Travelogue
Monday 10.01.2011 -- Travelogue
As each year by late December since 2004, young French people crossed the largest part of Europe to bring material and comfort to their Serbian brothers of the enclaves of Kosovo.
Departure from Grenoble at 5 PM on Sunday, December 26, with two 12 m3 trucks filled with toys, school stationery, sports equipment and children's clothes. This year the team consists of four volunteers of the association, a photograph and a team of journalists working on a documentary film on the situation in the Serbian enclaves.
The adventure starts. 1800 kilometres to Kosovska Mitrovica, the main Serbian city of Kosovo. Cities unfurl through the windowpanes: Torino, Milano, Venice, Ljubljana. Our entry into former Yugoslavia coincides with a well-deserved rest in a Slovenian hotel. The ringing of the alarm clock in the morning discourages neither bodies nor spirits, ready to face a very long day of driving. The Slovene-Croatian border, limit of the Schengen space, provides the first contact with the customs administration to us, very finicky about the transportation of goods. One hour of waiting, but this is a simple formality compared to the previous missions. If the borders of our own country were as carefully controlled today, traffickers of all kinds would have to worry. Croatia displays monotonous landscapes in long straight lines through the snow-covered plains. The Croatian-Serbian border, the next stage of our trip, features a line of shacks with a cohort of insurance companies. This is because a specific registration is required to cross the country, involving a succession of stamps and paperwork. The official documents from the orthodox episcopate largely facilitate our task, and we set out again at dark after only 1.5 hour waiting – a record of swiftness compared to eight hours the previous year…
The 300 km of the narrow route connecting Belgrade to Mitrovica are strewn with tags clearly indicating the intense presence of the orthodox religion in this area. Right in the middle of nowhere, an imposing cross more than 10 meter high towering in the centre of a roundabout reinforces this feeling. The recurring inscription ‘1389’, on the walls and the bridges refers to the battle of the Fields of the Blackbirds (Kosovo Polje) against the Ottoman Empire, the foundation myth of the belonging of Kosovo to the Serbian people. The thick layer of snow covering the tarmac does not facilitate our task. We start various lines of discussions to fight tiredness. At 1 AM, the “border” station of KFOR separating Kosovo from the rest of Serbia finally appears at the horizon. It was arsoned during the riots related to the unilateral declaration of independence by Shqipe authorities in February 2008, and is now constantly watched upon by armoured tanks and armed soldiers. A wind of unrealized voltage still blows in these places. It is 2 AM as we arrive in Kosovska Mitrovica for a long, well-deserved night of sleep.
On Tuesday we prepare our visits to the enclaves. We call around, sort boxes and define a plan for the three next days. We meet Dragan, a member of the city council of Mitrovica, and a contact of the association for many years. After these necessary preambles to access the enclaves, we drive to the monastery of Banjska, a jewel of orthodox architecture in the North of Kosovo where we briefly meet the bishop of Kosovo Mgr Teodosije. Back in Mitrovica after night fall, the call of the muezzin is heard up to the Serbian areas, as an ultimate nose-thumbing with History. The evening continues with specialties including veal and cheese, and the famous plum brandy šljivovica.
Wednesday morning, Marion Chevtzoff and Arnaud Gouillon are invited on Serbian television for a live appearance in the morning news show. A team of Serbian journalists then follow us in a school for handicapped children, in order to carry out our first delivery of toys and school stationery. The existence of this school in downtown Mitrovica proves that there still exist various local structures that contribute to limit departures to mainland Serbia. Then, we head to first enclave in our travel plan, Banja, located about thirty kilometres from Mitrovica, where we meet our guide and friend Pajo. It is always with great pleasure that we see this young Serbian polyglot who has been accompanying us since 2006. As most inhabitants of the enclaves, he welcomes us in his apartment very cordially with Serbian coffee and homemade rakija (brandy). Banja is a village of 150 people with a school and a kindergarten. We distribute many toys and school stationery to the children, and childcare material to the educators. This is repeated in two other nearby schools, in Crkolez and Suvo Grlo, two enclaves of a hundred inhabitants who managed to preserve their village life in spite of various acts of pressure from the Shqipe. The smiles and cries of joy of the children are heart-warming, enhancing our conviction that our struggle for freedom and truth is right.
We hit the road again, to the South-West of Kosovo, Metochia, in the direction of the large enclave of Goraždevac and its 1000 inhabitants. The city has an imposing secondary school but decreasing enrolment since 1999. We distribute clothes, school materials and sports equipment to the pupils. The director explains to us the hard situation that the people there have been experiencing since the war. Their main problem is economic. Indeed, in the enclaves the Serbs live on welfare, which, they regret, could have them portrayed as “parasites”. Quite the contrary – aid only enables them to survive, with difficulty. Before the war, all had an employment and used to work hard to be able to live with dignity. But the destruction of almost all industrial sites in the area as well as the lack of economic outlets for Serbian farmers are obstacles to the economic development of the enclaves. The heart of the problem is in the fact that today Shqipes are preventing Serbs from selling their production on the markets. Consequently the enclaves do not sell anything, have very limited prospects and must do with self-sufficiency. The younger logically leave the enclaves to find work where there is some, which in the long term, leads irremediably to the disappearance of Serbs in Kosovo. However, there exists in the enclave a community radio run by young people who take the opportunity to interview us. This testifies that concrete plans exist to dam up the exodus and have youth do something useful instead of hanging out in bars.
