Blueberry Field, Areljie

I apologize that I did not have time to offend you

So ended one interview with a farmer in Serbia yesterday. It was a very friendly conversation and he was quite open, answered my questions, provided a lot of helpful information, and even went out of his way to introduce me to others and take me out to the field, but in the end there was some underlying tension - a simple reminder that many Serbians see the NATO bombing as being led by the US and they despise Americans because of it. In the wholesale fruit market outside of Belgrade earlier in the week a trader took ten minutes out of his busy morning to tell us how much he dislikes Clinton (although I’m sure he used much less dainty language edited by the translator). These underlying tensions between different ethnic groups and towards outsiders are complex and not easy to understand. They make working here interesting.

I traveled to Central Serbia on Friday and spent my day with the head of a blueberry cooperative. Serbia is so much more advanced compared to most countries where I work, but I keep having to stop myself from making that comparison as Serbia really should be compared to the rest of Europe and it is certainly far behind Germany, Austria or even Slovenia. Still, there are lots of changes taking place and assuming peace reigns, Serbia seems to be on the right track.

Context

This is by far the slowest reconnaissance trip that I have ever been on. Yesterday we had one meeting at 5pm and spent the day in the office setting up meetings and reading documents. Today was a bit busier with one unhelpful meeting at noon and an interesting visit to a progressive fruit and vegetable trader in the afternoon. Unfortunately there is really not enough to do for two people and I am feeling a little stifled by my colleague. Ahh well, hopefully things will pick up.

I have decided to stay in Serbia an extra day and not take the train to Croatia until Sunday so that I can spend one day in the city of Belgrade exploring and seeing something other than the inside of offices. Interestingly, there is a national election on Sunday. Unlike some places, it is expected to be peaceful regardless of the outcome, but no one really knows what that outcome will be. There are seven political parties which are estimated to receive between 5 and 35 percent of the vote, so there will have to be a coalition government, but none of the 7 are all that keen to work together.

Even more interestingly, the timing of the election has a lot to do with Kosovo. The Serbs view Kosovo as an integral part of their nation and feel that the international community has no right to decide on whether Kosovo should be independent. Kosovo is currently officially a province of Serbia, but it is a protectorate the UN/NATO. The Albanians in the province feel that as a discriminated against minority in Serbia but the significant majority of Kosovo, they have a right to independence. An advisory group has been preparing to advise the UN Security Council on whether Kosovo should become an independent state their verdict has been expected for some time.

Today I was told that last summer the Serbian government was concerned about the imminent verdict (in favor of Kosovo) and so the parliament rapidly drafted and passed a new constitution which, among other things, had a specific clause declaring Kosovo an integral part of Serbia. Parliament was then disbanded and elections are being held on Sunday. It is now expected that the Kosovo Advisory panel will present their suggestions to the UN Security Council one week after elections. This way, when the verdict comes out the political party that is now in power cannot be blamed as the decision will have been made right after the election.

It is also expected that the Security Council will decide in favor of independence for Kosovo, which already has it’s own government in place. Of course a key to successful independence is economic security and Kosovo really has very few opportunities, with a population of two million living on poor agricultural lands and surviving on remittances, which are declining as Albanians return to Kosovo. If Kosovo is given their independence, it is unknown what the reaction will be, but there are plans being put in place to deal with any contingencies.

This is a very interesting time in this region’s history and I will be watch closely as events unfold over the next couple of weeks.

Eventful voyage

My trip to Serbia could definitely be classified as eventful. Because the trip was only approved a few days before I left, I bought my ticket at the last minute and so ended up stuck in the second-to-last row of the plane. The good news (or so I thought) was that there was an empty seat next to me, with a French gentleman in the aisle seat.

Shortly after dinner the Frenchman disappeared to the galley in the back of the plane from where a wonderful sewerage smell was wafting. My row-mate did not return for quite a while which was fine with me as I really just wanted to get some sleep on the plane as I knew I would have to hit the ground running when I arrived Belgrade the next day. At some point just as I was drifting off to sleep, I felt him crash down into the seat next to me – the empty seat. I took off my eye patch to glare at him and discovered that he had found a friend. He had brought a woman back to the seat and proceeded to spend the entire night flight drinking wine, chatting with her, which led to holding hands, smooching and even a little groping – all of which entailed a lot of noise and movement including bumping me several times as I was attempting to sleep leaning on the opposite side of the seat. It was one of those situations that was so bizarre that it did not really sink in until after the fact. The best part is that in the morning after she had returned to her seat, I realized that he had a wedding ring on – needless to say this was clearly not his wife as they ignored each other and headed off in opposite directions when we deplaned.

