In July 2001, not long after the conflict in Yugoslavia, I took on a job with the FAO, the Food and Agriculture section of the United Nations, in Kosovo. It came about because Ron Jackson, a New Zealand vet and epidemiologist who travelled the world visiting trouble spots was looking for someone who might be interested in working there.
At the time of my arrival, a 28,000-strong NATO-led security force involving 35 nations patrolled Kosovo. NATO had become involved after the Kosovo Liberation Army — Albanian revolutionaries — had risen up against Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian regime, who had been in power since the 1980s. Albanians dominated the population but were treated like second-class citizens. The Serbs retaliated and the conflict became bloody so NATO took control. Those Serbs remaining in Kosovo were subjected to revenge attacks and most lived in ‘enclaves’. When visiting them, we had to go via guard posts.
Disintegration of the Serbian leadership had left a policy void relating to animal health services. No one knew what to do, no one knew what diseases were important and there were no defined responsibilities for the private and public sectors. Ron was pretty well in charge of defining the situation and determining what was required. One thing he felt was needed was someone to get local vets thinking about herd and flock health programmes. So I responded to his request for a vet with suitable experience in this line of work to help.
Agriculture is important for Kosovo, which has a population of two million and is one of the poorer regions in Europe. Outside the main towns, most of these people live in villages comprising perhaps 80 houses with 30–40 of the houses owning a cow or two. During the crisis the cows were either stolen or shot and eaten by the Serbs, so the returning Albanians had no cows — vitally important to them for milk, yogurt and cheese, which make up a significant part of their diet. To overcome this crisis the United Nations gathered up 2500 in-calf Simmental and Swiss Brown heifers, mainly from Austria and Germany, and distributed these to farmers in December 2000 — usually one cow per family. One of the conditions of receiving a cow was that any heifer calf born had to be given back for redistribution and the cow had to be impregnated for the next redistribution. But there were lots of problems with getting these cows back in calf.
Historically the main method of impregnation was by artificial insemination and as a result there were not many bulls around. Unfortunately the critical timing for insemination to take place was invariably missed. Oft en telephones did not work, the vet might not have access to a car, or the owner missed seeing that the cow was on heat. The big imported heifers, housed for 90 per cent of the day, did not show the typical oestrus behaviour of the small indigenous cow the farmers were used to. To top it off many of the cow owners could not, forgive the pun, give a ‘damn’. Most had other jobs and all were trying to rebuild their lives and their houses. Getting the cow back in calf was low on the priority list. One day while I was there the FAO boss rang from Rome to see how things were going. I don’t think he was impressed when I told him we didn’t want any more semen from Europe. All we wanted was lots of randy little bulls — Jersey bulls from New Zealand would be ideal.
I was based in Pristina and living at the Park Hotel. It certainly wasn’t the Park Royal. In fact it used to be a brothel in the days when the Serbs were in control but unfortunately there was no sign of the previous occupant of my room. The walls were a shocking purple, the water — when it ran — was cold, power was only sometimes on, and sleep was difficult. Very early every morning I would be rudely awoken by calls to prayer from a tone-deaf muezzin shouting through a megaphone on top of a minaret outside my window.
I would walk to the FAO office each morning and then head out with the driver and an Albanian vet, who acted as interpreter, to ‘vet stations’ around the country. Here we would oft en spend a good part of the day discussing issues with vets and vet technicians, perhaps visit a few crook animals on farms, and generally try to change the world. It was not an easy mission. Firstly there was a language barrier and difficulties with interpreters. I found talking using an interpreter very tiring and sometimes quite a challenge, not helped by the fact there were always people coming and going during these meetings. Farmers would oft en charge in and jabber away with the vet, who then leaped up and disappeared for 10 minutes. Sometimes the vet also disappeared to go and do a bit of praying. When he eventually returned, you started up again. Then someone would bring in coffee. This stuff
was strong as hell, thick and sweet and not too bad. Once you had had a couple of these you didn’t need to eat much for the rest of the day. It was also probably one of the reasons that I didn’t sleep well the whole time I was there.