In the evening, we take the direction of the monastery of Visoki Dečani, an architectural jewel and a major workshop of orthodox icons in the Balkans, painted manually with an ancestral technique by the monks themselves. The community consists of 30 friars and novice cenobites. The monument, founded in 1327 by the king of Serbia Stephan Uroš III, is classified as world heritage by UNESCO since 2004. The entrance of the monastery is constantly guarded by armed soldiers of KFOR. However, extreme serenity reigns there. After attending the evening office, we relish on multiple local specialities prepared for us by our hosts. Father Sava, the archimandrite of the monastery, who has been interviewed one week before by Le Figaro Magazine, congratulates us for our work. Together, we discuss the next stages of our collaboration, concretized by the future presence of a permanent humanitarian office within the monastery of Gračanica, which will be funded by Solidarité Kosovo. It will be in charge of establishing a daily link between our givers in France and the needs of the various Serbian enclaves. We spend the night in a dormitory arranged for visitors coming for spiritual retreats. The alarm clock rings for the mass of 7 AM, followed by a Community meal in the refectory. Before our departure, a French-speaking monk takes us along for a visit of the buildings and tells us about the daily difficulties due to tension with Shqipe, never showing any hint of hatred. We leave in the monastery a large quantity of clothes which will be redistributed to needy recipients.
Our tour then takes us to Velika Hoča, an enclave of 600 inhabitants located near the Albanian border. We deposit clothing at the house of the pope, Father Dragicević, taking a glass of de rigueur šljivovica, then deliver toys on the village place for the elementary school nearby, for which we have also brought school material. Our last stage of the day is the town of Orahovac, in which both Shqipe and Serbs live. Obviously, the two populations mix very little, living in two well defined areas. The Serbian part is home to 400 persons concentrated along a few streets and separated by a no man' s land symbolized by burnt houses, once belonging to Serbs. The local pope, Father Stevan, makes us visit his enclave to explain local history. During the walk, he suddenly stops: we have reached the limit with the Shqipe section and could not cross it without being harassed, stoned or assaulted. Walking on by ourselves a bit, we meet with a tragic sight: a row of five mosques in the part of the city lying before us. Here, being a Serb means living in fear. At dusk, we drive back to Mitrovica.
Friday’s objective is the enclave of Kosovska Kamenica, which we have never visited yet, in the easternmost part of Kosovo. On the road, driving through the “capital” Priština is nightmarish. The main throughway from Mitrovica is hardly practicable – a mere dirt track, indefinitely under repair. One could think that the Shqipe authorities take pleasure in chaos. American symbols are everywhere. A replica of the Statue of Liberty floats above the streets. Elsewhere, Bill Clinton left his name to the central boulevard of the city and a statue of himself. After having crossed splendid landscapes of lakes and wooded hills, we finally reach Kosovska Kamenica, where we are received very cordially by the mayor of the enclave and the director of the judo/jujitsu club. Over an excellent meal, we strike a cooperation agreement with the club. The first act of this agreement is the immediate contribution of funds to purchase tatamis and practice combat sports safely. To the sounds of the accordion and the saxophone, we cheer our hosts goodbye and promise to be back as soon as possible.
Friday evening, December 31st: midnight supper in Mitrovica. Fireworks, firecracks and Kalashnikov shootings in the air animate the evening on each side of the bridge separating the Serbian from the Shqipe population. Young people flow in from all directions to the sounds of joyful explosions. Soon, tension can be felt. We feel that any incident could suffice to make the situation degenerate in a snap. In our own way, we celebrate the arrival of the new year, conscious that here more than elsewhere, looking onwards to the future means necessarily nurturing hope.
When a new day is dawning on Mitrovica, all seems quiet in the city, as if the euphoria of the celebration had only left a mirage. At 10 AM, the team hit the road again, to Grenoble. At the “border” station of KFOR, a welcome committee of sorts is expecting us: US soldiers and French gendarmes entirely search the empty trucks, probably looking for organs stored in formaldehyde… We remind them politely that they should have done this ten years ago at the border with Albania! According to the rank and file, this search has been decided by French authorities here, always ready to hinder the enduring friendship of our people and the Serbian people since 1914. It is clear that if we had been helping Shqipe, we would have had quite another reception…
On the way back, we swiftly pass customs but have trouble driving in thick fog from Croatia to Italy. After a long drive and a last Italian night, wrapped up in our sleeping bags in the back of the trucks, we arrive in Grenoble on Sunday, January 2, at the beginning of the afternoon. Full of dreams and with new projects in mind, we promised ourselves to return to Kosovo before long – which is an obvious matter.
The team of Solidarité-Kosovo