I had a 4 hour layover in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in the B terminal. Take this as a warning – if you ever have a layover in that terminal, just change your flight plans. There are a grand total of 10 seats in the entire terminal (no exaggeration) and to get to any other terminal you actually have to go through customs. After confirming with an AirFrance employee that this was really the situation, I went through customs and found and empty bench where I curled up like a bag lady and slept for a couple of hours inhaling second hand smoke with my cell phone in hand with alarm set.

Fortunately when I arrived in Belgrade I discovered that my colleague’s flight was delayed so I did a few hours of work and then did a few hours of sleep before heading out for dinner with the three colleagues from the home office who all happen to be out here at the same time. My first impression of the city is incredulity that the US government is actually investing in economic development here. (I am here again researching a potential new project in agribusiness development). Belgrade is now one of the hot spots for nightlife in Eastern Europe with brightly lit pedestrian streets filled with restaurants, shops and bars that I am told are even more lively in the summer. It seems like a bustling Eastern European captial with functional systems and a strong enough economy to support the consumerism on display.

Belgrade has a cell phone parking payment mechanism that lets you send a text message with your license plate number and time that you want to park and the amount is charged to your account. The parking police then just check the automatic database to see if you have paid. It seems like the US could learn something from Serbia! That said, drive around Belgrade and start talking to locals and I think the reasons for the US Government investment become clear. There are still many bombed out buildings in Belgrade from the 1999 NATO bombing to end the Milošević-lead ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. The tensions here still run high, but my information now is all second hand – I am sure I will have more first hand information tomorrow.

One correction – the country is no longer Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegro declared their independence in June of last year (the day before the first World Cup match of the Serbia and Montenegro team) and they are now completely independent.

Serbia & Montenegro (but where is Kosovo)

I am flying out tomorrow to spend a week in Serbia and Montenegro looking at a new project. Once again, my knowledge of the coutry pre-departure is quite limited, but I do know that Kosovo is part of Serbia and yet is not in the list of regions in the country name - interesting.

I'm heading out on the trip with my new(ish) boss, which should make things interesting in all new ways. Stay tuned.

Trip Cancelled

It seems most of my trips are last minute affairs, but sometimes that works in reverse - I know about a trips for months ahead of time and it is cancelled at the last minute. I will no longer be going to Mali. The week I was supposed to leave the budget was dramatically cut.

I am now working on organizing a potential trip to Liberia and one to Ethiopia so we'll see where the next year takes me.

More To Come...

Just to let my faithful readers know...

It looks like I will be heading to Mali at the end of November for a few months. I should be departing on November 27th to spend four months working on designing a new project. I'm sure it will be an interesting trip with lots of lanugage struggles (I haven't worked in French in 4 years), interesting development issues (we're designing a large irrigation program which is quite contentious), and lost of interesting adventures (I am planning on visiting Timbuktu and going to the Ali Farka Toure memorial music festival).

So stay tuned at the end of November!

Ice Cream Ending

My last day in Macedonia was spent on yet another field trip – this time to Gostivar in the West of the country. Macedonians I have spoken with disagree with me, but out of all the parts of Macedonia that I have seen (and granted I missed the big tourist destinations) this was the most beautiful. It is in the “Albanian” area of Macedonia and is predominantly Muslim. In 2001 there was a civil war (sometimes downgraded to civil conflict depending on who you are talking to) in this region with Albanian-Macedonians pitted against mainstream Macedonians. There is some concern that this conflict could flare up again at some point as the underlying issues have not really been dealt with.

Regardless, I was awestruck by the beautiful mountains, picturesque villages, crystal clear Vardar River and trees on the hillsides. There is a lot of deforestation ongoing in Macedonia given that wood is the main fuel for heating and cooking, but this region still has some of it trees left. I would love to come back sometime and do some hiking or maybe even try my hand at skiing again – there are some good slopes in the area.

But I was there for business – sort of. My first stop was visiting a cheese factory. This family owned business owns a second production plant in Rome, Italy which is where they learned the art of cheese-making and let me tell you, they learned it well. The mozzarella, smoked provolone, and ricotta that I tried were all to US standards if not beyond. They are all made with sheep cheese so have a distinctive and delicious flavor. So yes, we talked for a while and ate cheese – I have a hard life. The second stop was a juice factory, and once again I sipped strawberry juice as we discussed the juice business in Macedonia.

This has been a great trip and not only because of all the sampling of local delicacies. Macedonia has a rare opportunity right now. Their labor is very inexpensive compared to the nearby European market, plus they are getting support to be able to enter the EU, so if all goes to plan, there will be major changes in the country over the next few years (hopefully with my company helping them along the way if we are successful in this bid). In my opinion their biggest obstacle is corruption.

My last evening my colleagues and I went out to dinner with our translator and the woman who has managed logistics while we were here. They are both great fun so it was an evening with lots of laughter and the evening ended with a trip to the gelateria. Who could ask for a better end?

Walking the Gauntlet

I went on a very interesting drive today and feel lucky to have come out alive. I went by taxi to the town of Kavadarci which is 1.5 hours from Skopje to visit a peach farmer who is exporting his peaches to Europe. The main road east from Skopje was previously a very nice four-lane divided highway, but as of Monday they closed one half of the highway and moved all four lanes into half the size. Needless to say, the road is now far too narrow for two cars to drive in the same direction, never mind all the trucks that use that route to transport goods to and from Greece and Bulgaria. When my driver dodged through the barriers dividing the directions in order to pass the first of a long line of trucks crawling up a hill creeping around the curves, I decided it was time to intervene and tell him that I would rather arrive in one piece 5 minutes late than not arrive at all. Even with a severe language barrier, he was made to understand my intention and we crawled along the rest of the way.

On the way back from the visit I saw a car lose its wing mirror on the barrier and we passed an accident (only one). There were three cars involved, and two of the cars were Parliamentarian’s vehicles. Maybe this will change the decision about the road? It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

When your life flashes before your eyes, it makes you want to make the most out of the time that you have left. So I went out to dinner with some colleagues from Washington that are based here and sampled the nightlife of Skopje. Who knew that I would be out at a salsa bar in Macedonia!

Small World

I had another busy day of meetings today and I was pretty tired this evening (and still recovering from the sheep cheese yesterday), but I went out with some colleagues from DAI that are working on projects here in Macedonia. At dinner I was talking with one of our project staff here and asked where he is from. He responded, “upstate New York”. When I asked where, I nearly fell of my chair at his response – Geneseo. He lived in the town of 5,000 people where I went to college. He even was friends with the son of my landlord. This means that we almost definitely would have sat at tables next to each other at Mama Mia’s pizza place, passed each other as we walked past the bronze bear fountain, or competed for the attention of the bartender at the Idol Hour bar. We spent the rest of the evening reminiscing about swimming in the old quarry and the, shall we say, ‘festive’ days of Geneseo.

Coke is freedom

I just spent my entire weekend working and had the best time. I went out to the East of the country to talk with people and learn more about the issues in the agricultural sector. Macedonia is a very small country (of only 2 million people) so it was only a two hour drive from the capital Skopje, to Strumica (pronounced Strumizza).

On the way out there was plenty of opportunity for good conversation with my translator, who is a piano accompanist by training who worked for the Opera of Macedonia, but has switched careers because of the lack of opportunity for growth in the world of music here. She is a multi-talented lady and is by far the best translator I have ever worked with. To my surprise, she told me that life under Tito was not so bad. Sure, you could not speak out against the government, but crime was low, there was a healthy middle class and only some people were a little worse off. Now there is much greater economic disparity, the number of very poor people is growing, and crime is increasing. Under Tito they had a good living, they could afford to go on holiday once or twice a year, and they were allowed to listen to Western music and drink Coke. Live was good.

On the drive I was also able to learn about some of the environmental damage from industrial development. The worst example that I saw was the town of Vesen which was a former industrial center producing metals. The town now has a very high rate of birth defects and the government is debating what to do. With the high costs of clean-up, I cannot see any action being taken any time soon. I also drove past mine heaps as big as the surrounding mountains, areas of massive erosion, and I’m sure I am only scratching the surface of the environmental problems in the country. And yet, people have talked about the potential for organic vegetable production here – do they not know that entails testing the soil to ensure it is not contaminated?

On Saturday I had meetings with the owners of a vegetable bottling company, a dairy, the president of the Association of Cow Breeders, and a vegetable farmer. All of the meetings were extremely interesting, but by far the best was last. This vegetable farmer was a true businessman who understood the market place and had traveled to Kosovo and arranged a contract with a supermarket to export his crop when the local traders were refusing to pay a reasonable price. But in talking to him, I began to understand some of the obstacles facing farmers here. Like in many places, when one person is successful, others try to bring them back in line. The corruption, intense political influence, lack of access to finance, and suspicion amongst farmers and between farmers and traders/processors all provided obstacles that proved insurmountable and he was unable to fulfill the contract.

I spent Saturday night in Strumica and then headed to Negotino on Sunday morning bright and early. I spent most of the day with the grape producers. There were riots in Macedonia last year because the wineries would not pay the farmers for their grapes. In fact, one of the two large wineries (both of which were previously government owned) still has not paid farmers for last year’s harvest which was 13 month ago. The wineries argue that then do not have the funds as they have not yet sold the wine and they need to service their debt first. So essentially the farmers are shouldering the debt of the wineries. When the protests started to grow, donors got concerned and stepped in and loaned the largest winery funds to pay the farmers. On the other hand, the small wineries have exellent relationships with their farmers.

The final stop in Negotino was a visit to the homes of two sheep producers. The sheep are kept for their milk (which is also made into cheese) and for lamb meat. I sat and interviewed both farmers in their one communal room, with the extended family sitting on the sofa and the Macedonian version of MTV playing in the background. I of course, was asked to sample their cheese, and I accepted. I have now learned first-hand of the need to improve the quality of locally produced cheese! It tasted good, but I didn’t feel so good the following day.

On the way back to the Skopje, we stopped off at what I was told was some ruins. It turned out to be ruines of the Roman city of Scupi from the 3-5th century AD. Given that Rome converted to Christianity around the 4th century, the ruins provided an interesting example of a church being built on top of an old synagogue. Unfortunately, the site is only partially excavated and there is no good explanation of what you are looking at. Supposedly the government looks into excavating and developing the site everyone once in a while, but the government of Greece intervenes in a variety of creative ways to prevent its development as Greece does not want the competition for historical tourism.

I feel like I have not done the weekend justice with these brief notes. I could write pages on each of the visits, but time is not my friend at the moment. I still have to type up all the many pages of notes from these many interesting meetings.

Field bound

This is going to be a super-quick post as I am rushing to pack up my suitcase and deliver it to my colleague's room before she goes to sleep. I am checking out of the hotel tomorrow and heading into the field for a couple of days to visit some farms, dairy processors, vegetable canneries, cheese makers, grape farmers, and of course wineries. I am so lucky to have this job. I told my colleagues today that I was looking forward to this weekend of getting my hands dirty and they looked at my like I am nuts (they are both finance and business development people). But then they admitted that there are those who fall into the field of development - most people in business/finance and development - and then there are those in this field with a passion for what they do. I just love it.

Back late on Sunday night, but I'm sure I'll have lots to write about.

Sunny or Grey?

I'm in Macedonia for 10 days to gather info for an upcoming private sector development project that will include agriculture. Macedonia is very different from the places where I usually work. It's practically in Europe - well at least it is hoping to become part of the EU in 2012. But it was also a part of the Soviet Union (as part of Yugoslavia) so it still has not fully shaken the old command economy mentality.

One of my colleagues asked me if Macedonia is more like sunny Italy, which is just across the Adriatic, or more like the grey Soviet Union. After just one day in country, I would answer that it is probably somewhere in between. The expansive central square and the central post office building, which is a dull grey monstrosity of cement that dominates its surrounds, are very CIS. On the other hand all along the river are lively outdoor cafés filled with fashionable young people that are (vaguely) reminiscent of Paris.

It looks like I will be spending the weekend out in the field visiting farms, processing companies, orchards and sheep herders. Oh, and as wine is one of the high-potential sectors here, I will be visiting grape growers and yes, wineries. I am always amazed by (and thankful for) the opportunities that I have to see different aspects of the countries I visit.

My suitcase arrived today and I was so happy to get out of the clothes that I had been wearing for more than 48 hours. I finished off the day with dinner with my colleagues at an Irish pub with a very bad meal and a glass of surprisingly good Macedonian red wine.

Macademia?

The next chapter in my adventure had me leaving my little house in DC in the middle of a downpour yesterday morning to head to Macedonia. The bad weather was my only immediate incentive to get on the plane for what will hopefully be sunnier climes given my current state. I am completely sleep deprived thanks to the city of DC that I actually fell asleep in the taxi on the way to the airport – as in mouth open, good dreams, asleep. Two weeks ago the city dug a huge hole in the street in front of my house and covered it with 6 steel plates which literally bounce every time a car drives over send out a small earthquake of earth-shattering noise and vibrations when a truck or bus drives over them. So it’s been a sleepless couple of weeks.

So I thought the trip could only get better from there. Hah! The check-in line at the airport was a mile long. When I got to the front, they informed me that the flight was delayed by an hour. Well, we ended up boarding 1.5 hours late, at which point I knew I would miss my connection in Switzerland. The very helpful airline people managed to get me on another flight, but I had to sprint a lap of the terminal to pick up the new ticket before they finished boarding the plane. I was the last passenger on the plane, and we then sat on the runway for another hour due to a maintenance problem. Needless to say, by the time I finally arrived in Macedonia 3.5 hours late, my luggage was not there to meet me. So I am stuck wearing the same coffee stained pants tomorrow – a flight attendant spilled hot coffee in my lap.

I’m now off to try and get some sleep and I am absolutely convinced that things can only get better from here!