Steffen Seibert's Travel Diary: On the road in Kosovo with UNICEF - Day 3
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - Preliushe and Gjakova We start the day in the company of 20 women in a small living room of a Roma family in the poor village of Preliushe. The International Red Cross, supported by UNICEF, invites the women three times a month to educate them on issues like health, education and family planning. That sounds normal, but in fact it isn't. Most of these women have never spoken out at all on issues such as birth control or other taboos. But it's more important here than anywhere else in our region, because child mortality rates are hihger in Kosovo than elsewhere in Europe. Today, the women of Preliushe talk about domestic violence which is a common problem that mainly stems from the high unemployment rate of the men and their frustration about it. The discussion is held in both Albanian and Serbian, because the women come from different ethnic backgrounds. Other alternatives for open talks are non-existant, so this is a good start. There is also a discussion group for the men of the village, and the fact that this works is even more surprising. To get to our next appointment, we first have to drive a full two hours West towards the border with Albania, direction Gjakova/Djakovica. We all notice that we have never seen so many gas stations on one road. Most of them have adjacent motels with well-sounding names like „Amsterdam“ or „Anna“ and you don't have to take a wild guess to come up with the assessment that this is for money-laundering and prostitution in the first place. There is a lot of construction going on everywhere and near the road you can see many, many unfinished or almost finished houses, most of them still completely empty. Here in the West of Kosovo, there was a lot of violence in the years of 1998 and 1999. We keep passing small plaques for fallen Albanian fighters or for murdered Albanian families. The ruins of a Yugoslav army control post is also still there, hit by a NATO bomb and totally destroyed. In Gjakova, which is also known under its Serbian name Djakovica, 1,500 inhabitants are still unaccounted for.
We arrive in the shanty town of the Ashkali at the outskirts of Gjakova. The Ashkali, sometimes also called the Egyptians, are closely related to the Roma. They live under extremely poor conditions at the edge of a garbage dump. We can see from a distance how people are ploughing the dirt and go to take a closer look. What we witness now, I have never seen anywhere in Europe before. These are images you know from the developing world: All sorts of garbage are piled up, there are fires here and there and the stench is somewhere between disgusting and poisonous. And then, in the midst of this all: Families, men, women and mostly children. One boy tells us that he is looking for food and for materials that he can collect and sell. Metal and paper – a kilogram of aluminium for example will get him one Euro. The children share the money with their parents and the families actually have to count on this 'income' generated by the rag picking kids. Many of these children do not go to school at all, others come here before or after their classes. What these endless hours in the garbage dump does to their health, we can only guess... One child tells us that the local hospital also uses the garbage dump. The UNICEF staff members who accompany us don't have a quick answer to this problem, we all feel completely helpless right now. But still: I am convinced that there is only one answer in the long run, and this is education! Everything we can do to help them get a decent education is right and important. And therefore I can see how a small UNICEF-supported primary school in the shanty town is the beginning of a better future. A few kilometers down the road in Skivjan, we meet an Ashkali family. Hussein, the father, went to secondary school when he was younger. Quite an unusual story in this ethnic group. Today, he makes his living as cigarette seller. But the motivation to try and enable his children to go to school as long as possible is still alive. For a few years, the family lived in Heilbronn in Germany and then they went back to Kosovo on their own initiative. They are always short of money, but still the parents send all four children to school. Hussein puts much emphasis on the fact that he does not make a difference in this question between sons and daughter. And his eldest daughter even has big plans for her future. She wants to go to secondary school and then wants to become a doctor. However, the stakes are high and just to pay for the bus to the school in the next city is more or less impossible, not even considering the costs for books. Whether or not she will succeed, we don't know, but at least we are impressed by the silent dedication of these people.
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