22 July 2009 – The brighter is hope

Štrpce is a large and pretty self-contained Serbian enclave at the foot of the Šar Planina range in Kosovo and Metohija, to give Kosovo its Serbian name. It is blessed with some of the most stunning scenery in the Balkans and according to many, before the Kosovo war of the late 1990s, relations with their Albanian neighbours was mostly good. But the 'Albanian problem' as Serbs call it, which a Briton is apt to compare to the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland of 40 years ago, turned into a disaster leading to the NATO bombing of Serbia and the exile of many of the remaining Serbs. There are now less than 5% Serbs in Kosovo which has for centuries been at the heart of Serbian identity and mythology.

We wanted to visit Šar Planina partly for this National Park's wildlife and plant life, but also to see and meet the people who are a long way from the rest of their countrymen. We saw immediately that they were without electricity and there was little in the way of fresh milk and meat. This village and enclave of 15,000 had been coping with generators and various innovations for solar heating for the last three weeks due to a dispute over power supplies. Not surprisingly there was a certain amount of resentment amongst the general resignation. Nothing looked very good to an outsider. There was lots of litter, especially in the pristine melt waters rushing through the village; there was only limited farming, and of course few jobs.

The National Park was not much different. Having failed to get any sort of response from messages to the former Park director I wasn't feeling very generous. When we heard that in 7 years as the director he hadn't once visited the Park's beautiful mountain lodge only some hour's walk up from the track, I wasn't much surprised. Yet we met people who wanted to move on and deserved more. The new director seemed to have a tough job on her hands but wanted to cooperate with the Kosovan authorities for whom National Parks seemed to be a new idea. She was faced with pressures on all sides, from poaching (including, it is alleged from UNMIK helicopters) and illegal timber felling to unlicensed building of holiday chalets and problems with waste.

Yet to an outsider, unburdened with disappointments and apprehension, the place was full of opportunity. We know from experience how hard it is to get foreigners to visit even peaceful and beautiful Serbia, let alone Kosovo, but you have to start. Wildlife tourism, especially for the flowers, and maybe for wolves and bears, would be something special. How I would love to see hundreds of bee hives gathering up the nectar from the alpine meadows. Bring back some sheep grazing, and start making mountain cheese. Most important of all, and hardest, build up relations with former enemies. When we are without hope and without vision, we perish and grow bitter.

However, like the alpine Sedum clinging fleshy leaved and brilliant on naked rock, hope springs up to surprise us and shame us. Dr Rastko Alexandrov, a Belgrade heart surgeon, devout Christian and ornithologist, made Šar Planina a place of special pilgrimage for all his life. As a young man he had a vivid dream of a church hovering over a spur of land just where the mountain track meets the village. One day years later, whilst watching Peruvian condors flying out over the world's deepest gorge, the Creator of condors and gorges gave him a powerful vision of what he had to do. He returned home immediately to begin building this church. And there it was; the cross raised up against the mountain sky with Šar Planina's green slopes falling in rocky curtains to its very foot. The harsher the place, the brighter is hope.