Now on Air!

Yes! The new IGLYO website is ready! Me not being a wizz-kid I don't seem to succeed in copying a whole screen into blogger. Well maybe a good reason for you all to take a look on our new website! www.iglyo.com.

Fabio, Alon and Doron really did a great job.

Pristina

And the last stop of this short Balkan tour is Pristina. The week felt good after all, even though it is heavy to do so many visits in such short time. It energized me, as I realise that progress is being made. In Kosovo there was lately quite some media attention: during new years evening two gay guys were beaten up. When they reported this to the police they were harassed by the police officers, about which they raised a complaint. The spokesmen of the police department in Pristina reacted with a statement that homosexuality in Kosovo was still a crime, which is untrue. Pristina is the only entity in this area which has a rather clear anti-discrimination law, which explicitly includes sexual minorites. So the consequense of this all has been that police officers lost their job and the spokesmen was replaced to another area of Kosovo. A lot of media attention was given to the issue, until the moment that president Rugova died.

However it is a fact that the LGBT community lives very isolated. It moves around in small sub-communites, whom hardly communicate with each other. So many efforts are put in building up a community which is capable of defending their granted rights....this is not an easy task!

It was great seeing friends back here. In one and half a year I have seen the confidence of a small group of people growing. For outsiders this might seem like a normal and unimportant thing, but having been involved in these communities for almost two years now I am proud on what these people have reached. Not to forget people here are great fun: we drunk, we sung and we dance like crazy!

Tirana

After a ride of four hours we arrived in Tirana yesterday. The road to Tirana was bad, especially the part between the Montenegrin boarder and Skadahr, the first 'real' city which we passed. We drove thru many small villages, in which the main source of income seems to be the small trades that people have started along the roads.

The mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, waschosen as global mayor of the year. 2004. He began his career as artist, but moreover he is famous as a reformer now. A socialist who is standing for rapid changes in Albania. He paints many buildings in the centre in contrasting colours, through which the looks of Tirana have changed in only a couple of years time.

Whenever we talk about gays here we call them communists. Of course in Albanian context this is a save word to use: it has just been only a bit more than a decade ago since the communist chapter of this country was closed. Till here my short update from a cafe with WLAN, in the centre or Tirana. Crazy enough I can update my blog, read my private e-mail, but not access my COC webmail...

Crna Gora

This is, I think, the sixth time that I visit Montenegro. I am sitting in my hotel room, after we just arrived. Just called some people and set the schedule for this 3-day mission. Wednesday we will travel on to Albania.

The first time I came to Montenegro ('Crna Gora') was in May 2004. My mission was to find people who wanted to start a NGO on Lesbian and Gay rights. Initially this mission seemed to be succesful, but now, almost two years later, I am back in Montenegro with a similar mission. It is said to conclude that I can probably count the gays I have met here during the past years on two hands. To count the lesbians that I have met I don't even need one hand. It is not that people did not warn me: Montenegro is a post-conflict, post-communist, masculine and religious society, be carefull with what you do and who you meet.

During the first press confence we planned to organise, November 2004, the national football hooligans organised as 'Varvari', announced to react violently on our press conference. We decided to cancel it as we had to take the receveived treaths serious. The Ministry of Internal affairs first couldn't help us. Still a big group of people was searching for us in the city, and the police posted for my hotel that night. One day after I left two activists (one not gay, one not coming from Montenegro) showed up in a television show. (We had already done this when I was still there, but apparently nobody had watched that show). Over 50 'Varvari' surrounded the television studio, happily the police this time did react and protected the activists.

Montenegro is one of the nicest spots I know in Europe. It has a very well preserved nature. Due to the big differences in landscapes it has three different climates. When you land on Titograd Airport (the capital Podgorica was also named Titograd until the fall of the communicsm) you fly over Skadar lake, see the beautiful photo above. The contrast of such a beautiful country with people possessing a truth hate against different oriented people is still difficult to understand.

A Saturday at home

Woken up late and prepared a simple breakfast. Whilst checking my e-mails my eye falls on the window-sill, a ladybird (yes they are still terrorizing my appartment) is catched by a smaller spider. It takes the spider more than half an hour to get the ladybird to its hole, a small chink. I notice that the spider collected 3 ladybirds in its hole now.

Going to some old papers I discover the discrepancy between different existing timelines of IGLYO's future, so I take a while to make one list out of it and send it over to ex board members for a check-up.

After cleaning up a bit (a neverending task) I discover that it's already five in the afternoon. As I want to read the weekend edition of Volkskrant I have to walk to the station to buy one. Because I am leaving for Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo tomorrow I decide that I should also buy a book. Paulo Coelho, because I was told he writes nice books. And a new opinion magazine, probably with many new articles on interfaith clashes.

The days are getting longer and I enjoy watching the sunset out of my appartment.

My horoscope for the day

"Today everything annoys you. You have the feeling that you are surrounded with idiots. Control yourself and try not to explode."

Gie

Tonight I saw the story of Soe Hok Gie, a young Chinese-Indonesian guy who grew up in the militaristic post-colonial period in Indonesia, which was ruled by Soekarno and Soeharto. The patriarch was struggling for a true democratic Indonesia, leaving the militarism and communism on the other side. His struggle was brave, and of course he ended up paying the most expensive price possible for his truth believe. It is idealism of people like Gie that fascinates me. Pragmatic reasons often take me away from idealism, they turn my idealism in a less honorable strive to integrity. His idealism was not one of Para-militant protesters fighting against vested powers, but he was an intellectual leader of the Indonesian student movement during the sixties. Later he also published his ideas. He did this during years when the government was not censuring the media yet, soon after the government started. At many days I dare to wonder whether I should let my pragmatism overrule my idealism, I sometimes even wonder why I don’t do that. However the fact is that I do not, and that I contrary believe that I have to respect made choices, even if they’re mine.

“I do not want to be bamboo bending for the wind,
I want to be an oak standing firm.”

Watching portraits like this always make me feel strong, they make me believe in the power that is in people. They make me believe that tomorrow I can change the world. Afterwards a melancholic mood, yes indeed mostly occurring during traveling by train, overrules me and I loose the will to get disciplined tomorrow morning and change my whole life for sake of the world. Still, I hope that tomorrow morning I will wake up being a bit more disciplined in realizing my ideals.



The era of International Film festivals, such as the one in Rotterdam I visited tonight, always fascinates me. Walking through the buildings where the movies are screened makes you feel part of another world for a while. I am not sure whether this is caused by surrounding people who fantasize themselves being part of the surreal world they are watching, or whether it’s just me being in an artistic environment I don’t visit too often. Analyzing movies like these feels like walking on ice: in the middle of so many movie phanatics you soon have a wrong interpretations. Tonight I just left the movie festival straight after the movie, sticking to my own reality of what I saw. Gie, who didn't show much affection to girls, was not gay, I thought. However, the website of the Filmfestival (www.filmfestivalrotterdam.nl), told me that the homosexual aspect of the movie remained uncensored. I have to visit more film festivals!