Let's Go: Kosovo - 8
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"Truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future." Cervantes (Don Quixote Part One Chapter 9) The Pandeli Sotiri elementary school, located in Obilic, an Albanian town, 3 kilometers from Plemetina village, where I work, is a large, dilapidated communist era school. A vaguely cubist structure, it is painted a disturbing electric salmon color and, when filled with students, feels ready to crumble at the shear bustle and noise of what seems like thousands of small children in the throes of a Fun-Dip buzz. In the entranceway to the school there is a large area with 35-foot ceilings and a small stage. There is a long hallway to the left with classrooms. Doors left open. Inside they are powder-blue, cavernous, boxes with long, bench-like, one-piece seats and tables. The blood red Albanian flag with its sinister, black, Skenderbeg eagle hangs above the blackboards. Another hall goes off to the right and more classrooms. The left hand wall of the entrance area is an enormous bank of spider-webbed windows that reach to the ceiling, with long, red, shabby, curtains. The view looks out onto the cylindrical generator tower of Kosovo B electric plant. Twice weekly, my colleague Jamie MacDonald, a Tai-Chi instructor, and I bring our students from the youth center to the school to practice Tai-Chi Ch'uan. The class is comprised of about 10 Roma boys, two Serbs, and 10 small Albanian girls between the ages of 8 and 12. We practice after school hours, in the late afternoon, when the school is quiet. Some of the boys who look through the windows or sit on the periphery, snicker at first, and then seem mesmerized by the slow and deliberate movements of twenty people in full concentration, moving in concert. Often, as we leave the school, there are boys, around 18, who stand with their arms folded, glowering at the Roma students as they get in the van. When it first started happening they said things. “Hey Madjupi! (an Albanian racial slur for Roma) You don’t belong here. This is a school for Albanians.” Lately, however, the Albanians know better. They stay silent and let their look talk for them. The Roma students don’t react. They know they are there, and they know their intent, but they don’t look at them. They keep joking among themselves, speaking Romani. After driving the boys back to the village I stop in at one of the small kiosks that line the center of the village to buy a coke. I chat with the boy behind the counter. His sister was a student of mine over the summer. He asks if I want to buy a keychain. In his hands he holds an assortment of key chains with the faces of Slobodan Miloševic, Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadic. "Naš Legendi" He says (Our legends). |
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Article added on Mon 14th Oct, 2002 [last updated Mon 11th Aug, 2003]Share this page 
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