Semi-wild dogs, many apparently with rabies, were common in the city. After dark, these dogs would appear and congregate around the overflowing rubbish skips parked on every second corner, fighting for the best scraps off and on throughout the night. Then as dawn approached they went and holed up somewhere and the crows took over. They made quite a din, as did the mosquitoes, which seemed to enjoy a bit of Kiwi blood. Then the tuneless singing from the minaret eventually forced me to give up all hope of sleep. I could understand why there was tension in the country.
The first few weeks in Kosovo were spent helping local vets learn a few basics, such as pregnancy testing cows and getting them to think about preventative medicine. They were very good at attending to sick animals or calving cows but the bulk of their work revolved around treating ‘downer cows’ or those with mastitis, and removing retained foetal membranes. Many of the health problems in cows suggested a selenium deficiency, but it was not possible to prove this while I was there because there were no animal health laboratories. Later on some bloods that Ron Jackson had collected for other tests were analysed in Britain and this confirmed very low seleniums. Something about the communist background meant people never asked why. If there was a problem such as a retained placenta, they knew how to remove it but no one had ever thought to ask why they were getting so many. Their philosophy was, ‘This is what it is; this is what you do. End of story.’
The written word was also gospel. One day I visited a relatively modern clinic where a very prominent and respected vet was treating an old horse with what appeared to be chronic parasitism. He was stomach tubing it, which involves gently feeding a plastic hose through the nasal passages and down the oesophagus to the stomach, and then pouring the medicine down the tube. In this case he was using an early type anthelmintic, or wormer. When I suggested he might like to try a newer more effective product, Ivomectin, because we had found it very successful in such cases, he refused to even contemplate it. He kept telling me that it was only for cattle. I kept telling him that it also works well in horses. He got more and more angry and then stomped off and brought out a packet of Ivomec which admittedly did say ‘for cattle only’. In his mind if it wasn’t written down that it was for horses, then it wasn’t for horses. End of story. And no one, least of all a vet from New Zealand, wherever that was, was going to tell him otherwise.
Most cows were locked up in their small barn for most of the day and only let out for a couple of hours of grazing — if they were lucky. Conserved food, mainly hay and meal, was brought to them. As the soil seemed very fertile and grew great lucerne, I wondered why stock were not grazed outside for longer periods. The lack of fencing was probably the main reason. I thought electric fencing would have been very useful but when I finally got one farmer to understand the concept, he proudly told me that my idea wouldn’t work — the fence would be stolen.
I think another reason the calves were never let outside was because they didn’t know how to control them. I went to one farm where the calf, which was about two months old, was with its mother in a stifling hot, crammed barn with shocking ventilation. It had sore feet and horrible skin lesions and from what I could gather had never been outside. I told the farmer, in fluent Albanian of course, to bring it out of the smelly hovel and give it some fresh air — which he reluctantly did. The calf, on a very long leash, was so delighted that he ran about skipping and jumping and knocking everyone over, and came right immediately — all he needed was a bit of fresh air, exercise and sunlight.
The Serbs behaved differently to the Albanians and the whole time I was there I never went into an Albanian farmhouse. The Albanian wife, all dressed in black, would usually rush out with coffee after we had finished a job and then vanish. We would sit down in the shade under a tree and quietly drink our thick, black, sweet tumbler of coffee. It was a very male-orientated society.
The few Serbs I met were very different. One day we visited a Serb vet and his wife at their home under some large old plum trees in an enclave. We were invited inside his house, introduced to his wife and family and before we could get into any meaningful discussion had to try his homemade yogurt, and then his homemade cheese and finally his homemade slivovic, a fermented plum alcohol and a potent brew.
However, that was after we had waited for him for some time to return from a call on the other side of the enclave to AI a cow. I expected him to roll up in a Skoda but instead he turned up pushing a squeaky wheelbarrow containing his semen tank. We then sat down in his house and memories of my student days flooded back. It smelt like a student flat, was as untidy as a student flat, and we were all drunk by 11am. By midday we knew everything, had solved all the world’s problems, and the four of us—Albanian vet interpreter, driver, Serbian vet and Kiwi vet were exceptionally good buggers. Of course every time we refilled and drained our tumblers we had to leap to our feet, link arms, and give each other a whiskery kiss — right cheek, left cheek, and then right cheek again, and toast something. The Serbian vet sang his national anthem, I did a haka. All good stuff and eventually we staggered out of the house and back to FAO headquarters where I proceeded to tell the project manager, whom everyone seemed suitably terrified of, how to solve the world’s problems, including his own.
