyone, I do not mean to. I am sorry for what has happened to you. I will empathize, but never enough for what you truly deserve. Yet you have a heavy and hard job now to make peace. Change history. Just because fighting happened before, does not mean it has to continue. I have faith in you.