Vulturin' around

By Maja Hrgovic

I was really excited last week, when I parked my car in Radonjska street in Zagreb and approached a small, trashy house at the end of the narrow road. I was looking for Ferida, a woman I used to know back in my university days, when I lived with two room-mates in a cheap rented flat nearby.

I hadn't seen Ferida for ages, and now I was arriving from the past to hear her story, and possibly make it the starting point for my article. I felt like a journalistic vulture when I entered the house - such a small house that one has to bow one’s head to enter - and found her beside the sink, energetically washing the dishes and listening to the news on the radio.

The encounter was, as I hoped it would be, full of emotions. I found out that nothing had hanged in the neighborhood since I left - but in a few years all the houses will be knocked down and another big shopping mall will be built there.

Ferida still works nightshifts in a bakery and sends money back home, to Kosovo, to support her family. Let’s skip the detailed description of our encounter, and just say that Ferida gave me a lot of colorful material to begin the article with (and while I'm writing this, I can't help feeling like a vulture again!).
Meeting Srećko, my local editor, was also a big thing for my story, because he helped me get organised and clarify my list of priorities. He suggested I should start by collecting official data on socio-economic migrations of Balkan women from rural areas to western cities.

I followed his advice and telephoned several international agencies and ministries, and sent several e-mails. While I'm still waiting for some of them to reply, I definitely gained a clearer picture of the problem. (And also, I became aware of the fact that my Italian is much worse than I thought – a couple of years without practice has taken its toll, unfortunately).

Planning the journey to Bulgaria and Romania was pretty difficult: there were so many things to coordinate - meetings, dates, planes... I'll try to squeeze as many investigations as possible into the journey, and I’m counting on Yana's and Adrian's help!

Finally, I’m taking care of my little baby - and we're doing great, thanks to help from enthusiastic grannies and aunts, although I had to reduce this summer's reading list to a few tough books on women and identity (one that I'm reading right now has that very title, and is composed of a series of texts by various authors, published in Belgrade in 2003.). I also got my paws on several issues of "Genero", magazine for feministic theory, published by the Belgrade Centre for Women's Studies.