Pristina->Tirana 15 July 1999
Mirdita,

In the time that we went to Peja, Dan, Rand and Hudson went and visit Mitrovica in the north. They more or less went into the UNHCR building, (also one of the govermental buildings in the middle of Pristina, which was hit by NATO and both the inside as well as the outside is pretty damaged) and told that they need a car and driver to go to Mitrovica. Ten minutes later they were on their way, with a local driver from Mitrovica and a nice UNHCR jeep, which they got to use for the whole day. Such things only work in emergency situations. It is time by the way that we get our own wheels, Kosov@ is not big, but the public transport is not yet totally organised either, you can reach most of the bigger cities, but for the rest it is hitch hiking with NGO's. Anyway they went to Mitrovica, which is under control of the French troops and which is devided in two, northern part Serbs and in the southern part Kosovarians. For the time being they only visited the southern part of the town. Because their driver was kosovarian he didn't want to go in the nothern half, beside that they didn't want to walk up there either. Not knowing yet how the serbian people there would react on a group of three USAmericans. So they walked around in Mitrovica, which is not as destroyed as Peja, but surely heavier as Pristina. Mitrovica by the way is a mining town, the most important coal mining town in Yugoslavia I should say. Already 7 years ago during the war between Croatia and Serbia it was noticalbe in Zagreb that coal from Mitrovica didn't come through anymore. They went to visit the UNHCR field office there and talked with the programme officer there. Who was very happy to have some people coming over not talking about rebuilding houses, food deliveries, medical help or trauma help. But just some people who wanted in the future to build up some social-culturel activities, like just playing with kids. His opinion was as all the other reactions we got so far, yes come it is needed. Get these children off the street, do something with them. Nothing is in place for them and they are just hanging around and their situation is probably even worse than hanging around in refugee camps in Albania. Especially those kids from families which don't belong in the south part of the town, but are coming from the northern part and the villages north of Mitrovica and who are just waiting here until they can move on. Because the town is so overcrowded also here the prices for renting of houses are enourmous. If we can't find some official funding soon we won't be able to do anything. Also here Rand was greeted on the street by former refugees from Kashar refugee camp. They were very happy to see them, but they weren't at their home yet, they stayed with friends in the south half of the town. How long this situation will stay this way nobody really knows, but it looks that it won't change before the winter. The security situation in Mitrovica was described as being rather safe by the representative of UNHCR. But it is unknown if this will stay that way, in the southern half people are getting a bit pushy and want to go all the way home already now. Nevertheless Mitrovica is one of those places from which we think that the Balkan Sunflowers should start to build up a similar project as what the Pakrac Project did in Croatia. Not in the whole town, since it is far too big, but at least in a part of it. Until deep in the night we talked about it, since Janine and I went to leave Pristina back for Tirana in the early morning and all those things should be clear then, since we don't know yet how the communication will be between Tirana and Pristina in the coming week. It is nearly impossible to find phones in Pristina which can call out or phones who can recieve phonecalls from abroad. We can communicate by sending messages to Skopje and they can go to Pristina, but without having an own car that is a drag. Arta and her husband and child also came by to say goodbye and thank me again for bringing them home, and furtheron wanted to know if Balkan Sunflowers could help them by setting up something in this part of Pristina. They have been visiting the last days people all over Sunny Hill and came to the conclusion that the whole area is full of refugees. Almost every third person here is a refugee, there houses in villages are destroyed and there is no possibility to go back yet. So even when you don't see it so clearly at the first moment, it is not all as in perfect order as we had the feeling in the beginning. Besides that the children are playing UCK and NATO the whole day. Running around shooting and throwing bombs from plastic mini airplanes. Since none of the older kids want to be serb, the younger ones are the underdogs. Arta was really happy when we said that we will try to help her and send some more volunteers to Pristina soon. In the morning Janine and I stood up at 6 o'clock and said shortly goodbye to Rand and the others and walked down to the busstation. We didn't want to hitch hike