--Monday, 06 March 00--
I was typing training exercises into my Mac when I noticed the sound of pouring water, rather like in a shower stall. I went to investigate and discovered hundreds of liters of water rushing down the center of the stair well. I rushed upstairs to the roof and discovered that the water was coming from there for reasons unknown to me. Later, I was told that the heating system there had gone haywire in some way but you never know for sure.

Then the generator came on and the electricity went off. Of course, John, who honchos all this stuff, was at the training and I was the person on the spot (in two senses). I started giving orders. The maintenance guy was busily trying to staunch the flow of water and was having some success so I got the cleaning person to start pushing the water down the steps. Then I got an office opened so we could vacuum the water out of the rug, and sent Donny down to get John at the Ilaria hotel.

I caught Sammy, John's assistant, carrying stuff into the building as part of a move, and told him to concentrate on the building and let others do the move. He went to see what he could do about the generator and was able to fix it.

By the time the other expats returned, everything was under control. You couldn't tell there had been a catastrophe -- and the stairs were clean.


--Tuesday, 07 March 00--
My readers seem more interested about how long will I will be on this assignment than I am, but, in answer, I have a verbal agreement to stay at least until the end of April and then we shall see.

The weather so far has been somewhere between cold and chilly with a gradual shift toward pleasantly warm. The sky has been slate gray, bright blue with puffy clouds, and cloudless in turn. The city is located in a small valley surrounded by low hills but from any decent vantage point you can see higher hills in the distance.

The people here are Albanian Kosovars and they really like Americans and Bill Clinton. One person told me that Bill Clinton should come here and be the President. I told him that many Americans might agree with him on that. Almost anyone who recognizes me as a foreigner, which is almost everyone, will say "Hello," on their own. They always respond if I say "Hello."

The stores here a filled with goods of all kinds. I even found a Bennetons (sp?). The issue is the number of people who can afford to shop in them. But things are not all bleak, there are many Kosovars working in Eastern Europe and the remittances here are a regular source of income for many. Still, the entire economy needs to be rebuilt because two crops were missed and nearly all the cattle, chickens, etc. were taken to Serbia or slaughtered for food.

This afternoon was the Treasury training of the new hires. I wrote some group exercises for the training that turned out to be excellent (both). It required the group (which I had subdivided into subgroups by table) to work through the whole process of hardware acquisition, from perceiving the need, to getting your boss on board, to estimating costs, to the full approval process (allocation, funds availability, bidding, vendor selection, goods delivery, receiving report, payment approval and execution). The response to my questions were lively and the group was clearly interested. I could feel people learning as I asked questions (What is the next step?, Whose approval do you need for this?, How do you do that?).

Contrary to what many think, things in Prishtina aren't dangerous (the story about Mitrovitsa, 50 kilometers away, is different but we are forbidden to go there) but they are very inconvenient. Prishtina does not have the amenities available in Ashgabat. The city is smaller and even more polluted You don't just breathe this air, you smell it, you almost taste it and when the dust is moving, you can chew it. There are the low-octane automobile fumes, the smoke from wood burned for heating, the wide-spread open burning of trash, the extensive cigarette smoke and the two coal-burning electricity plants on the city's outskirts. Ugh! No asthmatics need apply.

The food is reasonably good and very inexpensive (cheaper even than Ashgabat). The pizza is surprisingly fine but you can't get real pepperoni pizza. I have found something called "pepperoni" pizza but it turns out to be a particular kind of hot pepper, not the sausage I know and love. There is also a skinless sausage here, kabop, that is just delicious. It reminds me of meetch in Romania.

The electricity is extremely problematic. It ceases multiple times every day. To deal with this, there are numerous gasoline-fired generators ranging in size from a lawnmower to a container worthy of a Mac truck, and all adding to the air and noise pollution. When the electricity cuts off, the lights go out, 20 seconds later the generator kicks in, the lights go on and no one even notices (at least in our offices). Of course, your computer had better be attached to a UPS or you will notice the power change. On the street people fire up generators and the noise is noisome and the fumes worse. In the less-well-healed shops they light the candles on the cash register and add up your purchases on a pocket calculator.

One of the smaller generators used by a store.

The Deutsche Mark is the accepted local currency and the Yugoslavian dinar is used only by the Serbs. There are currency problems though, particularly the lack of enough coins and small bills. Recently I was making an essential purchase (beer, the local version being quite good) and the cashier didn't have change so she said so (in English. How do they know?) and handed me two packages of two mints each. Not eating anything that is artificially sweetened (I try to think of my health), I immediately put one package in the hand of each of two boys who were buying some small bit of candy at the time. They were first, surprise, and then, pleased.

After their recent experiences, the people here really like Americans and boast if they can claim to have an American friend. I saw a poster in Ishmail's house that had a picture of the leaders of all the major NATO governments. Bill Clinton was at the top and was the biggest image. There is graffiti on the walls that says, "USA, NATO, Beni" and the like.

This graffito is below a street sign in Serbian that has been painted out of existence.

My first impression of the people is that they are hard-working, intelligent, committed to education and honest. Interestingly, so far, I have detected NO sentiment to merge with Albania. The people I have met love to live here and want this to be their own country. Each to his own.

It is interesting that, if I did not read the Internet about Mitrovitsa and did not talk to the other expats about local attitudes, I would be unaware of the intense hatred that these people have for the Serbs. A year ago, a Bulgarian consultant to the UN was murdered on the main street (ironically named after Mother Theresa who was ethnic Albanian) after saying goodbye to someone in Serbian. I speak only English here.

I went for a walk up Mother Theresa Street with Ishmail. Promenading is about the only thing you can do here, other than sitting in a cafe. There were much greater numbers of people that usual, so many that they completely blocked the traffic. In front of the National Theater there was a barrel with a wood fire fueled with large logs. Everywhere people stood around and talked quietly to those around them. I was told later that this is how the Kosovars "demonstrate". In this case, it was in remembrance of the first person to die when the Serbian government tried to drive them out of Kosovo about a year ago.

Afterwards, I had another language lesson with Ishmail -- just as intense as all the others.

Joe