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On Wednesday, I went to Bujar's house for dinner. He told me he had not invited me earlier because his wife moved into the house only three months ago and so friends and relatives are still visiting almost every night to see the new house. From the outside, it is indistinguishable from any other house in Prizren. It looks like the kind of place you would use to store rolls of used carpet or have a paintball war. There is no yard. The masonry work makes you long for the return of the guild system. It looks like speed of construction was valued above quality. The interior of the house, however, is a sharp contrast. The floors are covered in new tile and the smell of fresh paint is everywhere. The wood molding is attractive and each room is filled with nice contemporary furniture. This is not the typical Kosovar home. The travel business must be going well.
Bujar took me upstairs and showed me the bedrooms. In his son's room, I commented in a good-natured way, "Wow, he has his own TV. I didn't have a TV in my room when I was growing up." Bujar bristled at that. With a serious look on his face, he snapped, "Well here in Kosova, everything is done for our children. In America, I don't know. Maybe it is different." I decided it was time to head for the balcony and talk about the sunset.
Bujar took me to the garage and showed me his new used car that he had imported from Germany. He would not have done so if not for a comment I made earlier in the week. He mentioned having a new car and I asked if all of his friends and relatives wanted to see the car when they came to see the house. He told me that at one time they might have been interested in seeing a new car, but now car ownership is so common in Kosova that no one would be interested. It would be like asking to see someone's new bicycle. I explained to him that people in America love their cars so much that people will come to see your car even if it had no wheels. He thought that was very funny.
One thing you don't see in Kosova is car lots. Most cars are imported from foreign countries by individuals. When Bujar imported his car from Germany, he received a lesson about United Nations governance. The UN controls just about everything in Kosova. They issue passports and even school diplomas, both of which contain the UN logo. They also levy taxes. Bujar said that overnight, without warning, the UN raised the import tax on used vehicles by 190%. The tax on his car would be $4,000.
Tariffs are not the only taxes imposed by the UN. Remember me mentioning all the small businesses in Prizren? Each one has to pay a monthly business tax of 150 DM. For many people, that is a month's salary. "Big" businesses are required to pay 300 DM. What makes a business "big"? The UN will tell you if you are big or not.
Bujar hopes that things will change once elections are held in October and a new government is formed. Maybe then the UN will back off, but they have not given any assurances that they will. Until then, Kosova will be taxed by unelected UN bureaucrats. I told Bujar that sounded like taxation without representation. I told him that Americans once considered that cause for revolution. I thought I would stoke the fires a bit. Perhaps Bujar will be the next Patrick Henry of Kosova.
To be fair, however, I must confess that other than the tariffs and the business taxes, Kosova is a tax-free paradise for the moment. There are no income taxes, property taxes, or sales taxes (although I noticed some sort of tax on my electric bill). But it should be remembered that in the 1770's, taxes on the American colonies were also very low -- lower in fact than in Britain. By today's standards, taxes were almost non-existent. In exchange for these minimal taxes, the colonists received the protection of the British crown. It was not the amount of taxes, but rather the practice of imposing taxes without the colonists' consent that resulted in the shot heard around the world.
For dinner, Bujar fed me ground beef and rice wrapped in some type of leaves, cooked in a delicious brown sauce. He also served fresh bread and homemade yogurt, which he said is very common in Kosova. Earlier, he tried to force some Turkish coffee on me. I finally told him that I don't like coffee and that in my entire life, I've drunk maybe four cups of coffee. That produced stunned silence. Bujar looked at me like I had just told him that the barefoot boy with shoes on stood standing in the grass.
After dinner, we watched TV. Unlike in my apartment, Bujar's TV will pick up CNN. It was the first U.S. news I'd seen in almost a month. We turned it on just in time to see live coverage of Elian Gonzales arriving at Dulles Airport for his flight back to Papa Fidel. I asked Bujar if that story had been covered here in Kosova, but he was asleep.
At 10:00, I went with Bujar and his wife for a walk downtown. It was the first time I had been downtown after dark. I was surprised to see how alive it was. All the bars and restaurants were full and the main pedestrian walkway was clogged with people; most of them were young people, but the average age was older than what I see during the day. There is very little entertainment in Prizren. The only movie theater was destroyed during the war. So the entertainment is simply walking up and down that cobblestone pedestrian walkway. When you reach one end, you turn around and go back. It is like going cruising, but on foot. There were carts selling French fries and pop corn. I had never seen them before, so they must come out only at night.