with NGO's but wanted to see how far we would come with public transport an how it works. At the busstation the taxi drivers told us that there are no busses to Skopje, but for 100 Dem they are willing to bring us there. Still we decided to try our luck, we found some other people who liked to go to Skopje and sat down watching what they would do. They found a bus going half of the distance to the border, so 10 minutes later we left Pristina. The scenery was similar, small hills and you can see how fertile the inner part of Kosov@ is. Everywhere in the landscape small villages and randomly destroyed houses. But again many people working already on the fields. After a bit more we arrived in Urosevac, called Ferizaj in Albanian, since we had a map from UNHCR with us, with only the serbian names on it we firstly didn't know that it was the same town, when we showed it on the bus. Mostly the different names are rather similar, but in this case it not even near. Also here the similar picture, more destruction as in Pristina, sometimes whole a street burned, but for the rest almost everything still undamaged, at least from the outside. Also here many people on the street and people cleaning up their shops to start again. The bus cost 30 serbian new dinar (the super dinar from 1994, in those days 1 Dm was 1 Dinar, now 1 Dm is 12 Dinar), but they took also the swiss franks I got back yesterday in Peja. The bus by the way, was somehow official, we got bustickets and everything. In Ferizaj we had to go again through the whole process of finding the next bus for our trip, here the busstation was undamaged, up to now I saw at least 5 totally destroyed busstations, the worst one was on the way back from Peje yesterday, in Klina, that station was really used by Yugoslav army since there were some destroyed tanks staying there as well, used by the children as climbing objects. After we asked which bus could bring us further, we created a small spectakel, two foreigners without fancy car. This area is secured by the Americans who drive around in their fancy jeeps from the golf war and organised a huge fleet of buses to transport their people up and down to Skopje to go out in the town. Some people told us that in 2 hours there was a bus to Skopje, somebody else offered us to bring us there for 75 Dem another told us that in 10 minutes a bus would come to Kacanik on the other side of the border station at Blace in Macedonia. After waiting 30 minutes finally that bus came, an old postbus from Switzerland which indeed went for 2 Dem per person all the way from here to Blace, at least up to the border post. >From here to Blace the road went through the mountains, in a kind of canyon and on both sides of the road the mine tapes were hanging, this is were the Serbs expected the biggest attack coming from. On the road coming from Macedonia one truck after another and a huge amount of NATO materials and supplies. It is enourmous what kind of cargo NATO is transporting into this place, wonder where they are going to store it all. At Blace we were put on the bus and with us about 30 people who also were on the way to Skopje. The Macedonia border police was working as fast as what is known from them in the past, so a huge crowd of Kosovarians were waiting to get into Macedonia. When I showed my Balkan Sunflower ID card we were allowed to take at least the two first hurdles, and the third and last one we had to wait in line as all the others. All this time NATO transport went up and down the border station, accompanied by an american soldier with a dangerous looking machine gun on his back driving such a four wheel motor, rather a funny site. The children in the line were shouting NATO, NATO, UCK, NATO all the time when another NATO transport passed by and sticking up the victory sign. After half an hour we were finally through the border post, I must say that still the people from Kosov@ who visit relatives in Macedonia are going to a lot of hazzle, we were lucky, they had to stand waiting for hours in the hot sun, and when they try to stand in the shade the border police pushed them back on the road. The first thing we saw on the other side was a big sign from UNHCR, saying refugee transit camp Blace, in the valley, between the Kosov@ and Macedonian border the famous place were thousands of refugees have been waiting for days to pass this border. Now only the sign has remained as well as the waste containers and some of the mobile toilets and the gravel which has been brought there in the end to put tents on. Now it is all empty. We worked our way through a long line of waiting taxi drivers who nearly pushed us in their taxis, we kept on saying no. We looked if there was a bus on this side, but no way, so we hitch hiked with the first NGO jeep we saw, a guy from CARE, who used to work for IRC, but was now responsible for the logistics from CARE in Kosov@ for their winterisation programm, they hope to winterise at least 120.000 houses in Kosov@ in the next two months. That means they want to make at least