Second full week

 27/01/25

Monday the 27th I went into work as usual. I had finished transcribing the interview with Michael McClellen, the American diplomat and moved onto another interview with an American. This was one with an anthropologist named Janet Reineck. The interview is reasonably long so I have been at it all week. 

Janet is a dancer from California and when she was in her early 20s was drawn to the Balkans by the traditional music and dance. She fell in love with the Albanian culture through meeting groups of them whilst travelling through Yugoslavia. She spent 2 years living among the people in Kosovo as part of her master's work fro university, she has many interesting stories about the people she met and things she did whilst there. It was particularly interesting her talking about learning Albanian, as I know how hard it is first hand. The people write and talk in two different forms, so it is extremely hard to learn it from paper. Albanian also has its completely own strand of dialect so is not related to any of the other European languages, the structure, pronunciation, spelling is all very different. Not to mention the 10 extra letters in the alphabet. 

Janet discusses her second time living in Kosovo, which she also got grants for from university. This time she was able to travel the country freely with a car and talks about the remote villages she went to live in, how they lived, the structure of family life, working, etc. It was all very interesting as she compares it to American culture, which is more similar to British culture, so made it relatable for me also being an outsider living here. Albeit I am only here for a month. 

Honestly I have not had much time to do any proper activities outside of work apart from finding some nice spots to eat. Ana from work showed me a great vegan and vegetarian restaurant where I ate a delicious mushroom burger. 

On Friday Anita and Ana were interviewing a man who was an ethnologist, a person who studies humans up close from a cultural perspective. Ethnology is something that I would be interested in doing. Although the interview was in Albanian I decided to come along and watch the process unfold. Anita had already met up with him earlier in the week and said he was very interesting, so it should be a good interview. It lasted about 3 hours and he talked about his life, from school to the war and ethnography he had done in his life. He is in his 70s and still working on a project around Kosovo, he has put together a very detailed map of all the places in Kosovo, from the tiniest villages and he had all memorised with perfect recall of the facts about each one. He had spent much time in all these obscure places, getting to know the people and the different ways of life, and was still putting it all together into this project. After the interview the others went home, so I also did and worked the rest of the day transcribing the interview with Janet Reineck. 

Earlier in the week I booked a trip to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. So tomorrow morning I leave for another solo mission, this time to a country I have never been to!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First day

 First day at work  I think I forgot to mention the difference in weather from my previous time here, it was 30-degree heat in the height of summer last time, 6 months later Prishtina is covered in snow and ice. I got up for work and wrapped up warm, the office is about a 20 minute walk from my apartment. I was welcomed by my colleagues and friends, Anita, Ana and Donjet. We had a lovely catch up and then they gave me a rundown of the project and what they need help with. They also told me more about what the organisation is involved with, currently they are trying to partner with an animation company that can create interactive videos of the stories they have gained. Hopefully ending with an exhibition. They are still doing their school house project which they started last summer, this is about the schools that were set up around Prishtina in the 90s to teach Kosovar children about their history. At this time, it was Yugoslavia, and they were not taught their own history...
Read more

Penultimate week

 Week starting 3/2/2025 This week I have continued to work on transcribing the Janet Reineck interview. It is very interesting to hear about her work there, as it was at the most difficult time in Kosovo's history, so she was the only foreigner around. She returned in 1994 because Oxfam reached out to her and asked if she would work there helping with humanitarian aid. The people were oppressed, the economy was failing as Yugoslavia was falling apart, and this was felt strongly in the villages where Janet had lived previously. Schools were broken and not functioning, sanitation was poor and the people were demotivated and felt helpless. At this time independence did not look likely so tensions between the Albanian and Serbian communities was high. Janet discusses helping with motivating the people to help her start fixing schools, sanitation and other social issues, where funding and work had to be done by the people living in the poverty. What is very interesting and was difficult...
Read more

Last week

 Final week in Kosovo I spent my final week in Kosovo at the office in Pristina, it was nice to get all the work I had been doing finished and ready to be uploaded to the Oral History archive. I went to all my usual spots for coffee, food and drinks which was really nice as it made me feel as if I had settled into this place and felt comfortable here. On one hand it is a bit of a shame that I am now leaving, as I have just started to really feel at home, but on the other hand I have done what I came here to do and now I have created a sort of base here that I could come back to. I will definitely be coming back as I now feel invested in the country and the people, they have all been completely open with me and it has really drawn me in as an outsider. My interest in the place will continue and I am excited to see where the country is going, I am grateful and honoured to have been able to work here at this time and be a small part of this new country moving forward and becoming a ...
Read more