For this entry, you need a little bit of background information about what exactly I am doing here. Women for Women International is an organization that helps victims of war with both vocational skill training (dairy farm, planting seedlings, bee keeping, carpentry…) and human rights training (stopping domestic violence, political rights…). WfWI runs a large variety of various training programs all around Kosovo, each one lasting around 6 months, with several different training sessions each week. Most of the women who participate are of the lowest social classes and who have no previous knowledge of how to run a business or how to work. The training is a basic way for many women to learn how to earn money and to manage their earnings. Many of these sessions take place in villages, not just in Pristina.
Anyways, this Thursday was a graduation ceremony for one of the training sessions. The location was outside of Ferizaj, one of the larger cities in Kosovo, around one hour south of Pristina. We drove through Ferizaj on the way to the ceremony, and if you thought Pristina was rough looking then seeing Ferizaj would quickly make Pristina look like a well developed Western European city. The village we went to was just right outside of the city and was made up of mainly Hashakali, an ethnic minority here in Kosovo. Ethnically they are similar to the Roma, but they get along well with Albanians and there isn’t ethnic tension. The village was a stark contrast to the nearby city; there were horses on the street (which I have seen before, but still), and little kids running around in every direction without their parents nearby. When the car turned every corner, we had to honk so all the kids would run away. Each child would stare at us in the car with a curious gaze, like they didn’t know why us strangers were in their village. We had to stop and ask about five different people where to go and where this street was because just as in Pristina the streets were badly marked.
Eventually we arrived at this big house with a little garden in front of it, which is where WfWI trained the women. Several people walk by and peer in through the gate, and once they notice that we see them, they immediately walk away and pretend they did not look in. We arranged a bunch of plastic chairs in the garden, and two young girls came to help us. They only spoke Albanian but I definitely heard the word “America” a couple times when they looked at me. We finally set everything up and it is only 10 AM. They told the women to get there at 10:30, and the actual graduation started at 11. So we just sort of sat around for 30 minutes trying to talk, (I say trying because communication still isn’t great), and women start slowly coming in. At 10:30 there are about 30 women there, and at 10:45, maybe 50. They started to get restless though and started asking when it was going to start. They said they had to go back and take care of their children, had to cook, had to clean, get back to work, and wanted to get the ceremony over with. Well I understand all of their familial responsibilities but it seemed to me that most of these women didn’t care that much about this ceremony that was supposed to be really meaningful to them.
Finally at 11 the officials come so the graduation can start. There was such a funny contrast between us, and the women. The Hashakali have a much darker complexion than most Albanians, so there was an ethnic difference, but also in terms of clothing. We were standing up, some wearing nice dresses or skirts (well, I was sporting some jeans and a shirt) and the women sitting down were wearing old clothing that looked like maybe you found it in Goodwill. Most of the women too were pregnant or had their children with them, and were constantly occupied trying to keep them from misbehaving. One of the officials was a Danish man in his fifties or sixties wearing a very expensive looking suit. The organization that funded this program was Danish and he was in charge of giving the grant money to WfWI, so in part he was responsible for the training sessions. When he came in, all of the women figured he most be important so they all clapped. To me it seemed a little silly, and even though he funded the program, I wondered how much he knew about it and what his real input was. I imagined him thinking in his head about how dirty the surroundings were and about how nice his shoes are, but for all I know he could have been thinking about how happy he was to be there. It was just amusing because he looked completely out of place, more than I do walking around Pristina.
As soon as this Danish man got here, he took out three EU flags, one little one was to stand on the table, and two others were draped on the side of the house. His photographer made sure to take pictures of the poor women in front of the flag; I am sure this photo will go on hundreds of brochure about how the EU is helping women. None of the women really seemed to care about the EU flags, but to me it was just silly propaganda. The money and funding is of course pivotal in funding the training sessions, but it looked a bit like the EU was claiming these women for its own.
So there were a couple of speeches saying the usual, “I’m so happy to be here,” or, “I’m so proud of every graduate,” or “we will come back and run more programs!” Of course I completely agree with the work WfWI is doing here and I don’t mean to make fun of that, but the women didn’t seem to care about the EU at all. At last, the man started calling out women’s names (and butchering the names too) and giving them their certificates. Then all of us who work for WfWI or the EU went out for coffee immediately after to talk about the economy and how to create market growth and other really important things.
All in all, I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about how you should make your sponsor take credit for your work, about how when you do something good you should make sure to have your flag in the background, but also about what village life looks like (it doesn’t look good, it just looks a bit depressing.) Maybe you guys won’t find this entry very interesting, but I wrote it mostly with my mom in mind. I promise to write something a bit more funny soon.
Lastly, I uploaded a couple pictures to my photo website: http://gallery.me.com/ahongisto/
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