Pregnant in Pristina

Pristina was my first experience as a trailing partner. We did not yet have any kids and I was determined to find some work relating to the masters degree I was completing, in international and intercultural management, with a focus on conflict transformation. I could not, at that point, even imagine babygroups and sing-alongs at the clubs that I later relied upon for meeting people and learning how things worked. I spent a lot of time in tiny smoky internet cafés where I kept in touch with my friends far away and worked on my resume, visiting organizations to see if they might have any work or volunteer opportunities.

I realized I was pregnant at about the same time that I started volunteering with an organization that helped organize Serb and Albanian youth groups. We would travel up to Mitrovica, near the northern border with Serbia and check in with the groups. This didn’t last long- I chose to stop going when I learned Mitrovica was heavily polluted with lead from a mine that was still operating. Another factor in my decision to stop was that it was Ramadan, I had not told my fasting colleagues that I was pregnant, and I felt bad eating in front of them though that was the only thing that could quell the horrible nausea of my first trimester.

Staying home wasn’t a great alternative. The family who owned our house lived in the basement apartment and the mother and grandmother would do our laundry and clean for us. They were wonderful hosts to us, warm and generous. Unfortunately for the nauseous pregnant lady, their generosity often came in the form of leaving a plate on our table filled with pickled and cabbage-influenced treats. I had loved them when we first arrived in Kosovo in October but by December the fumes would send me fleeing. The hallway became a dangerous zone that I would run through, holding my nose, to avoid breathing the scent of their dinner downstairs.

I tried to spend as much time as I could outside but it was a fierce winter and I only saw one snowplow in Pristina the whole winter, far from our house. In our neighborhood the snow would pile up then freeze down into glaciers full of crevasses and slushy pits big enough to incapacitate an SUV that got stuck, blocking the road for over a week. There was no possibility of a garbage truck coming through for collection so the contents of the dumpster on the corner was regularly set on fire in order to make space, pouring clouds of acrid smoke through the streets to mingle with the sulfurous smell of burning coal. I would wobble over the icy ruts to the internet café where to search online for information about being pregnant, reading articles intended for Americans about subjects like avoiding being stuck in traffic jams because of exposure to dangerous chemicals in exhaust. Then I would head home along smoky streets, apologizing to the little person growing inside me and telling him to hold his breath.

I was not disappointed when funding for my husbands’ position dried up and we had to return to the US ahead of schedule. We settled in the mountains of Western North Carolina for the four months until our son was born, hoping that the clean air and good food would make up for the less healthy environment in which he got started.

Eleven years and two more children later, I'm enjoying reflecting on that stint in Kosovo, wishing that it could have been longer and that I'd paid less attention to advice online. Our son continues to thrive.

(note: checking out my memory with Google some eleven years later, I’m learning that Roma children living in UN IDP camps in Mitrovica had lead levels that are among the highest recorded anywhere, and families who were only intended to stay in the camps for 45 days ended up living in this toxic environment for nine years)