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June 05, 2007
Waiting for Fabio
We arrived in Gjakova to discover that, the day after 83 staff and students arrive in Kosovo, KFOR are due to demolish the hostel we stay in and run the summer school – Whoopee do!
The Konvict, as the hostel is somewhat auspiciously called. In 1999 the top floor was fire bombed.
So It’s cling-clang pick up the phone and speak to Fabio, Tenente Nuzzo to you, and ask if he can call off the Khaki bulldozers for a week. He invites us over for a meeting with the Italian Kosovo Multi-National Task Force West.
It was a stop start slalom of concrete road blocks and temporary traffic lights to get to the main gate where we were met by heavily armed camouflaged men sporting expensive sunglasses and brutal haircuts. We were ushered past the wire tangle and through the electric-slidey gate by a brief gesture from the business end of an assault rifle slung, somewhat casually, round the neck of one of the soldiers.
Inside all was khaki and drab greens and camouflage nets mixed with the cold grey sheen of gun metal and high impact dull plastics. Here the men were Men and the vehicles looked like they wouldn’t have any trouble parking anywhere they wanted.
Tenente Martino showed us into a reception area adorned with flags, shields, trophies and large framed photographs of military endeavour. We were joined by others whose various varieties of overly clean hi-performance black boots and neat greeny-brown uniforms stuck with Velcro badges, labels, names and flags proclaimed their position in the pecking order. Brown wrists, below sleeves neatly rolled-up to highlight the biceps brachii, carried expensive watches that could calculate the angle of most things the altitude of everything and tell the time to the nearest split second, They sat or stood using a version of the word relaxed that we were hitherto unfamiliar with. There was a silence.
Tenente Nuzzo, Fabio, hadn’t arrived yet. We waited. Then one tall tanned man stood up and, resting his hand on the sidearm strapped to his thigh, asked if we wanted some fruit flan. Er, what?
Here we were in the heart of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo’s Multi-National Task Force West, and they want to know if we want some cake. We decided it would only be polite to say yes. They produced white plastic forks, paper napkins and paper bowls and, with a precision developed over years of rigorous training, divided the flan into neat sections. And we sat there, in a bizarre mix of Full Metal Jacket and my nephew’s fifth birthday party, waiting for Fabio.
Posted by john at June 5, 2007 08:50 AM
Comments
Hmmmmmmmmmmm I love a bit of cake ??!! Well the world is a weee bit crazy. Was it an M&S fruit flan ? LOL Speak soon Paula
Posted by: paula at June 5, 2007 02:14 PM
Cup of tea and slice of cake aunt sally.
Posted by: Mick at June 5, 2007 02:19 PM