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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: So I'm going to Kosovo??  ·  

Congratulations! I lived (in Prishtine) and worked in Kosovo (at Film City) for a while when I was a civilian contractor with KFOR.

Kosovo was rough then - 12/13 years ago - and really the ass end of the world. Power for a couple of hours a day, every third or fourth day, often no running water, and the Albanian mafia running basically everything. (The whole thing in Kosovo was a proxy war between the Albanian mafia and the EU, and largely unrelated to the problems in the northern parts of the Balkans. The Albanians were trying to annex the land by trafficking shitloads of Albanians in, and claiming they had "always lived there", and the EU/US were just trying to get everyone to stop shooting long enough that they could have a reasonable conversation with Serbia about the region, and wondering what the fuck the Albanians were going on about.)

The one power plant was coal-fired, and it made the snow was bright yellow from all the soot and pollution in the air.

My friend ran the - what was it called then? International Security Center, or whatever? - where they housed and tried all the criminals. Nice guy from Texas, ex-cop, ex-military, and a grandfather. Talk about a shitty job, man. Working in a craptastic place like Kosovo, doing a thankless job, for an organization that wished he didn't need to exist, a public that was against him, and genuine war criminals were the people he got to hang out with on a daily basis. Man... that was hard work.

Good luck with it. The bureaucracy is inconceivably Byzantine (appropriate, considering the history of the region) but I expect the best introduction to the current situation there is understanding how it went from Yugoslavia to the mess it is now, and the best way to do that is to read my friend Adam LeBor's book, "Milosevic"

It really will be a good primer to understanding the tribal underpinnings of everything you are getting into there.

Good luck. And thank you for doing the good and important work that needs to happen there. I did my part with UXO awareness, but that was all I could manage before I got out.





arguewithatree  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I definitely appreciate your insights and any resources you recommend. Again I have zero background besides having lived in bumblefuck Jordan (which is also a rough, poor, and tribal region). I have an old Peace Corps manual for Albanian and found a youtube channel with some basic vocab that I'm studying now.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be living in Pristina but really don't have much info at all yet beyond where I'm working.

goobster  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oof. Jumping in with both feet, eh?

So. From your post history, I think you are female, right? Being a woman in that region is going to be really fucking hard. Really hard. This is some of the most brutally misogynistic society I have ever experienced. Far beyond the sort of "polite" and weirdly formalized misogyny of the Middle East. In this part of the Balkans, women are either your mother or treated as some sort of whore/prostitute who deserves no respect. I have seen very little gray area between those two extremes. (Professional adult men in their 40's still have their mother make meals for them every day, and do their laundry. Seriously.)

Everyone also has a hundred hidden triggers simmering just below the surface, waiting to take violent offense to the smallest thing.

Example: Spell it "Prishtine" vs "Prishtina", and get hit in the face. (Even the "sh" sound is a polarizer in "Prishtine".) One faction wants it spelled one way and sees the other spelling as a fighting offense, and the other faction believes exactly the opposite. (Put a map on the wall in your office with one spelling of the word, and you will feel the room go cold when certain people walk in to do business with you. Put both spellings on the map and everyone hates you.)

This is the kind of stuff that Adam's book can help you wrap your head around. For a long time people lived next door to each other in Yugoslavia in peace and prosperity, and then Milosevic needed to divide the people against each other to create a power base, so suddenly if the "c" at the end of your name was pronounced with a hard "ch" versus a softer "ts" it defined neighbors as "Serb" or "Bosnian Serb", and the AK-74's come out blazing. (The irony that "Milosevic" is exactly one of these names - meh-lo-se-VICH or meh-lo-se-VITS - is not lost on anyone that studies the history of the area. And there are four different variations of the ch/c/s/ts sound that only Serbo-Croat speakers can discern, so you may say it wrong and piss someone off anyway, even if you tried to use the right one!)

Learning anything other than the absolute rudimentary Albanian - "please", "thank you" etc - is pointless. Because the Albanians will think you are being patronizing - "What, you think I don't speak English, or something?!?" - and speaking Albanian is basically spitting in the face of everyone else in the region... Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins (who are basically the "Texans of Serbia", as described to me), etc. Learning basic Serbian will serve you much better. (Oh. And Serbo-Croat is, scientifically, one language, but due to the regional chaos the people there will tell you vehemently and in great and confusing detail about why they are two distinct languages. So you want to focus on learning Serbian. It will win you points with any Serbs you deal with, and everyone - even Albanians - can get along in Serbian. The Croatians are also MUCH more lenient and understanding than the Serbs you will deal with in Kosovo. If you go up to Zagreb or Hvar or Dubrovnik for a little vacation and use your Serbian, the Croats will be nice to you anyway. Croats like tourists. Serbs cast a wary eye on tourists and wonder why you aren't in Croatia.)