You'll recall that in my first e-mail from Kosova, I said that I flew into the capital city, Pristina. The airport was on the outer edge of the city and so I did not get to see Pristina. On Saturday, Festim agreed to accompany me to Pristina to show me around.
We also planned on visiting an Internet cafe where I would have unlimited computer time. In Prizren, because there is no charge, I am limited to thirty minutes at a time on the Internet. The response time is very slow, so I often do not have enough time to read all of my e-mail. (So it would help me out if all of you would limit the number of jokes, personality quizzes, and inspirational stories that you forward to me. Of course, all Clinton jokes are still welcomed.) The Internet center in Prizren was set up by a charitable organization to help the people of Kosova recover from the war and gain access to information beyond their borders. Each time I go there, however, it appears that half the computers are occupied by Americans and other foreigners from various relief agencies, news organizations, missionary groups, or whatever.
I knew that Bujar was traveling to Pristina, so I arranged for Festim and I to ride with him. We took the Partners in Progress vehicle that Bujar had used to drive me from the airport. Also traveling with us was Bujar's wife, daughter, and business colleague. We left Prizren at 7:30 AM. We took the main road connecting Prizren with Pristina. It is a different route than we had traveled from the airport, so I got to see some new scenery.
Weaving around potholes, we drove past many vineyards and cornfields. We then started ascending into the mountains. We passed more graves of KLA soldiers. I was told that we were in the part of Kosova that had seen the most intense fighting between the KLA and Serbian military. I noticed that the road was now bound on both sides by lengths of red plastic tape reading "MINES". The land mines left behind by the Serbs still have not been cleared. Here and there I would see breaks in the tape where narrow paths bound my metal wires led up the hillsides. These were paths that had been cleared of mines for the locals.
Because of the mountainous terrain, the road was curving more. The most disturbing part of the drive came when we rounded a bend and we saw the twisted carcass of a large commercial truck. I was told that the driver had made too wide of a turn, veered off the pavement a few feet and hit a land mine. The truck looked like . . . well, like it had hit a land mine. The cab looked like someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut it open in the rear and then rolled the cab out flat on a rock. The trailer was blown in the opposite direction. From the looks of the remains, it would have been a stupid question to ask whether the driver had been killed, so I asked if he was the only person in the truck. They said he was. The more disturbing part of the account of this Kosova fender bender came when they told me that it had taken place only one week ago. For the next few miles, every time Bujar would drive to the edge of the road to make way for another vehicle, my grip on the armrest would get a little tighter and I would wonder: Will I actually hear the sound of the explosion before I see Jesus?
We came down from the mountains and then passed a Serbian village, the entrance to which was heavily guarded by KFOR troops. The road split into four lanes and we drove through a KFOR checkpoint manned by Swedish KFOR troops. Soon thereafter, we could see Pristina in the distance. It was obviously bigger than Prizren. In fact it is twice the size. The first thing I noticed when we entered town were the wide streets and traffic lights, neither of which I was used to seeing Prizren. There were also more UN Police vehicles. Many of the larger buildings had been taken over by the UN and NATO. Pristina is in the British zone, but I also saw many American flags. In front of one building was a grouping of flagpoles containing the Kosova flag, the UN flag, the U.S. flag, and the NATO flag. I don't know what the building was being used for.
Bujar parked the vehicle and told Festim and I to meet him again at 4:00. If we didn't show, he would check again at 5:00 and then return to Prizren without us. Festim and I headed for an Internet cafe that is operated by Youth With a Mission. Festim knows Martha McComb, the head coordinator for YWM's operations in Pristina. He had e-mailed her to let her know that would be coming, but she was not at the Internet Center.
We walked 20 minutes to get to her house. Along the way, Festim asked me if anything had caught my attention during the drive from Prizren. I told him that yes, the truck that had been blown to bits by the land mine had made quite an impression on me. No, that's not what he meant. Anything else? He seemed disappointed that I had not commented upon the many Kosovars I saw working in the fields. This was not the first time Festim had reminded me of how hard the people of Kosovar are working. I was thinking about this when we got to Martha's house at 10:30 and a bare-foot, disheveled American stepped out, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Can I help you guys?" He went to get Martha and Festim looked at his watch, grinned, and shook his head. I knew what he was thinking: Americans.
