TEN YEARS ON: WOMEN’S IDP AND REFUGEE CLUB - LINGVA KRALJEVO

 

Women at work

 

NPA’s partner Lingua from Kraljevo has been the host of the Women’s IDP and Refugee Club for the past ten years. Lingva’s initial goal was to take women IDPs and refugees out of the gloomy collective centres in Kraljevo municipality and give them a place in the premises of Lingva where they could gather to socialize and jointly make handicraft items and try to escape their sad realities, if only for a few hours at a time.  In the beginning, the club consisted of 60 women for whom Lingva provided with basic tools and raw materials (wool, knitting needles and threads) to create their handicrafts. The items they made were exhibited at the Women’s Club and were occasionally purchased by sporadic visitors to the club.

 

Products for sale

Today, ten years later, the situation at the Club is very different. The Club now has over 120 members - women IDPs and refugees - and their handicraft production has expanded from basic wool and lace knitting to hand weaving, woodwork, jute and hemp processing, pottery and vitrage. Last autumn, they even added the traditional, Serbian winter pantry mainstays ajvar (pepper spread) plum and peach jams to their offerings. Their items are now regularly sold not only at the club’s premises but also at fairs in nearby towns and tourist spas, while Italian and Japanese entrepreneurs even place orders for their products a few times a year. 

 

 

Duska coordinator - heart of the Club

According to the Club’s coordinator Dusanka Jakovljevic, “The club will take a big and important step towards self-sustainability when it starts process of registration as social cooperative in May 2010.” Dusanka has been coordinator since the very first day and is very happy to see how the club has been growing, “This is not a typical workshop. This is our little heaven where our members share memories and sorrows but also revive tradition and find some happiness”.

NPA visited the crowded Women’s Club at the Lingua Community development centre on March 18th and talked to some of the members about what the Club means to them: 
   

Simka and Milanka

Simka Bogicevic (65) fled her home in Dobri Do, near Pec, Kosovo in 1999. Until November 2009, Simka lived with her husband in the collective centre “Maricic”. After the formal closing of this collective centre (the largest in Serbia), she was relocated with her sick husband to the collective centre “Triglav”. Simka shares, “I can’t imagine my life without Women’s Club. This is my little haven. This is where I keep my sanity. Living between four walls in a collective centre is living in a nightmare without waking up.”

Milanka Memarovic (70) fled the torching of her village of Belo Polje near Istok in 1999, Kosovo and, fearing for her safety there, says she has no intentions of going back. Like her friend Simka, she has been a member of the Club since the beginning. The two are “veteran” knitters and their sweaters, vests and socks are real pieces of art. Milanka adds: “I can’t live without the Women’s Club either. This is the only place where I feel useful and where my life has meaning. I can’t possibly think how my life would be without Dusanka and the Lingua team.” 

 

 

Goca and Bobana - youth in exile

Gordana Vujovic (39) is a mother of three children from Pristina, Kosovo. When she and her family were displaced from Kosovo, they made their home in what was once her grandparents’ small summer cottage in Kraljevo. They were disorientated and found it difficult to integrate into the community. Finding Lingva meant much for her and her family than learning how to make traditional crafts: “If there were no Lingva, I would probably have been in a psychiatric clinic today. Here, we get all the assistance we need – my children attended Lingva kindergarten, when they get sick, I take them to Lingva doctor, when I feel bad, I talk to a Lingva psychologist and other women.When I started to come to Lingva, I felt like I was born again. This is our second home.” And even though she received assistance to write a project proposal and received a loom from HELP so that she could earn money from home, she has a hard time staying away for long. “Whenever I come to the centre of Kraljevo, I must visit Lingva, even if there are no activities of Women’s Club going on at that moment. We really suffer in summer time when the Club is closed for two or three months. And I am really happy about this new plan to register as Social Cooperative. We keep on learning new techniques and the more one knows, the more one is worth. The more friends one have, the more rich that person is. At the same time, this Centre prevents old arts and crafts from being forgotten. Being a member of this Club is really beautiful and it will stay beautiful as long as we are together in this. With all the stress we had and still have, who knows what would happen to us if there was no Lingva. We have each other, but those poor old people left alone in collective centres, they only have Ana, the Lingva psychologist who visits them.”

