The Real Bee Queens

 

New Albanian vocabulary: mësit (matchmaker)

 

 

As I tended to my own hive, and felt the growth of my knowledge, skills and my identity as a beekeeper, I kept thinking about the other women going through the same apprenticeship, on the Women for Women programme where Avdyl ran beekeeping training. I shared with him a sense of frustration at waste, and I had a new perspective on the possibilities for the half of Kosovo’s rural population who have unused skills and potential beyond the home.

I did some research and discovered that Women for Women is based in the US, and offers women in post-conflict countries around the world a year of weekly or fortnightly training in fields including human rights, women’s health, parenting and small business management. At the end of the year the women who have taken part in the training are given the raw materials to set themselves up in a business. Perhaps a sewing machine, seeds and tools for market gardening, a loom, or – naturally – bees. Funding for this life-changing programme comes from sponsors in the developed world who are twinned with a ‘sister’ in a very different country. The monthly sum given by sponsors is split, with some supporting the programme in general, and a certain amount going directly to their ‘sister’ as cash. I talked to the head of the Women for Women office in Kosovo and, like Avdyl, I was impressed by the programme and its approach, and I signed up to become a sponsor.

In particular, of course, I loved the idea of bees changing people’s lives, and I asked whether I would be able to visit some of the women in Kosovo who, as a result of the project, are now beginner beekeepers like me. The organisation arranged to take me to meet the bee queens, in the company of my friend Saskia.

I had some misgivings when we arrived at the home of one of the Women for Women ‘graduates’. Despite being accompanied by our Women for Women chaperone, it was clear that our arrival was a complete surprise to them. We entered the one-room kitchen and living area, with foam mattresses laid around the edge, and were ushered to sit down cross-legged, and offered coffee – Turkish coffee, our host assured us, assuring us that we were honoured guests, not to be fobbed off with Nescafe. Of all the countries in the former Ottoman Empire, where its coffee has left its strong stain on drinking and social habits, Kosovo is significant for its honesty in attributing provenance. In Sarajevo I had been offered Bosnian coffee, in Edessa, Greek coffee, but in Kosovo they knew where coffee really came from.

 

 

I saw that in a corner of the room, next to the stove, there was a crib with something strapped into it. I politely asked how old the baby was and was told, by the rather tired looking woman stood next to the crib, that her son was three days old. She had come home from hospital yesterday.

What were we doing, barging into a home which clearly had higher priorities at the moment? I suggested to our Women for Women host that we should leave, but he assured me it was OK. And the coffee had just started to boil. I was torn between not wanting to disrespect the family’s hospitality, and wanting to acknowledge this young woman’s exhaustion. What I ended up doing probably made everything worse: I moved myself off the mattress where I had been sitting near the head of the house, to sit next to the crib and the new mother. I realised after- wards that it probably suggested disrespect to him, and only wearied her with my attempts at chatter and solidarity.

I admired the crib, which was a traditional design, made from wood that is often recycled, so that you see babies cradled on the slats from fruit crates that had held snuggled nectarines or apricots a few months previously. In the cribs I’d seen for sale at the market the painted trade names for the fruiterers had still been visible on the underside, in the same gaudy colours with which the date would be daubed on the sides, a record of when the peachy contents were produced. There was the traditional pole along the top of the cradle, with a cloth hanging over it like you might put over a parrot’s cage. Inside, the baby was wrapped up in tight swaddling like a bunch of flowers.

While we were all sitting drinking our coffee, I did some maths, and calculated that the new baby Alban shared a birthday with the new baby of my London friend, Kate, whose son had been introduced to us by email the previous day. Little Jamie had been born on the other side of Europe but, like Alban, he had an older sister (the perhaps three- year-old Albina sat looking serious at the side of her brother’s cot) and a mother who seemed to adore him. I wondered at what stage their fates might start to diverge, barring the obvious point that the head of Kate’s household would certainly not be allowing a party of foreigners into the house today to be entertained while they talked about bee- keeping.

