UNMIK ON AIR

16^th June 2003

STRAWBERRY WIDOWS

Zyke Balaj: We mainly work in the field we pick the strawberries; sell them on the market, things like that. This year we earned well. It is the second year that we are doing this and up to now we’ve had good profits. There are still unpicked strawberries. That is good.

Zyke Balaj, a mother of three from the Gjakova region, her husband still listed as missing since the war….

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on Air

Korenica, a small village just outside Gjakova is home to 10 members of the Balaj family. For as long as they can remember, they were involved in strawberry production, but the war put an end to that. Zyke has had to learn, not just to deal with the loss of her husband, but to pick up the pieces of her life in economic terms as well. The strawberry business had always been in the hands of her husband, but Zyke has learnt both to run the business and manage the family. For the past two years, Zyke and three other war widows have been involved in a strawberry-growing project developed by the Swiss NGO Inter Cooperation. Nora Gola, is a Horticulture advisor with Inter Corporation.

Nora Gola: It was felt that they have the possibility and the need to create earnings from their own work. They have the land, the water, more than enough working force so it was possible for them.

Possible yes, but not easy for the 4 women and their 14 children, the project has offered a new lease of life. The strawberry fields their husbands once managed are once again bearing fruit. Life, these women well know, is for the living, but the pain of lost family members is still there. Xhevahire Balaj, is Zyke’s sister in law – the two women live together, work together and bring up their children together.

Xhevahire Balaj: We had a lot of problems from the war. Four of our people from the house; my husband is missing, my brother in law too, our father in law and there is another missing brother in law who was unmarried. After we came back from Albania and survived some quite difficult times, we had to start living again, try and do something so that our children would grow to do something.

The Balajs have been through tough times – growing strawberries hasn’t always been so sweet. Initially, they had big problems trying to sell their product. Traders had other contacts and it seemed to be more profitable to import strawberries all the way from Macedonia or Serbia than to buy newly picked ones. In the beginning, they had to go as far as Prishtina to sell their strawberries since none of the Gjakova traders wanted to buy local products. And those who did, refused to buy labeled products the made in Kosova label that the women are so proud of. Xhevahire remembers a case when they had to sell a large amount of unlabeled strawberries.

Xhevahire Balaj: We sent 500 kg. once, or was it 600…they bought them all without stickers. They didn’t accept them with the stickers. Since they want to sell it as their merchandise, not ours. But we had no other choice than to sell them like that since strawberries get damaged very soon.

But things have changed since then – today strawberries from the Balaj family farm can be seen on stands in supermarkets across Gjakova. To the extent that there is more demand than supply – in fact things are going so well that there are plans of expansion.

Xhevahire Balaj: We did this for ten or fifteen years before the war, and we continued after. Inter-cooperation made it possible for us to work with strawberries. It was only women who started doing this and we made it up to here. In the future we are thinking about expanding. Now that we know that there is profit in this we will expand.

Gjakova has always been an important center for strawberries. The expected yield for the Balajs and their colleagues this year is around 9 tons. The women are being trained to develop marketing strategies and diversify their options. Stawberry processing is also on the agenda and the project clearly has enormous potential. Kosovo, stresses Nora Gola, has always been a place that grew things, not bought them and that is the way it should be.

Nora Gola: I do not agree that it pays out more to trade with- or import something like strawberries since it is very sensitive and it cannot handle long travels. It is much more profitable to produce than import.

Already several women from the area have expressed interest in starting similar ventures. The strawberry fields wont bring back loved ones, but for those who survived the horrors of the conflict, they offer the chance to start again.

That does it for this edition of UNMIK on AIR. Thanks for listening.