Albanian Brides Revive Serbia’s Dying Villages

Albanian Brides Revive Serbia’s Dying Villages
| 08 January 2009 | By Zoran Maksimovic in Novi Pazar

In the depopulated rural Sandzak region, Serbian bachelors are learning that love – and the hope of family life – comes from northern Albania.

The village of Budjevo, on the high Pester plains of Serbia’s Sandzak region, is a desolate place, with winter temperatures plunging down as far as minus -40oC.

But the air of emptiness and abandonment may be changing at last. Little Milos Matovic, the first baby born in the village for many years, is now a year old, and Budjevo has welcomed several more children into its ranks in recent months.

There is nothing unusual, perhaps, in local bachelors getting married and starting families.

What is more unusual, given the traditional intolerance in the Balkans between Serbs and Albanians, is that several recent marriages in this village have been mixed, with Serbian grooms marrying Albanian brides.

The villagers insist that it doesn’t matter that the brides come from northern Albania. The important thing is for local boys to get married and have children.

Little Milos is himself the fruit of one of these mixed marriages. His father, Radeta Matovic, is a well known local Serb, while his mother, Vera, comes from a village in northern Albania, near Shkoder.
Vera is still learning Serbian, while Radeta has learned a few words in Albanian too.

Until recently, the only words Vera could say in Serbian were “fine” or “great” and she mainly communicated with her husband through hand gestures. Today, she speaks more fluently to her husband, though in Serbian that is still clumsy.

“Communicating is not a problem,” says Radeta. “Vera has adjusted as if she was born here. Now we do all the chores around the house together.”

Marriages like Radeta’s and Vera’s are becoming increasingly frequent in the remote corner of south-west Serbia known as the Sandzak, or Raska, region.

Apparently, about 80 such marriages have taken place in the last two years alone between Serbian bachelors and Albanians brides.

Though well aware that relations between Serbs and Albanians are usually poor, in this area, circumstances have forced people to think differently. Most local Serbs applaud the phenomenon, though a minority fear the practice of marrying Albanian women could lead to the area becoming “Albanianised”.

The stories of most of the grooms are similar. The local girls leave the villages to go to school and then find jobs in the cities and stay there.

The boys, on the other hand, remain at home, obliged to help their parents, and eventually inheriting the pastures herds. But the ageing parents of those men have only one wish, which is to see grandchildren and know their farms and households will not end up abandoned.

As for the Albanian girls, they, too, often lack suitable partners for marriage in their home district. Poverty forces most village boys around Shkoder to depart to work in Greece or other countries. They often marry there and remain abroad. That is how a similar fate has connected boys from south-west Serbia with girls from northern Albania.

Brides usually meet their future husbands in one of the villages near Shkoder. After, the parents of the brides-to-be go to check up on where their daughters will live.

“The boys from our villages go to Greece to work and also get married there, so we don’t really have a choice,” one Albanian bride explained. “We want husbands, kids, and family harmony.”
Aferdita Crnisanin, the only court interpreter in the Raska area who speaks Albanian, told Balkan Insight that she had attended the weddings of more than 20 such couples, mostly in the municipalities of Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin.

Crnisanin admits that most of the brides do not speak a word of Serbian on their wedding day, but says that clearly does not represent an obstacle. “The good thing about it is that everyone is satisfied in these cases,” she said.

She says some marriageable girls come to Serbia for a “test” period to live in their new home for a couple of months, and only then get married. According to her, there has not been a single divorce so far as a result of these mixed marriages, which speaks about the practice.

Radisa Savic, a Serb from Sopocani, says his wife did not need a test run. His home yearned for a woman’s touch, he says. He had lived with his father for years until an Albanian named Pamvera agreed to marry him. “She is so hard-working that I couldn’t get on without her now,” Savic said.

Semiha Kacar, president of the Sandzak Committee for Protection of Human Rights, says the recent spate of local mixed marriages is helping to keep struggling villages alive.
“It’s good that rural households do not fold, because the migration of the population from the villages to the cities is very pronounced,” she said.

Kacar notes that women from villages in this part of Serbia have been marrying for centuries without knowing much about their future husbands. Such decisions were in the hands of family elders, so the fact that brides are marrying boys today that they barely know is nothing unusual.

The idea to find wives for local bachelors was originally promoted by the humanitarian organisation Stara Raska (Old Raska), which is based in Belgrade.

Mainly financed by the Serbian community in Canada, Stara Raska is trying to counter the effects of depopulation and the rural flight of Serbs from this part of the country.
“There are several thousand Serbian Orthodox bachelors aged between 25 and 45 in this region but ‘the white plague’ [contraception] is having dire consequences, primarily on the Orthodox population, changing the whole demographics in the Raska area,” Vojin Vucicevic, the organisation’s president, said.

“Stara Raska does not undertake a classic matchmaking role but… helps them,” Vucicevic told Balkan Insight.

He said that in the beginning it had been very difficult to set up contacts between local bachelors and marriageable girls from further afield, but now it was easier, thanks to the help of the new Raska wives who have come from Albania.

Vucicevic said that his organisation was expanding its activities. “Having realised the importance of our role in assisting marriages in Sjenica, several months ago we founded the Association of Grooms from Stara Raska, which includes all the mixed marriages,” he said. “Members of this Association will play a crucial role in the creation of new marriages.”

Milinko Rakonjac, from the village of Stavalj, was one of the first in these parts to marry an Albanian. He said he was persuaded to set off to a village near Shkoder by a woman who specialised in matchmaking.

Others groups and individuals, from clergy to local associations, are now also involved. “It is no secret that a priest from these parts is involved in matchmaking,” one local groom who recently married a bride from Albania, said.

The same man said the Association of Serbs and Montenegrins in Albania, which has around 30,000 members in Ljes, Drac, Korca, Elbasan and Tirana, also plays a role in helping to fix up potential life partners.

Not everyone is delighted by the influx of Albanian wives, however. Some believe it will eventually mean the “Albanisation” of the region.
“These Albanian women who marry our people do not speak a word of Serbian and when they have children, their native tongue will be Albanian,” one local complained.

But Stara Raska disagrees, adding that men from the Raska area have no other choice, and this way of choosing their life partner is quite acceptable if it prevents the death of family households.
“Claims about ‘Albanianisation’ are denied by the fact that these women give up Catholicism, take up Orthodoxy, marry in Orthodox churches and give their children Serbian names,” Vucicevic said.

Mirko Popovac, a local journalist, agreed that fears of “Albanianisation” are exaggerated. “This phenomenon is not so widespread that it can endanger the national identity of this part of Serbia,” he said.
He said it was commendable that marriageable girls wanted to live in the Serbian countryside and give birth to children there.

It is not a good thing if marriages are made without love, he went on. However, he added, the fact most families speak highly of the experience proves that these marriages are working out.