But it became clear fairly soon that it was not only us, along with Alban, who were making demands on the new mother. Where Kate might right now be lying looking slightly drained but quietly elated in a pretty nightie with flowers all around, her ‘sister’ in Kosovo was carrying out the usual household chores. There was another woman in the room (the two were the wives of the brothers of the house) helping to serve coffee, but when Saskia asked their father-in-law about buying a pot of honey, it was the new mother who was sent outside to the honey store to get it.

I had read about the tradition that women must be made to work immediately after they give birth in order to exorcise the evil spirits of childbirth which otherwise make them unclean. I love the guys who come up with these superstitions. Edith Durham, the British lady-traveller-turned-anthropologist who visited Kosovo in the early years of the twentieth century, had noted that a woman was expected to fetch wood and water three days after childbirth. Perhaps being sent out for a pot of honey was getting off lightly. But it was sad to think that in this respect a hundred years had changed nothing for Kosovo’s women.

I continued trying to make conversation with the girls, and when it palled one of them got out a little album of photographs to help us along. They included a holiday snap of her other sister-in-law – the last woman that had married into this family, whom I hadn’t met. I was interested to see that she had her head covered with a scarf. It is rare, but not extraordinary to see this level of Muslim observance in Kosovo, and I asked about it.

‘It’s for people to choose,’ the girls said easily.

‘People or husbands?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, husbands,’ they conceded. And that was the end of that conversation.

Reminders of that dynamic were everywhere; I was intrigued to see that one of the photos in the album showed a bride wearing a red scarf over her face. I had been told at the Ethnological Museum that this had been the traditional dress for Kosovan brides, but I didn’t know that it was still worn anywhere. The scarf was made of simple cotton, not the translucent tulle of what I would think of as a bridal veil. With this over her face, the bride had no chance to see where she was going when she was collected from her house by the bridegroom’s party who took her back to his home. The theory was that if she couldn’t see where she was going then she couldn’t find her way back to her parents if she didn’t like her new life.

I was called back to the main conversation by the Women for Women trainer. The principal beneficiary of the Women for Women programme in this house had been our host’s wife who, it turned out, was away from home today. So I discussed beekeeping and honey-eating with the men. Like so many people I spoke to in Kosovo, this family said that they didn’t use their honey in cooking, but simply ate it on its own, by the spoonful. Before I saw people doing it in Kosovo, this would have seemed unthinkably indulgent – like spooning Nutella from the jar. This family told me that they eat their spoonful’s of honey with milk; a truly Biblical sense of indulgence.

Without the Women for Women ‘graduate’ being at home, I sensed, and rather hoped, that our visit was coming to an end. Then Alban’s mother could get back to resting or caring for him (and probably her father-in-law), and we could move on to the other home we’d been told we’d be visiting, where perhaps they would be prepared for our arrival. I looked around me, at this warm little family centre, with its alien rituals and obligations. In the opposite corner of the room from where baby Alban was swaddled and rocked beside the wood stove, there was an electric cooker where our coffees had gurgled on the hob. I glanced at it and looked back again, in shock. There was a woman’s face staring at me through the oven door.

I looked again. It was, of course, not a real woman. It was a life-sized photograph of a model’s face with her hair streaming out behind her, applied as some kind of transfer to the glass door of the oven. It was just decoration. And as you got close to it, you would presumably get the whiff of baking. Welcome to the life of women in Kosovo.

We did at last move on, to a house where the bees were cared for by two other young women, Shqipja and Lendita. Despite my hopes, they apparently hadn’t been warned that we were coming either, but they were charmingly hospitable all the same, moving in what I recognised now as the Kosovan hostess scoop, sweeping away with swift movements all the things that had been out on the table before our arrival, and making space for fizzy drinks for us. One sat at the table with us (‘How are you? How is your family? Your health? Are you well?’) while the other disappeared, reappeared with the tray of drinks. When she’d transferred them from tray to table she walked backwards respectfully to stand near the wall, awaiting our next need of her. The routine seemed elegant, civilised to me, but I have a militantly modern Kosovan friend who refuses to have a tray in her house at all because of what it represents to her of this ritual and its oppressively unchallengeable rhythms and roles.

