Over to Mitrovica

[RH] I went with Chelle up to North Mitrovica yesterday. That's a bordertown of sorts, where a river running through the city divides the ethnic Albanian part of Kosovo from what is effectively Serbia. Mitrovica has been the site of hordes of international media coverage just lately, since December 10th was the deadline for the U.N. negotiations btwn Kosovo and Serbia ... the issue being Kosovan independence. (For example, see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1688462,00.html.)

The Serbs, along with their Russian allies, have been doing all sorts of saber-rattling over the prospects of independence, which they bitterly oppose. They've also been indulging in a lot of disingenuous moaning about how Kosovan independence would represent a violation of international law. Of course, the "cleansing" of 125,000 non-Serbs throughout the Balkans during the 1990s wasn't particularly in tune with international law, but Serbia didn't care much about such legal niceties back in those days.

Anyhow, Prishtina is such a trashy, urban hole, I always welcome the opportunity to leave the city, even for a few hours. And I'd heard so much about Mitrovica just lately, as it's a likely flashpoint for violence and general unrest when Kosovan independence is finally announced, so I was eager to get a first-hand look. (In anticipation, Serb militias, composed, in part, of former war criminals, are reputed to have gathered in N. Mitrovica, planning their opening move ... or so the international media has reported.)

It's against this backdrop that Chelle has been traveling to N. Mitrovica every week since September to teach one of her classes. And when I accompanied her this past week, it was for the final class session before the holiday break. In fact, a holiday party was planned ... one that involved food, as well as some games and activities that exercised the students' English-language skills. The first thing that struck me as we drove into town was how relatively pretty the area is. The city sits at the base of some decent-sized mountains. And with the recent snow we've had around here, they looked fairly alpine and pristine. I learned later, though, that the Mitrovica region is actually dangerously polluted, as these mountains are/were the site of lots of mining. And given the lack of almost any environmental consciousness -- much less actual regulation -- the slag piles are left to drain their toxic affluent into the area water supply and so forth. Nevertheless, it happened to be a sunny afternoon that day (the first one in ages), and lots of people were out bustling around, shopping in the open markets, despite the sharp cold. So, things appeared rather festive and appealing, although perhaps a bit less bustling after we walked across the bridge from Mitrovica into N. Mitrovica.

One thing that took me by surprise was this: Despite my ingrained ideological bias against Serbia, I found, during our walk from the bridge on up to the library where the class meets, that I felt a bit less culturally displaced there than I generally do in Prishtina. Let me explain: In Prishtina, despite the general friendliness of the people and the cosmopolitan nature of the place, I tire of being gaped and stared at continually ... as though I'm a cross btwn a celebrity and a bizarre curiosity. This tendency is certainly heightened when we're walking Hazel (see the previous posts about what a non-canine culture Kosovo is), but I've realized lately that it's not just the dog thing. Despite the aforementioned cosmopolitan aspect, the culture in Prishtina definitely has its provincial side, and it's perhaps more culturally bound (read: traditional and Islamic) than I had initially appreciated. Much of the gaping I mentioned is undoubtedly harmless and even good-natured; and rarely have I felt it to be even remotely hostile. But, still, I wouldn't have guessed in a city with as much of an international presence as Pristhina that my non-adherence to the local fashions and styles (of clothes, hair, ethnic markers, etc.) would draw as much attention as it does. What I'm saying is that I usually feel marked as an outsider around here. And, surprisingly, I didn't feel the dragging weight of that attention in N. Mitrovica. I could only assume that this was largely an ethnic thing -- I'm of northern European extraction, and therefore I appear more like the average Serb than I do the average ethnic Albanian. [To be continued.]