LOJA in Tetovo

My next meeting was with LOJA in Tetovo. They were having a German Film fest and invited me to watch the film fest as well as interview them. Loja mean games in Albanian, and traces it back to how their NGO got started. Essentially they help with video production for cross cultural discussion. There are 7 people who work at the NGO, 5 of who are local in Tetovo, and one is from Germany (not sure who the other person is, just realized that it only added up to six).

In 1999, while they were directing and rehearsing a play and they could see all of the refugees from the Kosovo crisis. (Need some reminding on what exactly happened? Click here.) The people who later formed LOJA, decided to become involved and to do something for the kids who were suffering. They were playing games to help the kids forget what they had seen. After the refugee camp was moved, they decided to continue the work. They were being told that there was peace, but the founders kept seeing a different story on the ground. They wanted to help prevent a crisis situation from developing. So they decided to create an NGO to help maintain the change. In 2001, they felt the changes in the ethnic group before the tension escalated. Their target community is the youth, because they are easier to change when shown the benefits of cooperation. Where LOJA is known (such as in Tetovo) the community is very responsive to their efforts, but they face resistance from other communities.

From 2000-2004 they worked on the Babylon projects, whom they shared office space with.These were the first attempts in non-formal intervention. It is different in a post-conflict society than a society before the conflict. They are trying to reach their aims and help groups be resistant to extremists. But their work can be destroyed within hours. They are trying to give messages that will stick through and after the fights that people are going to have. They try to bring people together who share things in common, rather than what separates them. (They are teachers/journalists/workers rather than Albanian or Macedonian.) Part of this cooperation involved creating the following video:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r3muc80-Poo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Currently, they run 4-5 projects per month and are the only ethnically mixed organization in MK. There are other organizations that have both ethnicity’s (or all) but they are either All Albanians or Macedonians in higher positions, with the opposite in lower positions. At LOJA both Macedonians and Albanians are equal.  They work mainly with culture. When I talked to them in October, they had 4 projects they were working on:

1. extra-circular activities for future teachers. This one has been running for 4 years. They provide training and direct workshops. LOJA also runs small pilot projects with different ethnic groups.
2. Robert Bauch Tifgen (possible spelling errors, because I could not find anything related to many different spellings of this name) cultural activities, such as with the media to try to create different resources.
3. Franco-German youth exchange as a resource center for South Eastern Europe
4. In cooperation with a Swiss group- network of participation with cultural memories. To provide different perceptions of history. Bring reasons why to cooperate and to do so through art.

LOJA is often critical towards the governments view of civil society (in this case, I mean the real government not the party in power). Mike (my contact) believes that it is more complicated due to the mixed groups, than the government gives on. There is a difference between the government’s discourse vs. the actuality on the ground. The government/party in power believes that if you are not for this particular government, then you are against it.

LOJA has never gotten any money from the government, and they are dependent on external funds. They are now able to self finance. They often offer training abroad for training (and they get some extra salary out of it). They have been working in the public sector for 9 years, yet they are the only cinema in Tetovo. There is no public cinema in Tetovo. In addition, the government is in charge of cleaning up the trash on the streets. (In MK, they have big trash containers on the street and everyone brings their trash to these like they would a big dumpster in the US. Sometimes these are over-flowing.) Right in front of LOJA, there is one of these set of trash cans. Usually it is over flowing, and they do not clean it up until the day after any LOJA event. LOJA thinks this is on purpose.

There are no big cultural events in Tetovo, none sponsored by the municipality even with partial support. When the municipality does support something, no one sees where it goes, it is suggested that sometimes that it lines the pockets of the officials, or fictive projects. Mike states that the government is discriminatory towards non ethnic Macedonians. The state will enforce laws, only the negative ones. Mike claims that the government needs external support to change the laws and how they are enforced. Further, Mike claims, the government is doing very little to help bridge the gap ethnicities, sometimes they even cause the problems. Thus, this part of the government’s job is left in the hands of civil society and international organizations.

When the 2001 crisis occurred, the Ohrid agreement ignored the basic problems. The current government, Mike alleges, will miss the opportunity afforded by this agreement if they continue on the same path. While in theory, the framework has been implemented, the policing infrastructure has not been fully changed due to problems in finances.

After the interview, we attended a movie event sponsored by the German Embassy. It was the first movie of the week long event. They had translated the German into both Albanian and Macedonian. They also had the German Ambassador’s speech translated by different women into both Albanian and Macedonian. They are very careful to have both ethnicities represented. After the movie, they had a small reception with food and juice provided. Many people mingled, but it did appear that they were in separate friend groups.

“My fear,” Mike finished with, “intuition, suspicion tells me that this government will break Macedonia so it makes no sense.”