Once we were all seated, Lendita and Shqipja talked happily about the Women for Women course and all the things they’d learned from it. We had so little in common, but the one bond of beekeeping was a good start. I had seen Saskia in action like this before – her two children offer her a way to engage with any woman who has children, just through the mediation of her kids, whether they are present or not. Comparing the ages, feeding habits, health, sleeping of children; these things are a connection for mothers everywhere. I had no children, but I did have my bees. How many kilos had my hives produced this year, Shqipja and Lendita asked? I wanted to know if they’d had any trouble with varroa. Did I use glucose syrup? Had I been frightened when I’d started beekeeping? Shqipja said she’d been terrified. But she had never actually been stung. Had I? In these limited social situations, that little community of mine on Adem’s farm was a great substitute for a family.

When I asked the girls about business they said that they didn’t have enough honey or access to enough markets to be selling it; instead they ate it themselves.

‘So why are you so enthusiastic about the programme, then? What benefits has it brought, if it hasn’t left you with a sustainable business?’

‘Just to meet with other women in the village,’ their faces lit up as they talked about it. In rural Kosovo traditions keep women well out of public life, and Women for Women had challenged that, not only with its talk of human rights and business plans, but by the very act of getting the participants together. So the women had wanted to continue meeting. Shqipja told me that the municipality had made a room avail- able to them for weekly meetings that she organises herself.

‘How many women come?’ Maybe this was one of those schemes that was all talk.

‘About a hundred come in all, and usually fifty turn up each week.’ As agents of emancipation these bees had done a wonderful job. I congratulated Shqipja and said that if there were ways to help her group of women I’d like to try to be of use. We exchanged email addresses and I took some photos of her and Lendita and promised to send them soon.

A week later, I contacted Shqipja and Lendita by email to send the photos. They are on MSN Messenger and so after that, when they had electricity and time, and I also had electricity and time we managed some typed conversations online. For me this was easier than speaking to each other, as their Drenica accent is the Glaswegian of Kosovo, and in our spoken conversations there were moments when I lost the sense of the discussion completely. Electronically, we had time and space bars to help us. A hesitant relationship built up: I asked about their bees and they asked about my strange life in faraway Pristina. One evening I was on television, running a charity art auction; the next day I got a message from Shqipja congratulating me: ‘When we saw it was U, we watched the whole show. U were great.’

On MSN one day Shqipja mentioned that at the most recent meeting of the women’s group, the women had put together the plans for an ‘excursion’ they wanted to go on. It was madly ambitious – they wanted to take in Prekaz (the Adem Jashari massacre/ battle site), a park where you can see fish which supply the attached restaurant, the Rugova gorge and Pristina. ‘But we have no money to pay for the bus for the day.’

Well, I had said I would like to help her village group, so I offered to pay for the bus, on the condition that I could go with them. This caveat was partly fuelled by suspicion, wondering where 200 euros might end up if left unattended. I couldn’t believe that this group of 50-100 village women with an idea for setting off for a day trip round their whole country was really going to materialise. But I could also now understand, in a way that I wouldn’t have done before meeting Shqipja and her sister, how getting two or three euros each from their husbands or fathers to fund the trip just wouldn’t be possible.

They claimed that they would love to have me along, so we fixed a date and with some nervousness I caught a shared kombi minibus from Pristina to join the Skënderaj beekeeping women for a works outing, Kosovo style. My nervousness was in many forms – had my Albanian been good enough for the women to know that I would be paying for the bus, but not for anything else? Had it been clear enough that I would be paying for the bus but not organising hiring it? If they had hired it and it then fell over/broke down/killed us all, would they or their legatees hold me responsible? Morally, would I be responsible? Would it be a day full of the wearing form of organised jollity that as a boarding school survivor I rebel against? Would the women see my presence as a dampener? As a sign of my suspicion? As a patronising gesture? Would I get travel sick?