Martha's backyard contained pear, cherry, peach, and apricot trees. They were all loaded with fruit. Because the house was at the top of a steep hill, there was a nice view of the city from the front balcony. A block away, I could see a partially destroyed home. An opening in the outside wall allowed me to see inside. On an interior wall, about chest high, there were two dark red splatter marks with red lines running down to the floor. I told Festim I hoped he would tell me that was paint. "Yes, it is possible that it is paint." Okay, I'll assume it was paint.
We had to wait several minutes for Martha to appear because she too had been sleeping. Once she appeared, she gave me a brochure about YWM and told me about their work in Pristina. Each year, YWM has 25,000 volunteers involved in short-term work while nearly 7,000 work as permanent staff in 480 operating locations in 120 nations. In Pristina, the permanent staff consists of Martha and three other people. At any given time, they also have between 15 and 25 temporary volunteers, many of them teenagers. They operate the Internet cafe, teach conversational English, help out at the hospital, and help with reconstruction efforts in the villages. They currently have 100 English students, so I guess WEI has a lot of catching up to do here in Prizren.
Martha is 34 and is originally from Austin. She has been a full-time coordinator for YWM for the last 10 years. She has worked in Hungary, Bosnia, and South Africa. She has been in Pristina since December. As you can imagine, she has a capable and forceful personality. She had already made plans for the YWM folks to spend the day at the lake, so she invited us along. The purpose of the trip was to celebrate Canada Day for the benefit of the Canadian YWM volunteers. The education system in Canada must not be any better than the one in America, because the Canadians were unable to explain to me what happened on Canada Day. All they knew was that something important happened in 1867. One of them thought maybe that's when Canada became a confederation.
All together, there were fourteen of us. There were people from Canada, Hungary, Australia, America, and Holland. I was in the lead vehicle, which was a Suzuki Samurai jeep with the top removed. The stereo was blaring and there were two blondes up-front waving at people. To say that we attracted attention would be to understate the situation. We couldn't have looked any more American if we had been singing the Star Spangled Banner.
It was a 35-minute drive through more farmland before we turned off the main road and drove another 20 minutes into the mountains. The mountains were thick with cedars. It was the most trees I've seen in Kosova. At the base of the mountains was a pretty green like. I had expected a mud hole filled with abandoned cars and debris, so I was pleasantly surprised.
We had to drive across a one-lane bridge that had replaced the one destroyed by the Serbs. At the entrance to the beach area, there was a guy charging for parking. I don't know whether he was a park ranger, municipal employee, or simply an enterprising young Kosovar who spotted an opportunity, but when we told him we were with YWM, he waved us through. There were about 200 people at the beach, but it was a large area with room for everybody. I watched as the YWM folks ran for the water. The American guys were wearing swimming trunks and the Europeans were wearing bikini briefs. Keep in mind that it had not occurred to me to bring a swimsuit with me to visit the Internet cafe, so I was in jeans. Festim and I went walking around and found a mobile trailer that was selling beach gear. Festim bought the only swimming trunks for 10 DM. I then had the choice of buying a pair of bikini briefs or not swimming.
Of course, it became quite hot in my jeans, so I spent much of the day under a tree. We cooked sausages on a grill that we had brought and had watermelon. The YWM folks also brought a volleyball net. As they started setting it up, Kosovar guys from all over the beach were drawn to it. They reminded me of our cats when my dad cleans fish in the garage. Every time you would turn around, another one would silently appear. They looked at the net like it was fire brought to them from Mount Olympus. While we were eating, they grabbed our ball without asking and started playing. We eventually had to run them off so that we could play. I played two games of volleyball. The entire time, a group of Kosovars stood by just waiting for us to get tired. As soon as we stopped playing, they grabbed the ball and resumed their game. They weren't any better than we were, but they exhibited the additional skill of playing while holding cigarettes.
