Mr Hamiti has his office in the Kosovan parliament, in downtown Prishtina. The building is heavily controlled by police forces. While entering, I had to legitimate and give my passport, in order to receive a small bdge mentioning 'visitor' on it. "Well", I said by myself, "I became a visitor, how fancy". And how official. My rucksack had to pass by a detector and I had to do that also (luckily nog the same). No bomb was found however, so after a pauze of 3 mins, I was led to the office of Mr Hamiti.
I entered. Mr Hamiti shook my hand. One of the first things I mentioned - it struck me directly - was a picture of Ibrahim Rugova hanging on the wall behind the man's desk. Also the direct, but gentle manner of introducing himself was remarkable. You don't do such things everyday as a student, talking to a senior political advisor of a president.
"Viability it is, not 'livability' as you quote", Hamiti said when he finished his work, leaving me for about 10 minutes, while I sat down in this luxuous seat. The correction the man made, made me think that my English could be better (or just my dictionary were I hooked the Dutch word for 'leefbaarheid' up. I thought that it was 'livability', and when he gave me a huge, Oxford-like dictionary (Hamiti is also a teacher in the English language), I gave up defending the word. But anyway, he knew what I was going to talk about.
Recording the interview wasn't a big problem. Mr Hamit himself answered in good, round quotes to my questions. The main issue we talked about was the economic future of Kosovo. According to him, as you may already have read, the future can look bright, if the country itself quickly gets independent. "Actually, Kosovo is already independent from 1999. The international organisations helped us a lot, but now we have to do it on our own, as receiving a final status is the only way of creating a strong, healthy economy."
"We have, despite of the good work of the international organisations, been in limbo for about 8 years, and this is deadly for our economy. Like that, we don't have any acces to the global economy, we have less perspectives for investments - both from foreign and Kosovan enterprises - and we can't participate in the financial, international market. Also the war and the socialist era destroyed most of the economic space. Serbia has used us for so many years." Muhamet Hamiti, senior political advisor to the Kosovo president, Fatmir Sejdiu.
"It will be a hard process, but we can make it anyway, within few - 4 or 5 - years. We can enter all international organisations and build our economy, depending on our main opportunities like agriculture, a very young population (60 pct of the Kosovan population is under the age of 30) and our mineral deposits. You also have the biggest concentration of lignite in this part of the world in Kosovo. So yes, Kosovo can have a very bright, independent future." Muhamet Hamiti, senior political advisor to the Kosovo president, Fatmir Sejdiu.
After 30 minutes the interview ended. When I received my passport back at the reception, I felt a redemption from a certain stress. I did a good job, and, it has to be said, Mr Hamiti is a good chatter, who co-operated well.
'Jon's', Fatmir and Arbresha.
Before that, I met Arbresha and Fatmir at 'Jon's coffe bar' in the centre of Prishtina. Very kind people, with strong, good coffee and a strong opinion about the future of Kosovo. Fatmir :" It's hard to be here, I want to go abroad, but I can't get a visa of any European country, so I have to stay here and make my business." His sister-in-law, Arbresha, by his side behind the espresso machine, was more optimistic. "We can manage this, and soon it will be better." They have my support. 'Jon's' is now my preferred coffee-chat bar.
The OSCE-time.
I met Franklin De Vrieze, a Belgian OSCE-co-ordinator and my very much-liked local 'helper' (If you read this Franklin, thank you for your support!) at the OSCE-building in Prishtina a few hours after my interview. After the same check-up at the reception and the change of my passport into a nice little badge , we went to the rooftop cafe of the building. The view was fantastic. It is a former bank building, and seems to have a good infrastructure for the OSCE-contributors (It has a bar).
The chat was calm. About Kosovo, about what I did, about my perspectives and about...well, I was just happy that I could talk about my stories in my own language. After the chat we moved to a bar across the street, plenty of expats and other OSCE-guys. It was a nice start of the eve. Good for my growing local network. At least two of these guys are willing to talk to me about the future of Kosovo.
The kitchen-story.
In the evening, after some beers and jokes with the OSCE-guys, I entered the Kitchen at my guesthouse and met some people from all corners of the world. A couple from Singapore, A UK Indian, and an Estonian-Russian girl who was travelling with an American.
The American used to be a chopper pilot in the Marine corps in Iraq, the UK Indian was muslim. What deployed while they sat at the kitchen table was a discussion about the US army being in Iraq, and, well, you can just imagine. It was interesting to see both points of view being transmissed, and in the end they got along quite well. But it was striking how Ken, the chopper pilot, was trained to just answer critical questions about the rules of engagement, Fallujah and collateral damage. But he was a sympathetic guy and although I didn't endorse his opinions, I can understand why he replied in that way to such questions. "I don't care about collateral damage, it just happens", he said. Well, yes, it was impossible to confront him critically with this. But as a person, he was nice and well-mannered.
So, the only thing that you may want to know is my personal list of how you can risk your life in prishtina:
-Break your neck on the icy, slippy pavements
-Get overrun by a car (In the evening they are all sliding down the hilly roads instead of driving on it)
-Get a heart-attack because of the little children who are igniting all kinds of unsafe fireworks for Christmas, or make a sport out of trowing loudy bombs on the streets - sometimes just on the piece of pavement were you are heading to.
Nothing to worry about as you see. No wartime or ethnical things.
Et Voila. This was December 24th in brief.
Read on...
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