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 | | The wreckage -- and the work taking place -- in Chabra Village. |
Over the course of my stay in Kosovo, one trip to the field in particular stands out clearly in my mind. It was one a follow-up visit to a community called Chabra in the northern part of the province. The conflict had spread early to Chabra. Well before the NATO bombing, the Yugoslav Army had initiated a campaign of violence that swept through the area around Chabra. Residents were forced to flee into the mountains for safety and would end up returning home many months later. They could not have been in any way prepared for what they found.
Chabra had been leveled. Not just bombed and burned, but bulldozed into piles. Nothing recognizable remained. It was probably the worst case of destruction in the entire conflict and the sights were accompanied by wrenching feelings in all of us. "Why?" "What were the passions in the hearts of people that brought the communities to this point?"
On this day, I was a passenger in the car of Olivier David, a French national who directed CARE's work out of its Mitrovica office. He had been to Chabra on many occasions and had wrestled with these questions himself. But our conversation that day turned to what the community was doing to put itself right again. And to illustrate this, he took me first to meet Osman Rama -- the local mayor. Osman himself had fled to the mountains and then to Albania during the main part of the war. He was back now and was busy accounting for the community members that had been dispersed by the violence. There was sadness in his voice, but at the same time he also was proud of the progress in the town of 300 people.
Several agencies were helping in the reconstruction. Rubble was being cleared and sorted. Water was being brought in by truck. Sanitation facilities were set up. CARE had helped by providing tents for temporary shelter, and the fields around the town were full of them, as the families had set themselves to creating a functioning community amongst the ruins. CARE also had provided the community with a huge warehouse tent that we called a Rubb-Hall. Approximately 40 feet by 80 feet and as high as a two-story building, it can protect a fair amount of equipment and supplies. But the folks of Chabra had decided to set up a primary school in the Rubb-Hall. A split day handled the 60 or so kids in grades 4, 5 and 6 from 7 a.m. until noon and then grades 1, 2 and 3 in the afternoon. The desks were long benches made of cinder block and rough-hewn timbers. But it worked well, and the students and teachers were busy with the affairs of a normal school. The atmosphere was almost festive.
 | | Mustaf Vaseli and his wife Ruzia offer visiting CARE officials coffee.
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I toured the village with a few locals, stopping to listen to their stories or view their former homes. We ended up at the tent of Mustaf Vaseli and his wife Ruzia. They were 60 years old, and their grown children had mostly settled away, but there were grandchildren and assorted relatives that called the campsite home. Ruzia set a small table on a crate and offered us fresh Turkish coffee and an abundance of plums from the orchard. The walnut trees overhead showed a bumper crop coming on later in the fall. The one woman teacher from the school, Lumnije Kurte, joined us to translate. She was young, and I suspect she injected a lot of her story as well. But I learned a lot about the history and aspirations of the community. As I walked back to the car with Olivier, we could hear the music of someone playing the flute in a nearby tent. It fit the surroundings -- the late summer's eve, the orchard, the pleasant conversation -- but it haunted us both nonetheless.
Day 5
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