And then in the kombi on the way to join the group in Skënderaj I saw a new risk to my health and happiness. This small space was shared by ten passengers, squeezed onto each other’s laps, up against hips, sharing unanticipatedly intimate moments on the bumps in the tarmac. And then someone called out from beyond my neighbour – I couldn’t see quite where – ‘is it OK if I smoke?’

My English soul cried out about laws concerning such things in public places, about my own little lungs. But I found myself inexplicably soothed by the poisoning humanity of the driver’s reply – not ‘it’d cost me my job, mate’ but ‘it’s fine; would you like a cigarette?’ It was then that I remembered that I was going to be spending a day with a large group of nicotine addicts in an enclosed space. I breathed deeply – and wished I hadn’t.

At the end of the kombi route, Shqipja was waiting for me, the excursion bus-driver was waiting, and an excited gaggle of 25 women was on the bus already. I handed my money to the driver and hoped that my responsibilities were over for the day. I sat down and leaned back and started to count how many of my worries were still valid.

None, as it turned out. Shqipja was an excellent manager – of time, of people, of me. We did indeed get to Prekaz, the trout park, the Rugova gorge, and even had time to divert to Prizren before coming to Pristina. She conscientiously counted everyone on and off the bus at each stop, warned them about staying together, charmed the driver when he had to be asked to do a few extra favours for us, and was clearly a born leader. Bee metaphors naturally sprang to mind. I saw the power of the little (or not so little) group she had organised in her village and had a growing sense of respect for her. I just wished she had something else to do all day than watch her bees and kick her brother off MSN to send me messages.

Chatting with her and her neighbours, the main topic of conversation was marriage. Two of the girls were engaged and had proudly shown me their rings. I asked how they met their husbands-to-be, and after the briefest of pauses they explained that these were arranged marriages. A member of the family or of the village would have done the scouting for appropriate partners, and then the couple was allowed to meet.

I knew that this sometimes happened, but hadn’t realised how widespread it still is. I asked Shqipja whether she would use a match- maker and she said she wouldn’t. She has four sisters married through matchmakers, and said she doesn’t like any of their husbands so she didn’t see it as a very reliable method. But another unmarried girl I asked said that she would. After all, she explained, if something goes wrong in the marriage and you’ve used a matchmaker then people will help you. If you’ve chosen the partner yourself, and you have problems then you’re on your own.

I was told that when the matchmaker goes to the potential groom’s house to arrange the match, honey is smeared in his shoes, to ensure that his words will be sweet. When I was also told that he puts eggs in them to ensure the fertility of the relationship it sounded like a recipe for a rather nice dessert. But when I heard that his shoelaces have to be untied too, to ensure that there will be no knots in the matchmaking process, I decided it was more like a recipe for disaster. What good family would allow their son to be married to someone who is championed by a fool with his laces undone, and a squelching sound as he walks?

As it was a Saturday, we passed a number of wedding processions as our bus drove along the crazy roads of Kosovo, and at each one the beekeeper girls were set off squealing and squinting at the bride and the decorations. The music playing in the bus, too, was all about wed- dings. I’d never noticed until hearing it in this new context, but the traditional songs that are still the main thing you hear on Kosovan taxi drivers’ cassette players, or on the radio, are largely about weddings. Not about love, but about marriage. And when they came on over the bus sound system, Shqipja and friends grinned, ‘it’s like a wedding’, a ‘kanax - heq’ (the women-only day out of the three or so that make up a Kosovan wedding) and some of them got up and started dancing on the bus (time for a little more of Shqipja’s charm on our driver). I realised that weddings were the only chance they got to dance.

