August 8, 2012
The less than jovial Jovica: Ljubanista
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FOR MACEDONIA, the future isn't good, says Jovica. He is 47 and unemployed. He gets no help from the government. "I will never work again," he says in acceptance and resentment at how things have turned out.
"There are no jobs. No good jobs. I could drive a taxi for..." - he shakes fingers to denote a paltry sum. "But in Macedonia there are no jobs. I am no communist, that's for sure, but before it wasn't perfect but everyone had work. Now, since 1991, we are a separate country but we are just two million. We are not in the European Union, so when we make things it is only for ourselves. The market is very small, so everything is expensive.
"I am very pessimistic. Even for the young there are no jobs. I live thanks to my wife, who does have a job."
We are sitting in the awning of a caravan of the campsite beside the lake just inside Macedonia. Our plan was to stay one night but Steph has been beset by an upset stomach - what we would give now for that Danish doctor we met a few days back - and a couple of days seem a good idea.
It turns out that Jovica and his friend and former workmate, Nikolas, have been watching us from a distance, intrigued by foreigners on bicycles with a small green tent. In the end Nikolas realised the only way to find out more was to invite us to meet his family and Jovica's. Together they are sleeping in neighbouring caravans, just as they have every summer for the last 25 years.
Jovica used to sell Italian cars, Lancias and Fiats. "But then I got downsized." Nikolas works "in trading" but never gets round to saying in what. They and their families, and Jovica's son and his girlfriend, live near Skopje, the capital.
Nikolas is more optimistic. "Things are not good here but there is always enough if you live with what you have. I can't buy my own house or buy a new car. There is enough to live on, but even if you have a good job, you don't have much."
Nikolas likes everyone. Except gays and Albanians.
Ethnic Albanians are a quarter of the population, many of them refugees from the Kosovo war of 1999. Albanian nationalists on both sides of the border started shooting to acquire their own independence from Macedonia.
"They are causing a lot of trouble in our country," Jovica says. Nikolas nods. "The jails of Macedonia are full of Albanians. The jails of Europe are full of Albanians."
It's worth pointing out here that neither Nikolas nor Jovica have been to Albania, even though for 25 years they've seen it across the lake and that the border is only three kilometres down the road.
"They bribe border guards to work in Italy. They cross the Adriatic and bribe the guards maybe 500 euros to get in."
He and other Macedonians, on the other hand, can't work even in neighbouring Bulgaria.
"To do that we would have to buy a Bulgarian passport and be part of the EU."
"Buy?"
"Get Bulgarian nationality," Nikolas clarified.
"And you can buy that?"
"You can buy it," Jovica insisted.
I have no idea if he is right but it challenged my notion of the probable that, if Albanians bribed their way into Italy for 500 euros, they'd return to Albania on holiday and risk not being allowed back or, worse, being jailed for bribery. Or at the very least have to pay another 500 euros.
But then the subject changed and we drank Turkish coffee and we talked of cabbages and kings and exchanged addresses and promised to meet again if we ever came to each other's land. It was a wonderful encounter and another which would never have happened had we not arrived by bike.
For who becomes curious about people turning up by car?
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