A Kosovo village struggles to overcome losses of war

In the weeks since, Batusha and other widows have begun filing death certificates with the local municipality so that they might be eligible for pensions. Even before this summer, many had been going to the women's center to learn to drive, to sew, to plant crops, and even to use a computer.

Widow Shkurta Hajdari earned extra money by sewing, and last year she took a job at the village day-care center. "Besides the money, it's good for me," she says, sitting in the twilight outside her house at the edge of the village. "If I stay home, I will think the whole day of my loss."

Not all opportunities for self-help have been welcome.

A few young widows have returned to their parents in other villages to remarry, but this practice is condemned by men and women alike. When Hanumsha Batusha's youngest daughter-in-law remarried, she left behind her 3-year-old daughter. She did this in obedience to ethnic Albanian custom, which assigns children to the husband's family and not to the mother, but custom made it no less painful. "She wanted to take the child along, but we didn't want to let her go," Batusha says.

In many ways, Krushe e Vogel – the Albanian name, adapted from the Serbian, means "little pear" – offers a glimpse of problems that are widespread in Kosovo three years after the war. Few in the village have jobs, and most see few prospects for getting any.

Many families farm small plots outside the village, but their produce fetches little in the glutted local markets. The flood of foreign aid that helped rebuild the village and that employed some of the villagers has slowed to a trickle.

Villagers also are waiting for justice.

Milosevic is charged with the massacre in Krushe e Vogel, among other war crimes, but everyone in Krushe e Vogel points out that he did not act alone. "I do feel a kind of satisfaction when I see Milosevic in The Hague," says Ramadani, whose two sons died in the massacre. "But it will be a greater satisfaction if I see in jail the criminals who committed the crimes here."

Among the guilty, the villagers say, are members of the 30 Serb families who once lived in Krushe e Vogel. The families fled at the end of the war and have not returned. The villagers are furious that United Nations officials want to bring Serb refugees back to Kosovo, perhaps even to Krushe e Vogel, without a broader accounting for war crimes.

For most people, economic problems loom largest.

Hanumsha and Shemsije Batusha share a two-story house that they have partly rebuilt but cannot afford to refurnish. They keep a cow – the gift of a foreign charity – and a flock of chickens. Like other widows, Shemsije Batusha receives a monthly stipend of about $50 from the provincial government. Last summer she also earned $150 by working a month coring peppers in the pepper factory.

The two women grow much of their own food in a vegetable garden next to the house, but not even this simple effort toward self-sufficiency is easy.

Because of shortages, the local water authority forbids villagers to use household water to irrigate crops and has threatened Hanumsha Batusha with a $500 fine. "What can we do?" she says. Defiantly, they water.

In ways large and small, people in Krushe e Vogel are learning to manage, while they defer their hopes to their children.

Shemsije Batusha says she will find peace only when her 8-year-old son, Mevlan, grows up to take a man's place in the family.

For now he is just a skinny boy who likes to climb trees, and she has much to do. She chops wood, cooks meals, looks after her mother-in-law, and waits for the peppers to ripen so she can earn some money.

"I want to work, if I have the chance," she says, with determination.

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