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[This letter was written a week ago. This is the first opportunity I've had to mail it. I should make one correction. Where I talk about Serbian soldiers, I should have used the term "paramilitary". There is a big difference.]
Reinforcements arrived on July 7. Doug Smith from Washington and Bob Patterson from Oregon, both of whom are full-time missionaries with WEI, showed up along with another teacher from Oregon and two from Arkansas. Three days latter, Ken left to return to America. Doug told me that Ken prefers to work alone and so he intentionally arranged to return home when he knew more teachers were coming. He had been here since February when the temperature stayed below freezing and there was seldom more than two hours of electricity per day. For much of that time, Ken was the only WEI teacher in Prizren.
I'm starting to understand Ken's preference of snow over swarms of teachers. Since July 7, three more teachers have arrived. That makes nine teachers. More will be arriving in the next couple of weeks. Keep in mind that Ken and I did not have enough students to keep both of us busy. I had repeatedly sent e-mails to WEI folks in America telling them we did not have enough students, but I never received a reply. Now new teachers are showing up and asking to see the student waiting list. They seem surprised when I tell them there is no such list.
You should also keep in mind that the office is approximately 15' X 25', with only two tables. Previously, when one of my students would arrive for their session, they would see me and one old man who was quietly reading his Bible in the corner. Now, they see me and eight other Americans staring back at them. They must feel like the last wildebeest on the planes of Kenya. None of the other teachers have anything to do, so they stand around in the office talking about what it must be like to have a student. The resulting noise that echoes off the stone floor gets progressively louder and my student and I lean in closer to one another until it looks like we are trying to pass Lifesavers on toothpicks.
However, these circumstances are only temporary. Bob's primary purpose here is to recruit students and he's had a lot of experience at it. The first thing he did was to convince the local television station--I didn't even know there was such a thing--to do a news piece about WEI in which they interview Bob. How did he convince them? By agreeing to purchase commercial time for WEI for the remainder of the week. I don't think their standard of journalistic ethics quite reaches that of the Columbia School of Journalism. The next day, a cameraman showed up at the office to film me teaching a student. That was incorporated into the commercial. Yes, my face now appears on Prizren television screens every night before and after the news. (Since I was wearing my Steak n' Shake T-shirt, they are getting some free advertising as well.)
Also, Bob purchased radio time that he used for a 40-minute show during which he answered questions from callers. He was hoping to get some calls from some of the villagers, but Doug repeatedly explained to him that villagers do not have phones; they are lucky if they have running water.
Starting yesterday, we saw a large increase in the number of new students coming by the office and registering. It must be as a result of the radio and television advertising. Also, some of them are attracted from off the street simply by all the new activity they see at our office. As an additional recruiting effort, Bob placed fliers around town. I told him that Ken had tried that and the Muslims had ripped them down, but Bob said he would use extra thumbtacks. I thought to myself, "Huh?" The next morning, the fliers had all been ripped down.
By the time I leave for America, WEI's efforts should be in high gear. If new students continue to register at the current rate, the teachers should have enough to stay busy. We are also preparing a second office to use for study sessions. It will still be too cramped for my taste, but it will be workable. By November, I would expect our Sunday morning church attendance to be up quite a bit. Still, it seems to me that it would have been better to start the recruiting before the teachers started arriving. Some of the teachers will be here only three weeks. It seems like a waste of a precious resource to have them sitting around for a week with no students. But this is my first experience in the mission field and so I realize I should just watch and learn. Maybe this is just standard operating procedure.
I probably mentioned Ismajl in an earlier e-mail. He is an Albanian Kosovar who occasionally serves as a translator at the WEI office. He also teaches an English class on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays for beginners who do not speak enough English to be taught by any of the American WEI teachers. Ismajl is 22 years old. He rarely speaks, and when he does, he speaks so softly that it is difficult to understand him. He is a shy person, so I was surprised when I heard Ismajl's war horror story.
Just before the war, a small group of student leaders organized a sit-down strike here in Prizren to protest the treatment of Kosova by the Serbian authorities. For one day, the people of Prizren sat down and refused to work. Much of the city participated-too many people for the Serbian police to arrest. The people of Kosova had become docile as a result of many years of persecution, so such massive defiance was very unusual. All the police could do was to search for the leaders of the protest. When they did so, the student leaders, wearing red bandanas around their foreheads, stepped forward. They were immediately arrested. Ismajl was one of them.