Before I left the Serb vet, with much ceremony he gave me a bottle of the good stuff — all nicely wrapped up in a plastic bag. So after sorting out the project manager I headed back to the ex-brothel and gave the bottle another wee nudge. I felt I deserved it, because in my opinion it had been a very successful day.
After I had spent a few weeks working with dairy cows and their clients and the dairy vets, I headed south to the pretty town of Prizren. The nicely cobbled, tree-lined streets were only spoiled by the rubbish which lay everywhere. In fact most of Kosovo was covered in rubbish. I spent a couple of weeks in the area looking into how sheep were managed and spent time talking to sheep vets and managers of the flocks.
Sheep are farmed principally for their milk in Kosovo. The indigenous breed, the Sharri, is oft en crossed with a German breed (Wintemberg), the cross producing a fast-growing lamb. Owners house their sheep at home over the winter but after lambing, the flocks, which are oft en only a handful of ewes, are driven up to beautiful rolling hill country with natural clover-dominant pastures where they join with other flocks and are managed in mobs of around 120 ewes. Here they are looked after by a team of four or five shepherds for the summer. The shepherds live in very primitive facilities, hand milking the sheep twice a day and because of wild dogs and wolves, yarding them at night. The milk is made into cheese on site and then transported to town by horse once a week. Despite the lack of hygiene and the abundance of flies crawling over all stages of the cheese maturation process, the finished product was delicious.
Kosovo was an interesting experience for me but in many ways quite frustrating. There were a number of diseases that could have been easily controlled, but the lack of enthusiasm of farmers and vets to change could be understood. Farmers were poor as the financial return for their products was generally very low. Bartering between neighbours helped them survive. There was no infrastructure set up to process milk and this was not encouraged or helped by cheap products being dumped into Kosovo from neighbouring countries. There appeared to be a general lack of enthusiasm from local vets to change their ways and improve their services. As one said to me early on in my visit, ‘Why prevent? We make our money out of treating.’
As there were ‘experts’ from all over the world in all areas of society trying to tell them what to do and how to manage their lives, they were becoming, as one vet put it, ‘experted out’. There were huge changes taking place and what was once, for the majority, a peasant-type existence ruled by an unpopular Serb minority with curfews every night and controlled by an unforgiving military, was now a free society. Just being able to walk the streets at night with their families was a luxury. There were enough changes taking place without the added stress of trying to make them change their ways of farming or vetting.
As I have mentioned I did find it a challenge to communicate through an interpreter all day but it sometimes had its funny side. One morning we visited a relatively large dairy farm, milking about 60 cows and managed by a woman. This was most unusual. She ran a good operation and I was impressed. At the end of the visit I was, through the interpreter, complimenting her on her set up, how she managed it, the excellent hygiene, how her cows looked and their production, and that she also had very nice breasts. I didn’t for one minute think the interpreter would say everything word for word. Well he did. Luckily she didn’t appear to be too upset with what I said and I heard later that she had wanted me to revisit her dairy before I left.
My work in Kosovo was meant to be a two-trip mission. Reports from other vets who had worked in the area went to great lengths to justify ongoing visits, but in my opinion our effectiveness was always going to be limited until a milk treatment factory was built and the Kosovo farmers were paid properly for their milk. Then vets might be reimbursed properly, and might be a little more enthusiastic about improving their services. For now they had had enough of experts telling them what to do.
On my debriefing in Rome, I told them not to waste their money and my time. Advisors were only going to be really effective if they, the local Kosovo vets, knew what they wanted. Up until now, they had been so isolated that most didn’t appreciate how far behind they really were. They certainly didn’t like being told that. Getting a local vet who was well respected by others in Kosovo to gain overseas experience was an idea put forward after I left. This would be far more effective and apparently has since happened.
Needless to say the FAO has not asked me back. However, I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything.