“On countless fronts, keeping up appearances will now replace all deep reflection and self-scrutiny.”
I remember, vividly, the first time I held a Euro penny. It was a small thing, smaller than its American counterpart but worth more. I had lived in Europe, specifically Kosovo, for two years, and two years worth of Euros had passed through my hands. Oversized hundreds for paying the rent, tens and twenties for keeping the lights on. Five-Euro bills closer in size to Monopoly money and two-toned Euro coins for Pejas and Wests. Pockets full of copper nickels and bronze dimes. Twenty-cent pieces and fifty-cent pieces: I knew them all by feel, hardly had to look down, counted out one, two, four, five and a half for phone cards, thanked the cab driver with a fist full of change and went on my way.
In the grocery I carried a basket, and I filled it with bread, pasta, vegetables, sauces and more beer. I stood in line behind kids counting nickels of their own to buy cheap candy and ice cream cones in Turkish wrappers, or machine-formed miniature croissants with Nutella filling. I unloaded my basket and waited while the cashier, a teen-aged girl heavily made up, her hair in a ponytail, tallied my bill. She handed me change in bills and coins, to a point, and I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable surprise ending.
For the currency in my pocket could buy anything, but the currency in her register had its limits. One time out of five, my receipt ended in 5 or 0. Four times out of five, my bill ended in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9. Four times out of five, we reached the moment of truth: the currency in her register ended in only zero or five. For two years in Kosovo, I never met a penny. No one had them. No one used them to trade. My wealth depended on the cashier’s whim. She might substitute, for the 1, 2, 3, or 4 cents that were owed, a piece of square gum from the bin on her counter. Cheap gum that lost its taste quickly; was spit into the bin by the door out the shop, or into the street along the way home. Or she might reach for the nickel, rounding up my change, saving me 2 or 3 cents—giving me free money I didn’t deserve.
Until once (after two years), nonchalantly, as if it happened every day, she handed me the correct change, which included the first Euro penny I’d ever received. It was one of the first times in Kosovo that I had paid the stated value for my purchase. I put the penny in my pocket, and I named it “metaphor.” I resolved not to spend it.
I did not keep the resolution long.
Because the very next time that I received a receipt with a 1 on the end of it, I used the penny to pay for it. I could not help myself. The receipt demanded—in writing—a penny, and I felt powerless to disobey it. The cashier raised in eyebrow in mild (or mocking) surprise… didn’t I want any gum? An extra nickel? She thought it was strange. No one ever paid in pennies.
Houses in Kosovo are sometimes priced as if they were within a short driving distance of the Riviera. The cheaply-made imitation clothing is not as cheap as it ought to be; consumers spend hundreds on faux-Italian furniture, German automobiles and vacuum cleaners. Euros are poured down the drain to keep up appearances. Land is bought and stores are put on the land, where more people stop in and buy more things. But unlike Jonathan Kalb, standing on a West Berlin street corner and pondering the flashing neon advertisements planted above postmodern facades that surround him, I have no problem with rampant consumerism, at least in theory. It doesn’t bother me if everything is for sale. Greece sells its beaches by the hour, and pop singers sell their wedding photos. Someone somewhere will sell you anything - why should I care? If Kosovars wish to put a price tag on everything in Kosovo, then this, I feel, is their prerogative. As long as the price makes sense.
But how can Kosovars buy so much if Kosovo is so poor? And how can Kosovo be so poor if nothing is ever priced in pennies?
Instead, it seems as if no one can agree on the value of anything, even a penny, much less justice, or expediency, truth or reconciliation. A penny might be worth a nickel, or it might be worth a piece of gum. Value is measured in the aspirations of large bills, not the crumbling-infrastructure reality of pennies. We skip ahead and count to five or ten, without first making sure we can count to one. It all seems like a metaphor.
I know that the truth is, of course, more complicated. Pennies are not the most cost-effective method of currency exchange. It can be expensive to ship a planeload of pennies to Kosovo, in terms of their relative value. (For this very reason, some wealthier European nations do not use the penny at all.) Maybe Kosovo’s poverty explains the lack of pennies – it doesn’t make sense to send them here. Maybe my metaphor is a weak one. But that is the danger of Kosovo. Everything there seems like a metaphor after a while.
Recommended Reading: “Free Admissions,” by Jonathan Kalb. The first two essays in this book describe the culture of Berlin during the early 90’s. These essays seem to me to have incredible relevance for Kosovo today: in particular, their examination of how international influences and the local culture collide to create a consumerist society and a really messy state of affairs. Even if you are not interested in theater, these essays will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to think about life in modern day Kosovo.
Blackbird is an American artist living in Kosovo. He can be reached at kosovotravelogue at gmail dot com
Owen
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... Thrift etc., I've picked my own argument in the past with Blackbird on the subject of comparing traditional values with the assumed values of the "conspicuous consumers" and I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick in accusing him of not looking below the surface. I criticised him then for what I thought at the time was prejudicial stereotyping but in fact was closer to a desire to bring an idealised hierarchy of values to a complex reality. Now you seem to be criticising him for not doing that. Poor guy can't win! People make choices, they choose between continuity and change. These are real choices that reflect the way people see the reality of their lives. There is more beneath the surface than traditional = good, modern = bad. |
Thriftiness vs blind consumerism
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... Blackbird, When I visited Kosova, I too went shopping there I saw people buying stale yesterdays loaves of bread for 15 cents. In truth the Kosovars are very thrifty, they don't feed their families with prepackaged frozen or tinned food like in the West, everything is made from scratch and if there is a garden there will always be tomatoes and peppers and more growing out back, they don't fill their gardens with useless bushes, instead you will find seasoned fruit trees such as pears, apple, quince, fig, cherries, plums peaches, apricots and grapes which will provide fruit and the excess will do to making jams and preserves, look at a typical kosovar family they will bulk buy all their essential food stuffs such as flour, rice, sugar, cooking oil so why begrudge them if they have saved up for furniture for their house? Kosova is a different cultural society to the West, there people interact with each other neighbours become like family and it is natural to have a little of "keeping up with the Jones's attitude" the vast majority of these families also receive a remittance from family who live abroad mostly in Europe and America and it is amazing how they stretch this money, these shopping malls which you have seen springing up are innovation and investment and the wealthy and well off use them, it's like comparing with "how come there are all these Designer Shops in Central London retailing dresses at £3000 when the average annual wage is £20,000" Blackbird please look under the surface instead of scratch at it. |