Many of the women told me this was their first sight of their country’s tourist spots. I kept quiet about the times I’d visited all of these sites in the two short years I’d been in Kosovo – how many trips I’d taken beyond my home, with or without my partner, free in our safe, affordable jeep, to follow our whims.

The older women – that day there were a few with us in their seventies, including the mother of Shqipja and Lendita – seemed to be having a whale of a time too. Like so many older women in Kosovo, they were headscarved and large. It struck me that once the indulged phase of childhood is over here, old age might be the next best part of a Kosovan woman’s life. There is a genuine respect for old age that translates into a care for older people even when they are in full health and energy. At that point, women seem to have less, if any, housework to do – if you have spent your middle years successfully then you have a household full of your sons’ wives to do that – just like baby Alban’s grandmother who was out when I’d visited, but whose household was being serviced by what families refer to as ‘our brides’. You may still have children to look after, but, as much as any grandmother in the world, you can spoil them without regard for consequences. And when guests come, you have no obligation to talk to them or busy round them as the rest of the house does. You may sit and hear them out, get up and shuffle off to your room (as many women have disconcertingly done while I am in mid-conversational flow with the younger generations of their family) or speak your mind and know it will be listened to. With the limited requirements for exercise, you can grow fat, and no-one will mind. You can grow into your old age without hair dyes or gyms or any of the curses of the Western mutton dressing as lamb.

From listening to these older women you would think you were on a school trip. They oohed and aahed with the rest. When we got to the deep and dramatic Rugova Gorge, one turned to another and said

‘we should have come here during the war’ as if the Albanians’ exodus to Macedonia had been an adventure chosen inadvisedly from a tourist brochure.

At lunch time we sat down in the Rugova Gorge and brought out our picnics. Some of the group hunted wild strawberries and Lendita shared the water she’d bottled from her well. This was my first chance to have a proper conversation with any of the group other than Shqipja and Lendita who had been sitting next to me on the bus. Others from the group now crowded round, seeming intrigued by me. I thought we would talk beekeeping, but they were interested in other things. One touched my nose stud and wanted to know whether it hurt. Another was near my feet, and started playing with my anklet like a child. I wished I had shaved my legs more recently. Since we were all looking at my feet now, her friend spotted the scars on each foot ‘did your shoes rub?’ she asked, fingering the ragged blisters. It’s intimacy that I’m just not used to with other women.

As ever, they wanted to know about my marriage, my lack of children. My answer to the procreation question varies according to context. Most of the time I try to be honest, explaining that I don’t want children – want to be independent, have time with my ‘husband’, be able to travel and to work. There are enough children in the world, I don’t need to produce any more. And I have a lovely nephew and niece and three god-daughters, I teach in a primary school – I have plenty of children I can enjoy spending time with. And it’s ‘different in England.’

All this usually cuts no ice with Kosovars. So sometimes I just say lamely ‘not yet’, which receives a pitying look because they know my time is running out, and they presume I am still hoping. There are still cases of bigamy here where a man takes another wife when his first has failed to produce a child, and in some cases, the older woman even chooses the younger on his behalf.

I haven’t yet had the guts to act on the tip from a friend who has also chosen not to have children but who, in Kosovo, invents a family that she can refer to at awkward moments like this.

I decided that their attitude to someone who doesn’t want children might be similar to the attitude towards a childless woman in the UK who doesn’t want a job. Protesting that you wanted to be free to follow your own interests, have time with your husband; that there are enough people looking for work, and that you don’t need to add to their com- petition – it would still be considered by many to be a waste of talent. British mainstream culture can’t help it, and nor could the Kosovars when faced with a childless woman.

When I got off the bus, at the end of our intense, exhausting, oestrogen-rich beekeepers’ holiday, all the women thanked me, shook my hand, kissed me. Two of the older ones gave me the best blessing they could think of: ‘may God make you pregnant with a boy child tonight.’ I thanked them politely, and of course couldn’t stop myself from wishing Lendita and Shqipja luck that somehow soon we could find them a job…