It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for over 10 months now. Crazy. But life is good… I have great colleagues and a supportive network of friends, the electricity stays on now almost around the clock, and I’ve been running quite a bit every day, which is a good balance with the amount of booze and chocolate that I’ve been consuming.
No political or otherwise profound thoughts in this post… just a bit about what I do and who I see every day.
So first thing in the morning, if I decide to go running, I’ll get up around 5:45 to 6 am. If not, I’ll get up between 7 to 7:30, depending on the events from the night before. Plus the water pressure (if any) sucks before 6:30 or so. After finishing my morning routine, I leave my apartment between 8 to 8:15, grabbing something at the nearby bakery before heading to work. (note that this all takes place within a radius of about a quarter of a mile, no hills or gorges involved)
Walking into my office, I greet my colleagues in their respective languages, trying to impress them if at all possible with any new vocabulary that I have learned. I find that my vocabulary in the languages consists of mostly single words in Serbian and entire phrases in Albanian (without knowing the meaning of each word in the phrase). Recently, I’ve become more proficient in using the different phrases, at least a dozen of them, that Kosovar Albanians have for somehow asking, “how are you?” Generally you have to use at least 3 different “how are yous” after your initial greeting to someone. So I have to giggle a little sometimes when an Albanian, speaking in English, asks me how I’m doing two or three times in a row. “I’m good… Yep, I’m still fine… I already told you, I’m not tired and really, I’m doing quite well.”
After greeting my colleagues, I go turn on my decrepit computer, and while I wait for it to wake up, I make some “filtered” coffee for myself. Unfortunately, I haven’t developed a taste for Turkish coffee, which the rest of my colleagues drink… a sort of gritty, syrupy form of espresso. No filters involved. So I get pretty psyched when my colleague, Enisa, sometimes decides to join me in having filtered coffee.
We then sit, read email, and bitch about “this f–ing Outlook!” or the software program and related network that we use for our CRS email accounts. I sit in the same room, essentially, with my four colleagues: one Serb (our chief Prica), one Bosniak woman (Enisa), and two Albanian guys (Burim and Adnan). They talk throughout the day in Serbian and Albanian, both of which I am beginning to understand about 10 to 20% of the time (muahahaha). They speak in English only for one of five reasons: 1) if I initiate the conversation, 2) if they want to bitch about something with me, 3) if they want to make me laugh or make fun of me (and be sure that I know it), 4) if it is a general story or news item to be discussed about one of our projects, or 5) if someone else is in the room that doesn’t speak Serbian or Albanian.
Initially, I was a bit hurt by the fact that they didn’t include me in most conversations. But now, they do talk in English a lot more. Plus, I like the balance of not understanding most of what is being said, because I’m able to concentrate on my work while still enjoying (and being entertained by) their chatter. I’ll definitely miss their chatter when I go to Afghanistan.
Sporadically throughout the day, I run into folks from other offices in our building, both Serbs and Albanians that work for strong, locally-run NGOs (some still with international ties). Really great people. Also there’s been two Dutch interns that have each worked a few months for the local NGO below our office, and I enjoy calling down from our balcony to harass them while they are out having a smoke. Milo, the current intern, has become one of my closest friends here in Mitrovica.
Finally, sometime throughout the day, I’ll run into one of our landladies, three sisters aged somewhere between 50 to 70 years old. They sit out on their second-floor balcony (adjacent to the CRS office), often with an iron grip on one of their grandkids, and manage to keep an eye on everyone… really, not just the people in our building, but all of Mitrovica. I swear. I’m quite positive that they see and gossip about everything that goes on in the city, perhaps even on both sides.
Of course, whatever knowledge you might gain from the three landladies probably depends on which one you talk to: the dictator, the silent grey witch, or the round one (unfortunately I’ve never learned their names). First, the dictator sister with peach-colored hair is by far the most outgoing, the leader of the three and the only one that ever comes to bitch to us directly at our office. Last winter when we would have frequent power outages, the dictator liked to throw small rocks at our window when we would forget to turn off our noisy generator after the electricity had returned. She probably speaks her mind quite frequently about the faults of everyone that lives in Mitrovica (too bad she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Albanian, I’d love hear her judgments about all the different actors in the city).
Then there’s the silent grey witch, who will only glare at us whenever she gets a chance. When the witch delivers the electricity bills for the offices in the building, rather than giving them to us in person, she just places the envelopes on the bottom couple of stairs. Then when we don’t pick them up immediately, she’ll simply keep coming back to check, moving the envelopes up higher and higher on the stairs until we take notice. I think the witch most likely spends her days developing conspiracy theories about the true intentions of everyone in the city.
Finally, there’s the very round, brown-haired sister, who simply smiles at us and waves. I bet she just giggles a lot and really has nothing bad to say about anyone in Mitrovica. One time she saw me from across the road, negotiating the price on a bicycle, and she came over to make sure that I wasn’t overcharged. I like her the best.
The rest of my average day is made up of editing documents in English, writing emails, drinking coffee, drafting proposals/papers/reports, running around to visit our partner organizations in the North and South, editing more documents in English, drinking more coffee, perhaps going for a run after work, finishing my coffee and my my edits to the documents in English, then eventually meeting friends for beer and food.
So that’s an average day for me in a highly elaborated nutshell. I’ll probably write more later on my work with our partner organizations, which has been one of the coolest parts of my experience here in Kosovo.
