Arriving in Prizren early in the afternoon of the 7th of August, we took our map during the break lunch and pointed randomly one village around Prizren: Velika Krusa, in abanian Krusha e Madhe. We found easily a bus to go there, but when the driver stopped us on the road, we realized that the beginning of the crazy trip started: we didnt know where we were, we only saw the road and few houses. “Let’s go the the heart of the village”: direstion the mosquee on the top of the hill.
200 meters walking, we found the “city center”: 3 pubs, 2 shops and few trucks full of vegetables waiting for customers. One guy came to us, speaking a bit of french and german, asking us if we were lost. “No, No”. the place looked perfect for for our first village in Kosovo.
We found hospitality of the villagers very quickly, they hosted us in the kindergarden of the village, offered us coffees and drinks, presented us people who were speaking german (thanks to Pero to be our translator!).
The next day, we started our “job”; at 9AM we met kids in the cultural house (nice and quiet place, offered by a dutch NGO, with a library and a teater). Around 40 kids were present, enjoyed our little show and learnt slowly but surely the basics od juggling. For the afternoon (from 5Pm to 7PM) and the day after, we were playing in the school, and all the kids were always present. Working by groups of 10 kids for each one of us, we started to have a quite good organization during those 2 days: making balls and playing with them, playing with pois, then making many games, not necessarily realted to juggling but which entertained the children.
One the morning of the 9th arrived our precious finish friend Prijatta (already with us in Kumanovo, Leskovac and Shutka). She gave us a nice help during the second day and bring a lot od positive energy for the group. Thanks to her! She stayed with us until our departure to the next village and took a bus in the opposite direction than our… to go back to Finland. We had an other special guest, Hirono, a japanese traveller who met our friend Carlsten in Skopje, and who wanted to visit Kosovo. She arrived at the end of the 2nd fire performance and found us in the dark of the night, due to the breakdown of electricity and with many troubles with our cellphones… complicated situation!
Like in the other towns before, we made during the nights fire performances. First afraid by the use of benzil instead of parafin, we were anyway to excited to play in a new town to stop ourselves. We made a short test to be sure the use of benzil was secure ans went on the “Eagle Boulevard”, a parking place in front of an amazingly huge albanian flag painted on the wall of a house. Villagers, as much as us, enjoyed to see the fire juggling show which gave lights in the red and black frame.
Those two days were intensive, so we have been lucky to receive the hospitality of the villagers until the end of this trip. The Mayer gave us a ride until the next village, on the way to Peja.
Tags: juggling, Kosovo, Krushe e madhe
