Travel Account Written by Heart

13.07.2006

Taking a plane to Belgrade and then by road to Kosovo!

At Gazimestan, Kosovo

Slovakian soldiers guarding Serbian saint monument in Gazimestan

The heat and dust of the journey was taking its toll on me and with the arrival in the barbed surroundings of Kosovo brought back flashes of where else I could have been on these eventful days. I had earlier refused an invitation to join friends in a villa with a swimming pool in nestling in the shades of tall trees with a cool environ.

Instead, I decided to pay a visit to Kosovo and get a first hand impression of how the “left over” Serbs were coping with life there. Not many people could understand that. They would ask what I was up to in this “black hole of Europe” if I was not authorized by the government or paid to do it. One ends up in Kosovo these days only with those two reasons: being authorized and/or being paid for. There is the third reason, far less obvious though, that I discovered during my stay there.

Children have hardly something called a playground out of the shadows of guns and threats. As even getting food is dangerous, Serbian women from more than thirty villages have joined their forces to make and sell handicrafts and home made products to survive and grow. Mrs. Gordana Djoric, a former entrepreneur in software field among the first to introduce IT to Pristina, lost her flat and her company there, but not the will to fight for better future for the Serbian community in Kosovo. Thus, she created a business women association “Avenija” and is leading these women with her skills and encouragement. Speaking to this journalist she narrated the hardships and discrimination rampant in the zone.

Being incorrigibly optimistic, I had come to light a candle to express solidarity with the Serbian community, but on seeing the conditions there, I felt the need for a thousand candles to dispel the prevailing fear and dark clouds of fatalism. Bluntly put, lack of belief that anything can be done to turn back from the path to abyss where Kosovo is heading for- independence i.e. creating a rogue state in Europe.

Serendipity strolled in to clear my nagging doubts about the real purpose of my visit and this young boy with a blazing T-shirt stepped in front of me with a notice “Because I Love Serbia”. There a thousand candles did light up in my heart as I realized the true motive behind my novice visit to this forgotten land of Europe. The previously mentioned third and far less obvious reason.

Today, as I sit back and look at the events of these past days, I am more than before determined to push ahead with the successful observation of St. Velika Gospojina Day of Gracanica monastery on August 28. This time not alone, but with numerous representatives of international community and media that can help spread the message which in turn will bear fruits of pragmatic action.

On this day they would be able to visit the enclaves to pay tribute to the 200.000 Serbs who are no more there and bring hope to those who are brave enough to stand it all through. Secondly and most importantly, they would be able to participate in Kosovo security panel discussion. Last but not the least; they would see the fashion show Ethno network with embroidered garments and handmade knitwear. With a bit of luck and a lot of courage Mila Jovovich might open the show.

Ironically, during a nice reception in his Belgrade-based residence, one diplomat quipped, “What are we going to do with these two million Albanians if Kosovo does not become independent?” Pusillanimous politicians, usually off the record, but sometimes even officially, have the audacity to ask the same. For a start, I challenge them to light candles of hope for multiethnic Kosovo on 28 August this year! To dare to experience one day what the Serbian community is experiencing the last seven years in this “black hole of Europe”. They might realize surrounded by barbed wire in the Gracanica monastery that such cowardly thoughts can be dispelled with joint efforts, truth and faith.

It is high time the international community came out of hibernation and joined hands with the Serbs to stop discrimination and the threat of violence. The 21 century is the century of social responsibility, dialogue and compromise and violence in the Balkans belongs to past. As European Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana rightfully put “we do not give Serbia the value that it deserves” and “we must not make mistakes we made in the Balkans in the 1990s”. Serbs in Kosovo take his word for that, and they wait, not with hope, but with expectations for words to turn into action. Before it really becomes late. Because, as I am writing this, it is still not.