Festim and I needed to head back to town if we were to avoid spending the night in Pristina, so we asked Martha to drive us back to the main road where we could catch a bus. I thought the car that was parked behind us was clearly visible while we were climbing into the jeep, but Martha did not notice it. She put the jeep in reverse and stomped on the gas. I said, "Whoa! Stop!" She stopped immediately after the sound of breaking glass. The car behind us had a broken headlight and a small dent. The purported owner soon appeared. Of all of the people on the beach, Martha had to pick out the biggest and meanest looking guy and hit his car. Judging from the size of his muscles, he must spend his days lifting weights, vats of wine, dead Serbs, or something equally heavy.
Martha asked him how much he would need to repair the damage. He asked how much she had. "That's not the question," replied Martha. By this time, a large crowd had gathered. They hadn't had this much entertainment since the time when some rich Americans brought a volleyball net to the beach. Everyone had an opinion and most of those opinions were in Albanian. Mr. Muscles spoke very little English and spent much of the time squeezing a pimple on his chest. He insisted on 100 DM, but Martha said that was way too much. She offered 50 DM and he said that was not enough. I was very impressed by Martha. If it had been me, I would have given him all of my money, my watch, and possibly my sweaty jeans. I suggested to Martha that she give him 50 DM and have him bring her the bill if it costs more than that. He didn't like that idea, but after much arguing, he finally agreed. The crowd dispersed and we headed for the main road. It wasn't until later that Festim told us that he heard Mr. Muscles tell someone else in Albanian that it wasn't his car.
Martha dropped us off and a bus soon picked us up. As we got closer to town, it made more stops and it filled up with laborers and other people from the villages. It was making odd sounds and so the bus driver pulled over. The "co-driver", wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey with "Jordan" on the back, headed down the aisle with a pair of pliers in his hands. That was foreboding. He opened up a panel in the floor and fiddled around. The engine then stopped completely. In Albanian, one of the passengers said, "Michael Jordan had to go and fix the bus." He got it going again, but we never got above 30 mph again. They also made several more repair stops. It seemed to me like the clutch was slipping. (I have personal experience in that area.) It took us an hour to limp back into town. We were not charged for the ride, so I guess the concept of customer service is not totally alien to Kosova.
Bujar had already returned to Prizren, so Festim and I had to take another bus from Pristina to Prizren. (If there is a list somewhere of the world's most disgusting restrooms, the public restroom at the Pristina bus station surely makes an appearance.) During our walk to the bus station, Festim steered me away from a guy he spotted on the sidewalk ahead of his. Festim told me that he recognized the guy as someone who once tried to pick his pocket. Festim had seen him in Pristina on previous Saturdays. He said that he is in Prizren on Wednesdays and in one other town on Fridays. I couldn't make Festim understand why I thought it was odd that in Pristina, a city of 400,000 people, and in Prizren, a city of almost 200,000 people, Festim would keep seeing the same pickpocket. It seems that Kosova has one petty thief. Even better, that petty thief has a schedule and is very conscientious in sticking to it. Maybe someone should snap his picture so that it can appear in the next Lonely Planet travel guide.
I got back to Prizren at 9:30. That is when the greatest tragedy of my Kosova trip occurred. I left my favorite T-shirt on the bus. It was a navy blue shirt with "Wal-Mart" and "Carter Burges" printed in white letters over the left breast. (I had been waiting for someone to ask me about it so that I could tell them I was scouting sites in Kosova for a Wal-Mart distribution center.) I can't explain why it was my favorite T-shirt without delving deep into my psyche. If any Wal-Mart people who read this e-mail know of a way to replace that shirt, let me know. It is the only Wal-Mart shirt I had that I would not be embarrassed to use for any purpose other than jogging or checking my oil.
Although not all the YWM folks were as friendly as Martha, I enjoyed meeting them and learning about their work in Pristina. I will close with an excerpt from their Statement of Purpose. I think it is a good one:
We of Youth With a Mission believe that the Bible is God's inspired and authoritative Word, revealing that Jesus Christ is God's Son, that man is created in God's image, that He created us to have eternal life through Jesus Christ that although all men have sinned and come short of God's glory, God has made salvation possible through the death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that repentance, faith, love, and obedience are fitting responses to God's initiative of grace toward us, that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, and that the Holy Spirit's power is demonstrated in and through us for the accomplishing of Christ's last commandment, ". . . Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15 KJV).