The police asked them why they had stepped forward; if they hadn't, the police never would have known who the leaders were. The students responded by telling them that they wanted to be known and that their resistance will not stop until they are killed. The police did not kill them, but they were severely beaten before being released.
Subsequently, on at least five separate occasions, the police appeared unannounced at Ismajl's family's house in the village of Celine (pronounced "Suh lean uh") and took Ismajl in for further interrogation. Each time, they would beat him. He said that one policeman would sit on his knees while another one would strike the soles of Ismajl's feet with a baton. They would then take him back to his village and toss him from the moving vehicle.
During the war, the people of Celine were alerted to the fact that the Serbian army was moving in their direction and were burning and killing at all the villages along the way. Over 5,000 people fled into the hills above the village just before the soldiers arrived. There they hid for the next four days with little food and no shelter to protect them from a freezing rain. The soldiers were within earshot. Ismajl said that during that entire time, he heard a baby cry one time. Other than that, the entire village remained completely silent. In the meantime, the soldiers were burning the villagers' homes, including Ismajl's.
Once the soldiers discovered the villagers in the hills, they separated the men from the women and had all the men and boys lie facedown on the ground with their arms stretched forward. There were 700 of them on the ground. One of the Serbian officers then used his radio to call his commander and ask what should be done with the men. In response, the order was given to kill all of them. The soldier objected, saying that he lacked the time or manpower to bury that many bodies. As they argued back and forth, the men on the ground listened to their fate being decided. Finally, the order was given to kill some of them and march the rest towards the border. Fortunately, the officer in charge decided to shoot only one of them. The survivors were loaded onto trucks and transported to the Albanian border. All the women were forced to walk. It was 12 miles to Prizren and another 10 to the border. Ismajl's diabetic mother was forced to walk the entire way on a broken leg.
Doug Smith met Ismajl in a refugee camp in Albania and latched onto him because he spoke English so well. Doug was doing relief work for Partners In Progress. He used Ismajl as a translator to help him find families with the greatest needs. Naturally, Ismajl's family was quickly added to the list. Once they returned to Celine, PIP helped them rebuild their house. Doug also hired one of Ismajl's brothers to work as a foreman of a work crew rebuilding homes for other families. The gratitude of Ismajl's family is without limit. Doug is now considered a member of the family.
Last Saturday, I traveled to Celine with Doug, Ismajl, and one other teacher. The first thing we did when we arrived was visit a gravesite at the top of a hillside overlooking the village. It contained all the villagers killed by the Serbian soldiers. There were a total of 75 graves. These people failed to make it to the hills before the soldiers showed up. Another 150 people were killed who had fled to Celine from other villages. According to Ismajl, some of the soldiers were Russians in Serbian uniforms. He saw a few who were actually wearing Russian uniforms.
The graves looked nicer than most of the rebuilt homes. Each one had a raised border of imitation granite. The graves themselves were covered with bright red, pink, and yellow artificial flowers. Each headstone contained a likeness of the deceased skillfully etched into the stone. I saw the faces of girls, little boys, and old men-everyone you would expect to find in a village. There were a wide range of birth dates, but all the death dates were within a two-day period. Doug directed my attention to the grave of a man who died at the age of 106. He was heading for the hills with the other villagers when he decided he was too weak to make it. He told them that he had lived long enough and that they shouldn't worry about him. As he was walking back to the village, a stray bullet hit him in the head. I also noticed six headstones that shared a common surname. They were for a mother and five children. I asked Ismajl and he told me the father is still living.
With some prodding from Doug, Ismajl told Elsie, the other WEI teacher who was with us, that one of the graves contained the body of Ismajl's girlfriend. The adjoining graves contained her mother and her sister. Later, Doug told me that all three of them were probably raped before they were killed. By the time we got back to the van, Elsie was bawling.
