By Ousman Mbengue
During our meeting with the Prime Minister Albin Kurti, which Ben discussed yesterday, we also had the opportunity to talk to his Advisor on Community Affairs, Elizabeth Gowing: she was able to answer our questions related to her specific field of work.
Gowing is an educator, story-teller and activist who moved to Kosovo in 2006. Once here, she funded the charitable organization The Ideas Partnership, to empower and support people in need in Kosovo in the fields of education, health and social welfare. She is the owner of the Sapune social enterprise, which employs local women to create hand-made products using traditional filigree, and she has written five travel books, of which four are related to Kosovo. In these books she tells stories of individual people she met in the country, and explores the traditions and social characteristics of Kosovo’s society through story-telling. She has also won several awards for her work: in 2016, she was presented with the Mother Theresa medal by the president of Kosovo for her humanitarian efforts, and in 2017 she was named a “Point of Light” for her volunteering work by British PM Theresa May. She also won the ‘Joans of Kosovo Award for Social Inclusion and Justice’ in 2023 for her work with Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. Therefore, she was very qualified to help us understand the inner workings of the current government of Kosovo and their work to support minority rights within the country.
After the meeting ended, we decided to sit down for lunch at Soma, right in front of the government building we had just left, and I caught the opportunity to text my local friends, Drit and Olti, to play some basketball in the afternoon. Now, the friendship I developed with these guys in the few days I was in Pristina deserves more than a quick mention in this blogpost: it was the best thing that happened to me on this trip, and it changed the whole experience for the better.
I met Drit on the plane from Vienna, when he tapped me to ask me what a group of students like us was going to do in his home town of Pristina. We clicked instantly, thanks to his friendliness and a common interest for basketball, and we quickly exchanged Instagram handles and promised to contact each other. We met again on Friday by coincidence, as we were walking into a bar to watch the game between Germany and Scotland: clearly, it was fate that we had to become friends. There I also met Olti for the first time, and we also clicked, thanks to his love for cooking and Italian old songs. As we had previously talked about basketball, and since Oscar and Ben had bought a ball, we agreed to go to a court and put some shots up when we had the time in-between activities. Fast-forward to today, and we finally had the time to go play. After some searching on Google Maps to locate a viable court, we decided to go join them on a court near the center. We were joined by another local who was just passing by and saw us play, so we played a couple of 3v3s.
After forty minutes, though, the heat got the best of us and we sat down and started talking. Olti was incredibly kind and eager to share his traditional recipes with me, which was particularly useful for my group’s research on food as a peacebuilding tool. He is Albanian, but was born in Serbia, right across the border from Kosovo, so his perspective of both cuisines was unique. He showed us the traditional method of making flia, which includes layering spoonfuls of batter in the shape of petals inside a large pot. After taking some pictures to remember the day, which you can find in the blogpost, we agreed to meet up later after dinner again.
We quickly went home and got ready for dinner, which we had at Tiffany's, a small restaurant with local dishes and traditional cooking. We had a buffet-style dinner and had the chance to taste local goulash, dolma (vine leaf rolls) and baklava. After dinner the whole group stopped by a bar to watch the game between France and Austria. Drit and Olti joined us at the end of the match, and we decided to go to a more relaxed bar to finish the night. Their friend Ylli also joined us: his name means star, and all his siblings have sky-related names too. They showed us café Dit’ e Nat’ (Day & Night), which had great music and a lovely cat. Drit and Olti asked us about life in Amsterdam, and we asked them about life in Kosovo. At the end of the night, we all felt like we knew something more about each other. We also got some tips on places to visit and restaurants to eat at, and they were so kind to walk us back to our hostel when the bar closed around midnight.
I wish I could write an entire blogpost entry about these guys: they honestly deserve a book’s worth of thanks for all the kindness they showed us as guests in their home country, and they made us feel welcome with their warmth. I can go home happy knowing I have made some real friends in Pristina, and since I know they will be reading this, I would like to thank Drit and Olti again for the time and memories we shared in Kosovo. Faleminderit shume!
From the left: Olti, Drit and Me
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