--Sunday, 12 March 00-- (Continued)
I walked back down the hill and over to the new part of Prishtina. Here the planners had built eight story high rises in groups. They at least used some strong colors (forest green, orange, terra cotta red, etc.) to try to distinguish otherwise completely undistinguished buildings.

Patrick

I found a pedestrian arcade with restaurants, shops, coffee houses and cafes on it. I was walking down the arcade, taking everything in, when a person I recognized from last week's training came out of a cafe and invited me in for a cappuccino. I accepted and he introduced me to a friend of his. Patrick's friend comes from an Albanian town in Serbia and spent 10 years in Italy to avoid the Serbian Army draft. He can't go home.

We sat at the bar and talked for an hour. Patrick (you can guess that that is not his name) told me that in addition to Mother Theresa, the present head of the CIA is of Albanian extraction (you know whom I mean) as are the Belushi brothers.

Patrick seemed to be an extremely practical person with a patriotism tempered by what passes for reality here. He stated that he thought most Kosovars wanted Kosova to be the 51st US state. I asked about this and he explained that the EU doesn't get much credit for what has transpired in the Balkans while the US and Bill Clinton do. He told me, "We are Moslems and worship Allah. You have Jesus Christ. We have Mohammed AND Bill Clinton!" This was the first I have heard this equation of Bill and Mohammed but he may be expressing a wide-spread belief based on the graffiti and posters I have seen everywhere in Prishtina.

Patrick went on to tell me that when over 200,000 Kosovars were in Montenegro the government there would do nothing to help and actively tried to prevent Kosovars from helping each others. He said that in order to get to the Blasja camps which contained large numbers of Kosovars, he had to use a fake passport that identified him as a British doctor. Once again he recounted how Macedonian Albanians (who he says are 40% of the Macedonia population while the government there says they are 34%) gave a fixed fee per family to help the refugees.

He went on to say that the only people who helped were the American soldiers who set up camps at Blasja and provided tents and food. He told me that his father said that the father will kill anyone who speaks ill of the Americans. Such are the emotions here that even in complementing someone for a good deed done selflessly, a threat of death is involved.

Patrick provided me some estimates of world's Albanian-speaking population: 2 million in Kosovo, 1 million in Macedonia, 3.5 million in Albania, 100,000 in Montenegro, 200,000 in Greece, 3 million in Turkey (Patrick's friend thought the number was actually 5 million), 500,000 in Bulgaria, and 250,000 in Italy. You do the arithmetic.

Toward the end of our discussion, Patrick's friend picked up the piece of paper on which I had been taking occasional notes and began to tear it up. I made a sound of disapproval and his friend stopped. I took the paper back and put it in my pocket. Patrick said that when the Serbs were in power, they would search people and if they found a piece of paper in Albanian, they would claim that it was an anti-government plan so it became a standard activity to destroy all notes after a meeting -- even a social meeting at a bar.

I asked Patrick if he thought that Kosova and Albania should merge and he stated flat out, "No." His reason was that 40 years of the Hoja dictatorship in Albanian had divided the Albanians into different groups. He made specific reference to the experience of East and West Germany. He said that in 40 or 50 years, maybe; but not now.

I saw the bartender (who was introduced to me as a KLA veteran) make a drink of peach juice and Ballantine scotch. Not imagining what it tasted like, I wondered what it might be called. Any suggestions?

Patrick borrowed 80,000 DM from expatriot relatives to rehab his home after the Serbs torched it and now rents his 13 room house to the French Red Cross for 7,000 DM a month. He plans to repay the loan in a year (he did the arithmetic). Patrick is married with two children, has studied to be an economist but would really like to be an actor. He has a Macedonian passport that cost $2,000 to get, even though he was born there. He says the Macedonians are brothers to the Serbs and points out the difficulties they made for the Kosovars.


--Monday, 13 March 00--
The local support for the West is reflected in the names of some of the cafes: Restaurant Amerika, Cafe KFOR, Caffe [sic] Uncle Sam, Cafe Bar West, Cafe Bar BravO, Caffe "Blair" [after Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of England]. Then there is Cafe Eris -- the goddess of discord, all too appropriate here.

I listened to part of George's lecture to the new employees and directed exercises with them when George had to go meet Alan. It became clear from the exercises that they don't really understand the codes. We can work on that. More exercises will help.

Lunch with Bernd, John, Alan, George. It was a new pizza place and I liked the way they cooked the thin crust. It was crunchy and just right. The smoked beef didn't taste bad, it just didn't have any taste at all.

Some people say that UNMIK is thinking great thoughts when it should be concentrating on collecting the trash. There is a lot of truth in that suggestion: Prishtina's public services remain minimal.

I learned that Kosovo' is the Serbian name for this area and the Albanian Kosovars call it Koso'va with the different ending and emphasis. Internationally, Kosovo as a name seems deeply entrenched.

The electricity in the Grand became unreliable (again). It goes off suddenly at night and I sit typing into my G3 for thirty seconds or so and then it comes back on. This seems to happen several times in a row.


--Tuesday, 14 March 00--
Up early at 6 am and that was perhaps a mistake. The water was on but it could not be called warm, just as it could not be called cold. I did manage to shower by wetting my hair bent over to limit the chill to one part of my body at a time and afterward wetting the rest of me. Certainly there was no pleasure in the experience.

The weather is definitely milder now. It is no longer cold but is frequently chilly and sometimes downright pleasant. More and more shops have put tables and chairs outside and more and more people are taking advantage of them, even if they have to wear their coats and take only seats in the sun.

I have been warned that Prishtina has only two seasons, Summer and Winter. We shall see: the change in seasons is coming soon.

Joe