When we arrived at the rebuilt home of Ismajl's family, the ashen faces we brought with us from the gravesite contrasted sharply with the joyful expressions that greeted us. Ismajl had not told his parents that we were coming. They were excited to see Doug as well as Elsie, whom they had also gotten to know in Albania. Ismajl is the youngest child and all his siblings except for his youngest sister are married, but they all live together as an extended family. There must have been twenty people there, including a number of small children. I saw nothing but smiles the entire time we were there. They seemed to be a family that had never known hardship.
There were two houses. The one in the rear is where the entire family lives. The one in front is the "nice" house they use for entertaining guests. It had originally been built for Ismajl's parents, but one day after moving in, Ismajl's mother decided she missed all the children and wanted to move back into the main house. They invited us into the "nice" house. It consisted of a single large square room. There was nice pine paneling on the walls and a new ceiling fan. The only furniture was a new wood cabinet in the corner. We all sat on cushions on the floor. Later, Doug told me that PIP bought everything, including the rug under our cushions. Turkish coffee was served; I had a soda. Ismajl was the only family member who spoke English, so all the conversation went through him. His sister showed us her wedding garments that she is making by hand. We then went outside and took a tour of the family's pepper and watermelon patch before heading home.
On Thursday, I took Parveen with me to a restaurant near the office for dinner. Parveen is one of the new WEI teachers. He had just arrived. He was concerned about the safety of the food. I assured him that I had eaten there twice before and there was nothing to worry about. He ordered something that he saw in the window. I didn't tell him that it had probably been prepared early that morning. I decided to order a hamburger. It was only 5 o'clock and most people here eat after 7 o'clock, so the grill was not hot. I watched the cook walk to the back of the restaurant and retrieve a raw beef patty from behind a curtain. I am hoping there was a refrigerator behind that curtain. The cooked slapped the patty on the grill, but I noticed there was no sizzle. He then plugged in a hair dryer and proceeded to cook my hamburger patty by waving the hair dryer back and forth. Parveen is a Christian, but because he was raised as a Hindu, he still prefers to avoid beef. No doubt, seeing a cow being cooked with a hair dryer must have made a unique impression on him. With a very disturbed look on his face, he quietly asked, "What's going on? What's he doing?" As a 5-week veteran of Prizren, I wanted to tell him something that would assure him that everything was copasetic, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders and tell him that I had no idea. I decided not to ask for curly fries, lest the cook plug in a curling iron. When my burger was brought to my table, I gave it a close inspection. Needless to say, I was a bit concerned by the pinkish hue in the middle. I considered sending it back, but didn't know the Albanian words for, "Please cook it with the setting on high." I decided I'd set Parveen's mind at ease by eating the burger without further complaint. The next morning, Parveen was sick to his stomach and spent some time in the bathroom.
Speaking of sickness, I'd like to once again visit the topic of hospital care in Prizren. You'll recall that the only medical equipment I've ever seen at the hospital is a stethoscope, a blood pressure measuring device, and a scale. Doug has now informed me that he gave them the stethoscope and the blood pressure measuring device. Before that, all they had was the scale.
Ken and I would give away Tylenol to poor people who came by the office and asked for it. Before Ken left, the doctors at the hospital asked Ken if he would start saving the cotton that is packed in the Tylenol bottles. They don't have cotton balls at the hospital. Let me repeat that: The hospital doesn't have any cotton balls. During one of our last visits to the hospital, Ken gave them a big bag of Tylenol cotton and they were very grateful. I find it odd, then, that when I offered them my portable surgical kit, they declined. They said they wouldn't know what to do with it.
When Ken first told me that he was saving Tylenol cotton for the hospital, I wondered whether we should start removing the cotton from the bottles while wearing rubber gloves so as to keep the cotton sterile. That question was answered during our final visit to the hospital. We were sitting in one of the examination rooms drinking juice and talking to the doctors. One of the doctors sat with her chair against the door because patients kept banging on it and trying to open it in a desperate attempt to get a glimpse of a doctor. When one of the doctors shifted in her chair, a metal key fell from her had onto the floor. Rather than picking it up, she got a piece of paper from the desk and used it to scrape up the key. She wrapped the paper around the key and then held it in her hand. When she noticed the confused look on my face, she explained: "I'm sterile." Keep in mind that she had already shaken hands with us, moved the changing curtain, and touched various items on her desk. Yet, she still considered herself "sterile". I decided I wouldn't wear gloves to handle the Tylenol cotton.