Squatting in the 11th Century

Seventeen Roma refugees fled their home in Kosovo two years ago, and now they all squat in this one-room mud shack. It is located next to the town dump and houses giant rats that eat at the small children. Photo: Layton Croft

Community can mean vastly different things to different people.

Earlier this year a tall young man squatting in a decrepit mud shelter on land that doesn't belong to him, located next to the local dump in a southeastern Serbian town, was asked how he defines community. He squinted, and pointed back, towards the shack.

"I live with seventeen people in one room."

Indeed, for this poor Roma refugee, who fled his home in Kosovo two years before, community can mean nothing and everything all at once.

Mercy Corps has worked in this town and others across southern Serbia since July 2001 to revitalize communities through small infrastructure projects conceived and co-managed by local community development councils. Laza, almost 50, is an active member of the Mercy Corps development council in this town. A devoted Roma activist committed to lifting this disenfranchised minority out of abject poverty, Laza uses his clout and charisma to influence local development decisions.

"I am fortunate to live in the 21st Century," Laza says, matter of factly, "but these refugees, these citizens of this community, they live in the 11th Century. That is wrong, and needs to be changed."

Laza is right, and through the new, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Community Revitalization through Democratic Action program, Mercy Corps is empowering civil society leaders like Laza to make such needed change.

"If you come here in 10 years and see doctors, scientists, engineers, then that will mean improvement, that something has been done," Laza said. "But if you give help to someone only once, it won't mean anything. Instead of giving a fish, you must teach people to catch their own."

The young refugee turns, goes inside the one-room shack and brings back a woman, who appears to be the leader of his 17-member refugee community. She looks tired, and dirty, and is breastfeeding an infant. She avoids formalities and in her Gypsy language, cuts right to the chase.

"It's the rats. They are actually eating my children," she says.

As she speaks, the young man holds his two hands about half a meter apart, as if his community leader had just told of catching a fish.

[Editor's Note: Laza is a pseudonym.]