I had to get up early this morning to go visit a friend in Skopje.  I walked to the bakery to grab a quick breakfast.  I was waiting behind the counter when an elderly lady pushed her way past me and shoved some change at the baker, shouting her order.  What could I do?  I wasn’t going to yell at an old woman, so I bit my tongue and waited until she had been served.

The drive to Skopje was simply dangerous—not because of any weather conditions or accidents, but because of reckless drivers who insisted on passing me at breakneck speeds.  Then, when I reached the border, I found that all of these drivers were only one or two cars ahead of me: they had really gained nothing by their recklessness, only managing to endanger all of us.

And then there was the border! “No man’s land” is simply an expression that means “every man for himself!”  Cars dart in and out of lines, new lines form and cut off pre-existing lines, and so on.  At the passport desk, the crowd gathers in a clump, piled on top of one another.  Most offensive to me are the international transgressors.  You know the ones: the same internationals who drop phrases like “capacity building” and “rule of law”—these same ones are often the worst ones at the border.  Ordinary citizens may have to wait in line, but not the international workers with big black letters stamped on the sides of their SUVs.  They somehow imagine that it is their right to get to their vacation destinations quicker than the rest of us.

 

But really, I can’t entirely fault the internationals.  They should know better (if only because they claim that they already do know best), but maybe they are simply reacting to the chaos of Balkan border crossings.  And this chaos only serves to make the wait longer for all of us—very few get through any quicker than they would have had they waited in an orderly line.

Finally, after Skopje and back again, I returned to Pristina.  I went to my favorite cafe, fully intending to sit there and complete the column I promised you.  Every table was full, so I waited inside the front door for an open chair.  A few people came in and waited behind me.  I noticed an empty table and started to move towards it but, as I did, two young women behind me shoved their way past me and stole it right away!  That was it.  I was officially having a bad day, and I was mad.

It is possible to sometimes find the Balkan un-lines charming, especially if you are a first-time visitor from a country with a different habit.  Other countries can even be a little too orderly—a friend of mine tells me that lines often form in Germany for no reason at all!  There is something incredibly vibrant about the teeming masses that can be found in Balkan post offices, passport booths and banks, everyone pushing and clamoring for what they want.  The first time or two, I admit that I even found it a little exciting, as if we were all engaged in a contest, and only the smartest, cleverest of us might win.  But then I found that this wasn’t true.  In fact, virtually all of us seemed to lose.

What do we lose?  Patience and trust, to start with.  The teller in the bank and the guard at the border both seem to become weighed down by the pressure of the crowd: they stamp and type slower as they see the mob grow.  We lose our patience with them, and the feeling is mutual. And in a mob only the strong survive.  It does not matter if I play by the rules, waiting by the door for a café table to become available: if someone decides that they can push me aside and grab it for themselves, then I only learn that the rules of “fairness” don’t function here.  I stop trusting that I can win by playing fair.

But most of all, we lose time.  We all want to get things done, and all those things may be of equal importance.  But, without some universally accepted order for doing those things, we scuffle and push, spending effort and time that might be better spent on so many other things.  (And, if you believe that old saying that “time is money,” then we lose our hard earned cash too!) Everyone says that Kosovo needs so many things, don’t they?  Certainly there’s no time to waste. 

With this in mind, I offer you a new motto for Kosovo.  It is classic, simple, mathematical, and, unlike most slogans, this one will actually serve a useful purpose:

If we made a line, at the borders and the bakeries, wouldn’t we all still be served at more or less the same time?  And what’s more, wouldn’t those old ladies and white UN trucks have to simply wait their turn, meaning that those of us in line will actually get to our destinations sooner than we do now?  And won’t that make the majority of people happier?

We can also apply this slogan to less petty personal concerns.  For example, if the straightest line in business is between a buyer and a seller, then we’ll no longer need smugglers!  If political decisions eliminated lengthy trips out of the assembly and around the corner to the café for coffee and glad-handing, wouldn’t laws be implemented quicker?  And so on: in every single case, the shortest distance will yield the quickest results.

I apologize again for missing my column deadline, but after losing so much time and patience in these un-lines today, I probably couldn’t have finished a column anyways.  Anyways, I was too mad.  I don’t want to change everything about Kosovo.  Part of me will miss the unruly free-for-alls at the bakeries and border crossings.  But everyone says that they want change in Kosovo, and they want it quickly.  In response to this, I have only one recommendation, “Get in Line!”

Respectfully,
Blackbird

 

Blackbird is an American artist living in Kosovo.