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 for Janet was trying to get the Albanian and Serbian communities to work together. The only solution that could work the time being was to make separate teams of different ethnicities to work on different jobs at different times. 

On Wednesday Ana and Donjet were holding a lecture at the AUK, the American University in Kosovo, it is an extension of RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology in America. The university that Michael McClellen, the American diplomat, helped set up. Just by coincidence the class that they would be lecturing is taught by Janet Reineck so it was quite funny to tell her I am currently transcribing her interview. She now lives in Pristina and is a professor of ethnography at the American University. Her class are doing an assignment in which they have to go and hold an interview with someone, so she asked Oral History to come in an give a lecture on how to carry out an interview. Ana and Donjet did a really good job.  

Weekend

It is my last weekend on placement, so I thought I'd stay in Pristina. Plus, it is the elections this weekend so a a big deal in the capital, as I write this on Sunday, people are casting their votes, the results will be in later this evening. On Friday evening I watched the rally for the Self-Determination Party, or VV, the current party in power, led by Albin Kurti. They are a left wing, social democratic party, and the first in Kosovo's history to have a leader stay in power for the full term. It was a huge gathering in the centre of the city, the politicians gave speeches on a stage, there were thousands of people who came out to watch. 

On Saturday evening it was the rally for the PDK, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, and the LDK, Democratic League of Kosovo. This was the first party formed in Kosovo during the Milosevic regime, to fight back for the rights of Albanians. It is quite a nationalist party that has more right wing views, there were a lot of people out for the rally but less than for the VV. 

I backed off from the march and went for a beer where I could still see in the distance, I met an English guy there, he is studying in Prague and came to Pristina for the weekend.

This evening, I will go out to watch the election results. I'll let you know how it goes.  

I went out into town for the election results around 6pm, which is when the voting closed, I had been told by some people that the results would be out by 7. I was a little suspicious of this and correctly so, the results didn't come out all night, and after a bit of a rollercoaster from the exit polls, Albin Kurti, the current Prime Minister, came into town at 12:30am to announce his victory. LDK and PDK are 'in bed' together and just needed to stop VV getting a majority of over 50% to win and from a coalition government. Most of the night the exit polls had Kurti on about 40% and losing to the coalition of LDK and PDK but in the end came out on top with 55%. So, he will have another term in office.