And people are definitely "ranked" there, culturally speaking. Serbs are top of the heap (because they forcefully put themselves there in every single conversation), with Europeans (including Greeks) taking a back seat to them. Macedonians are up there, but not as "pure" as the Serbs because they are in bed with the EU and Greece. Croatians are like that weird rich uncle with the nice house you love to go visit once a year, but you are never quite sure if he's a child molester or not. Roma/Gypsies are below dogs. And if you took a Serb/Kosovar/Macedonian aside, pointed at an Albanian, and said, "Is that human?" They would squint... tilt their heads... look over at the Roma, and back at the Albanian... and say, "Yeah? I guess so?"

In short, everything there is just fucking hard. And for reasons that seem completely stupid to someone like me who grew up on the west coast of the USA. But I learned my lessons there - some of them the hard way - and figured out how to navigate through the political mess and how to live in a shitty little flat in "downtown" Pristina. (Another alternate spelling.)

I guess my suggestion is to go in with big ears, small mouth. Listen more than you speak. Watch everything. Keep constantly vigilant. Dress like the locals. Buy local clothing and wear it ALL the time. I had my "Balkan costume" I wore whenever I spent time there, (black leather jacket, black mock turtleneck, blue jeans of no name brand make or model, black belt, black shoes, no labels or brand names showing, or cut off) and I could blend in a bit. Or at least not stick out.

Ok, yeah, I was living there more than 10 years ago but the problems there have been going on for a long time. When I was there wild dogs were a big problem. (Whenever you have a war, dogs run away. And breed. And run in packs. And become a Problem for humans.) I don't expect that is still the case. The powerplant is now running better and providing power most days, all day, but the soot is still on EVERYTHING all the time. The Albanian mafia is largely under control (or underground) and not a daily threat. The international organizations are better established and secured, and aren't being blown up on a bi-monthly basis anymore with RPGs.

But the cultural environment there is probably still very much like it was a decade ago. Culture changes slowly.

I will be fascinated to hear your experiences when you get there!!! And what it is like working for an international organization like that. I was just a lowly contractor, driving a truck around. So your view from "inside the system" is going to be particularly interesting. (All of my friends have since left there.)

arguewithatree  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·  

uh I typed a response but idk what happened to it.

In summary, I hope you're wrong and that culture has changed more quickly because this is/was one of my biggest hang ups about going. When I went to Jordan, I was told that the worst harassment I'd endure were marriage proposals. Then I was physically and verbally harassed almost constantly and followed more than once, even while covered collarbone to ankles. So I just gave up and stopped going outside.

One of my mentors who wrote a rec for me knows how hard Jordan was for me and was quick to reassure me that it was nothing like that when she went as a mid/late 20's woman. We're going to chat soon so I'm going to press her on that though for sure.

goobster  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In my experience there (as a white man), and my interaction with many women (some of whom were locals that worked for me), I would say that your mentor's experience is highly rose-tinted, or cloistered.

In many of these NGO's, etc, it is very possible to live in an "experience bubble." You live in provided housing, in a safe and secure area, with transport to and from the places you need to go, and a small number of "safe" restaurants, bars, etc, where the ex-pat community congregates, and the locals never go. (I had this experience when I worked outside of Cape Town, South Africa.)

This is how almost all of the ex-pat community lives in places like this. "Diplomats" in a bubble that rarely engages with, or crosses over, with the local community.

I hate that. I strove to always live outside of those boundaries.

So yes, your mentor could have had that experience in Kosovo, and maybe it was due to her circumstances and the bubble she lived in. Or, maybe the place has changed. Both things are possible, but if these issues are important to you, I would have a very direct, open, and honest conversation with her about it.

In my experience, it was not unusual for men to openly grope women when they approved of their outfits, be openly sexually suggestive with them, and take umbrage at rejection, including raging outbursts. Like frat bros in a strip bar. Seriously.

arguewithatree  ·  2838 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't remember the context under which she was in Kosovo but I'll find out when we do chat sometime this week. But I definitely appreciate the insight.