By
Rabiya Chaudhry
When
people hear the word Kosovo, the first thing that might come into their mind is
an image of a post-conflict country trying to move
towards development and reconciliation. However, when I hear the word Kosovo it
brings back all those beautiful experiences and memories I shared with 22 other
people. Friends and family ask me: “how was Kosovo?” and honestly I have no
words to describe what I felt and experienced during those nine days away from
Amsterdam.
Before boarding the plan to Kosovo I was so nervous
and scared but once I reached there I realized something completely different.
Of course, the environment was different
than Amsterdam but in some ways, it
reminded me of home. Maybe it was the warmth of people, or their generosity or
the hospitality I experienced but being in Kosovo changed a lot of things for
me personally. I was always a person who took things for granted and going to
Kosovo and meeting people especially the kids in the Ideas Partnership really
changed my outlook towards life. It taught me to appreciate everything I have,
and every opportunity I am open to due to the life I have been blessed with.
Even though I have a lot of times in Kosovo that are
worth mentioning, for example, our swim in the lake in Mitrovica, or the dinner
in the beautiful Germia Park, and the time I spent with Julia and Sahar at the
nail salon. However, my most fun experience
was the car ride I took on the way back from our dinner at Germia Park. In Amsterdam when you get a taxi,
you have to be disciplined, and listen to the driver playing music and wait
patiently for your destination to arrive but in Kosovo that is not how you
experience a taxi ride.
Imagine four girls slightly tipsy sitting in a car when the driver starts playing house music
which is a mixture of English and Albanian pop songs and all of us jamming to
the beats of the music. While observing our enthusiasm for the music, the
driver turns up the sound even louder and
starts driving at a high speed while the windows are rolled down. Driving on
the main road, with music and a soft wind
blowing in our faces reminded me of the long drives that my brother would take me
on when we were in Pakistan. At some point during our journey back home in Kosovo, we asked the taxi driver if he could stop at a shop so we could buy cigarettes
and water bottles but what he does catches us off guard. He takes out a pack of
cigarette and offers us one each, while he
lights up his own cigarette and starts enjoying the moment with us. This
openness is what I have missed in Amsterdam; it's
not only the taxi drivers that were so enthusiastic to host us but almost
everyone we met in restaurants or on the streets. They tried their best to
cater to our needs, play us music, and give us the best time in form of their
hospitality.
I remember going to the corner café often, it was located on the main city square opposite the Newborn monument. As we went there
regularly the waiters started to recognize us, and every time we would go
there, we would see them arguing about
who would serve us. This was obviously because we tipped them every time, and
they always made sure that we had the best experience ever. This hospitality
was everywhere in Kosovo, it did not matter if we were at a small café or a big
restaurant. People just showed us love,
never annoyed because we only spoke English and they were sometimes unable to
understand us. This hospitality is also something I experienced with our host
family. To accommodate us and make us feel at home they gave us their own
bedroom while all of them slept in the living room together. This touched my
heart so much because they let go of their own comfort to accommodate and cater
to our needs. This is something I will never forget.
Lastly, to give back something to the beautiful people we
spent our time with, Julia and I decided to make a blog
(kosovoidentity.blogspot.com). In this blog,
we both wrote about the existing majority and non-majority groups present in
Kosovo along with lingering tensions and the positive initiatives taken for
reconciliation between these groups. It is amazing to see the motivation that
the people and youth of Kosovo have for improving the condition of Kosovo.
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