one warm room in each house. Roofing and other things they won't do, that is something for next year. On the way to Skopje we passed by the famous Stenkovec camps, from which only Stenkovec 2 has still refugees, but immediatly you see how different it was here in Macedonia in comparance to Albania, even these empty camps are still looking far more organised as the camps in Albania, in front of each camp this official UNHCR sign, they never came around to do that in Albania. Also we passed by hundreds of trucks in the direction of Kosov@ waiting here for the border post, what a difference with the border post between Albania and Kosov@, where hardly any control is taken place, at least not from the Albanian border police. He was so friendly to bring us all the way to the WFP HQ, which was situated almost 5 kilometer out of the center of Skopje in the same place as the French and Chinese embassy in the building of the technical part of the Skopje center of testing contructions on their earthquacke stability. Here we found out that we didn't have reservations, but no problems there were enough free places in the plane. If we would be in one and half hour at the airport and pay 20 dem each as airport tax they would take us along. So we prepared ourself for a long walk into the town in the hope to find a bus there who could bring us to the center. When we left the secure area from the embassies we saw the same CARE jeep standing at the road, he just finished some motor problems and just wanted to leave. So we asked him if he would take us into the center of town, ten minutes later we stood in front of the local Mcdonalds, he went for a hamburger as lunch. After spending almost 3 months in Tirana and some days in Pristina, Skopje is such a big town, so western that I was glad that we had to leave it immediatly, since I didn't feel at home, far too big for me, far too western. We went to find a travel agency in order to ask if there were any buses going to the airport, but no way, you have to go there by taxi and it is almost 15 kilometers out of town. A taxi we found soon and we decided not to phone our Skopje office but go directly to the airport in the hope to be able to eat something there. On the way up to the airport, on the famous highway for brotherhood and unity (which runs from Ljubljana over Zagreb and Skopje to the Greece border), we saw how the russian troops just has arrived in Macedonia, a long convoy of at least 100 vehicles, tanks, busses, trucks, jeeps, all with big russian flags on them and all looking if they didn't even would be able to get as far as Skopje. Behind the convoy a Dutch Army convoy came transporting already two Russian trucks, which obviously didn't work anymore on their trailers. So that is the Russian batalion, I think I will see some more of them in the coming months. The airport was in kind of chaos, almost 200 kosovarian refugees from Germany just arrived and they were busy to reshuffle them on different busses going to different parts of Kosov@. The country gets fuller and fuller every day. More and more Kosovarian are going back, also the ones who haven't been in Kosov@ for years. I wonder how the country will take all those people in. The airplan which took as back to Tirana was a small two motor propeller airplane, which is flying now every day Rome-Tirana-Skopje-Pristina- Skopje-Tirana-Rome, so we also could have taken it from Pristina, but I was happy that we didn't since now I had the possibility to see all those places I have heard so much about. The flight took 40 minutes and at Tirana, Rinas airport it was the normal chaos again. Since the other planes had landed hours before us the line of waiting people was not so big. The girl at the desk wanted me to pay $37 for entering the country, but I said that I officially never left the country, I came from Pristina and still had this exit ticket, which they normally take if you leave the country, and after 5 minutes discussing she let me through. The next obstacle was a police agent who grabbed my passport out of my hand and said that I had to pay. So I grabbed my pasport back and said that I didn't want. He became angry and started shouting at me, I kept saying that he had to ask the girl, and that she said we didn't have to pay, but he didn't understand and was trying to take my passport out my hand. I protected my passport well and finally he went to the girl in the glassbox and asked her what was happenig, she said something and he turned to me making a sign that we could leave the airport without paying. All this time Janine watched this scene with growing unrest. Outside I told her that I was also afraid that on a certain moment he would arrest me or so, but that I wanted to find out how they react if you react back the way they react on you. Not my normal behaviour but kind of test I wanted to make. Outside again I was in a way happy to be back in the chaos of Albania, in some way I start to love this improvising country. It is so extrem that even a trip to Kosov@ is like holidays.

wam :-)