Plematina

In the shadow of Prishtina’s hulking power stations Kosovo A and Kosovo B sits the village of Plemetina, a predominantly Serb community but also home to several hundred Roma. It’s only 10km from the capital but feels like an entirely different world.

Plematina Village in the shadow of the power station. Click image for more photos.

As you drive into the town you first pass a set of abandoned NATO barracks. These gained some notoriety after the conflict as the location for a camp for over 1000 internally displaced people from Serb, Ashkali, Egyptian and Roma communities. These minority groups had fled their homes as Albanian refugees returned in the weeks after the war, fearing discrimination and reprisal attacks. Many of the families have long been able to return home, but others – predominantly Roma – ended up staying in the camps for more than six years. Finally in 2005 the remaining families were rehoused by the government in a couple of purpose built tower blocks adjoining the site, built with EU and UN funding.

Already these have signs of damage – doors hanging off hinges and graffiti and litter strewn darkened corridors. In some cases the apartments house 10 or 11 family members in a space measuring 60 sq. metres. But the people are friendly and during our visit we‘re invited in to visit one family on the fifth floor. There are no lifts and the stairwell is busy with children playing. Tethered on the balcony of the apartment is a sheep – awaiting slaughter at an upcoming festival. The father of the household has just returned from working in Belgrade where he earns 150 euros a month as a construction worker – a high wage compared to the prospects in Plemetina. Unemployment is rife in the town and some families still depend on state aid of food staples and fuel.

Further along from the tower blocks sits the town proper – home to more Roma, but the majority of the population are Serbs. Many of the Serb houses lie empty these days, but there are still enough to warrant a separate school – next door to the Albanian one. The pupils from the two schools have staggered break times so that they do not mix in the playground. The EU have put money into reconstruction, but the most visible sign of this investment is a gleaming new football dome. Otherwise the village feels poor, with dirt roads, very few cars, and few shops or infrastructure.

But many of the Roma community live in large houses which are well kept, even when shared between several generations and several families. We visit one – inside is cluttered but welcoming. We’re offered a succession of cakes, biscuits, fizzy drinks, beer, even cigarettes. An entire wall is filled with a bookshelves displaying an eclectic collection of colourful trinkets – family heirlooms and empty deodorant cans, plastic toys and 1970s kitsch. Outside the teenagers of the family are washing clothes in a plastic bathtub. The Roma have an incredibly close community, with strong traditions based around family relationships, music and storytelling. There’s an expectation that men and women marry young and it can be difficult for those who want to complete their school education or even attend university.

On windy days the houses can become engulfed in smoke from the power station and concerns have been raised about the levels of pollution (ironically the electricity supply in Plemetina itself is patchy). The power station casts a shadow in another way – many of the Roma used to work there but say these jobs have now gone to Albanians.

Several NGOs work with the Roma community here. In the Plemetina ‘Youth Centre’ a group of teenagers and young men are conducting a study into Roma population across Kosovo. They’ve been given a PC to conduct the work on (surprisingly all the houses we visited had computers and the internet is proving to be a powerful tool for maintaining links between the scattered Roma communities). The NGO Balkan Sunflowers has worked with young people in the town to create video records of their lifestyle and traditions, and now some of them have ambitions to be journalists or film-makers. Some of them recently organised the Rolling Film Festival, in Prishtina, dedicated to films about and by the Roma community worldwide.