 

Rosa and her art

Rosa Lazic (50) from Mlecane, near Djakovica, Kosovo, is living with her disabled parents in Beranovac. She and her sister Stojanka, who lives with her husband and four children in the collective centre in Vitanovac, are weavers, and their pieces are in high demand. The income from the sale of their products is the only source of income for their whole family. She is also one of the veterans of the women’s club and is very happy to see how the club has grown.

 

Biljana - the artist from Kraljevo

Biljana Dobric (20) is from Kraljevo and is not an IDP or Refugee, but she also faces a number of challenges. She lives with her sick mother, an unemployed brother and a father who works but cannot earn enough for the whole family. She studied art in High School but can’t afford to continue her studies further at this time. “I joined the Women’s Club a month ago in order to contribute to my family budget doing what I like the most. I really enjoy the company here. Now I am painting motives on wooden stools and developing ideas to start making adornments. I’ve learned how to crochet, and my knitting and embroidery skills have improved. I’d like to stay in this Club since we’ve really developed deep friendships.”  She hopes that one day she will be able to afford to continue with her studies, but in the meantime, she enjoys coming to the Centre to work and to spend time sharing ideas and some laughs with the other women.

 

Vida with her loom

 

Vidosava Simic (66), from Prizren, Kosovo is a true master of weaving. She lives alone in Kraljevo and really misses her son, who lives with his wife and three children in a tiny 23m2 flat in Belgrade. She is a very proud grandmother who sees the Women’s Club and her loom there as both a way to help her cover her living expenses and also as a place to forget about the emptiness she feels when she can’t see her family.

 

Painting and vitrage

 

Bobana Filic (34) is a mother of two from Kosovo Polje, who came to Kraljevo with her husband and his parents. She joined the club when her children started attending the Lingva kindergarten. “To me, the happiest time was last autumn when we started to make preserved food. I did not know how to make it before, but learned from other women. Our jams, fruit juices, and ajvar all sold out! The joint preparation of preserves reminded us all of the old custom of moba, when all women of a village would get together, work together, tell stories and sing. We were really overloaded with work, and we had so many orders, but we did it all together…arriving together, working and eating together and leaving together after each long day, but at the end of each week, we each earned 5.000 dinars to take home!” 

 

 

Biljana - natural born artist

Biljana Misur (31) is a refugee from Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina whose mother was originally from Kraljevo.  When they came in 1992, they stayed with her mothers’ parents. She graduated from the medical high school and passed eight exams at the Nurse college before having to give it up because her family couldn’t afford it. “Two years ago, I met granny Vida and I was really overwhelmed with joy after I saw her handicrafts. I did not know anything of all these arts and crafts. But immediately after that meeting I joined the Club and learned how to weave, embroidery, crochet…I am still slow, but I am getting better….Now, I have asked all my family members to send to me Bosnian arts and crafts and typical Bosnian ornaments….Here, they all use Kosovo traditional ornaments. It seems that here in the Club I discovered that in my soul I am a natural born artist, and I really enjoy painting on bottles. I have found myself in these old arts and crafts.” 

 

Radmila Vuckovic in sweater she knitted

Radmila Vuckovic (66) from Klina, Kosovo has been walking from Beranovac to Kraljevo to attend the Women’s Club ever since the local government stopped issuing monthly bus passes to elderly IDPs in June 2009: “This is where I share the burden of homesickness and where I feel useful. I will keep walking to Women’s club, although I am old and weak, because this is where I find my peace thanks to Dusanka, the doctors and Lingva’s leaders.”

Even without their bus passes, Radmila (66), Simka (65), Milanka (70) and the other “veterans” will keep coming to the Club to practice their age old crafts, earn some money and to enjoy their “little oasis” in each other’s company.