Monday, 10th of december 2007
Novi Pazar

We visit the camp of internally displaced Roma from Kosovo in the center of Novi Pazar. A local dealer brought a truck with firewood as we had agreed before. The Roma are happy about the firewood, but they ask for food. They say they are hungry most of the time, that garbage containers are their only source of food. They drag old cars to the settlement and then sell them as recyclable material. The camp is full of all sorts of garbage and rusting metal parts. There is mud everywhere and it is very difficult to move around. The Roma want us to distribute the firewood because they are afraid that otherwise the distribution wouldn't be fair.

The former president of the camp no longer lives there. He has moved in with Lirija's uncle's widow and took his wife (the "babitsa" who acted as midwife helping other women to give birth) to Montenegro and left her there. From Montenegro, he first went to Sjenica with his new partner, but since they had no place to stay there, they went to the new location for the camp. The Roma of Stari Batnjik don't want to hear a word about him. They are very angry because they think it is not nice to be with your friend's wife even if this friend is deceased.



The children from the camp attend preschool classes organized in the premises of the local Red Cross. Another 16 children go to school in Blaževo. Mifalj, one of the residents of the camp, puts them all in his car and drives them to school and back. The children like to go to school, but the parents are not always too happy about it. They say that if there is no one to look after the younger children, to cook and clean, while they are in school learning how to read and write.

We stay in the camp briefly, until the firewood is unloaded, and then Henrik and I go to the Red Cross to see Ljilja. She tells us about the projects for the children of Stari Batnjik - daycare and preschool for the children between 3 and 6 years old. Only the youngest children up to 3 years old are not included in any of the programs.



Ljilja can't provide food for the Roma of Stari Batnjik any more because they are not on the list of beneficiaries of the local Social Work Center. She is worried about the soup-kitchen program because the local Red Cross has almost run out of food supplies. Almost every year, the region of Novi Pazar is affected by floods and landslides and many people lose their homes. It took 320 million dinars only to fix the damages of last year's floods. The total annual municipal budget is 500 million dinars and the Government of Serbia has sent another 10 million dinars.

It is not rare that a company blocks the municipality's bank account for unpaid bills, in which case all the money that arrives at the municipality's bank account goes directly for the payment of the overdue bills. The Government officials visited the houses damaged by landslides and flooding last year and promised funds to the municipality for the reparation of the damages. Counting on those funds, the municipality then hired local companies to fix the damages, but the Government hasn't send any money and the companies haven't been paid.

Ljilja also told us that Novi Pazar is a town with a large number of drug addicts, and unfortunately, it is also a center for prostitution and human trafficking.