Thanks to Anila, who came from Albania, children’s laughter can be heard in the village of Kosmovac.
Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./Printscreen
Kosmovac, a village from Belopalanac located below Trem itself, the highest peak of Suva Planina, is widely known for its hard-working herders and woodcutters, but the fate of other Suva Planina villages did not bypass it. Young people moved to Niš, Bela Palanka, Belgrade, Pirot, Crvena reka and other places in search of work in factories, and only old people remained in the village.
After the end of World War II, more than 400 people lived in Kosmovac. now only about 40. Unlike the locals who left the village one after another in the past decades, Anila Cakoni (48) came to Kosmovac from Albania six years ago with her son Klaus.
Thanks to her, children’s laughter can be heard in Kosmovac, and Anila and her husband Senta Stefanović are now the only family with a child, not only in that place, but also in neighboring Toponica and Miljkovac.. Anila points out that she likes life in Kosmovac, although she has never lived in a village before.
EVERYONE LEFT FROM THIS VILLAGE IN SERBIA, AND ALBANKA MARRIED INTO STEFANOVIĆ’S HOUSE! She also brought her son from Tirana, even learned Cyrillic
Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./PrintscreenNo. image: 7 1 / 7 Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./PrintscreenNo. image: 7 2 / 7 Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./PrintscreenNo. image: 7 3 / 7 AD Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./PrintscreenNo. picture: 7 4 / 7 Source: niskevesti.rs/B. Lj./PrintscreenNo. image: 7 5 / 7 Source: Facebook/ScreenshotNo. image: 7 6 / 7 AD Source: Facebook/ScreenshotNo. picture: 7 7 / 7
“I lived in Tirana, I am a seamstress by profession and I had my own tailoring salon. I was introduced to my current husband by a man who knew both me and him. Senta wanted to get married and that man brought him to Tirana. We met and Klaus and I came to Kosmovac. Everyone accepted us nicely, they are very kind to us. In the beginning, I didn’t know a word of Serbian, but I learned little by little. It helped me that I know Italian very well, so I watched series in Italian with Serbian translation. Klaus now helps me with many words because he is now in the third grade and speaks Serbian very well. When he started first grade, I also went to school for a short time and a teacher gave me Serbian language lessons. It’s different now, I know how to write Cyrillic, although I’m still bad at reading it“, said Anila for Niške vesti.
She said that what she likes in Kosmovac is that there is no crowd and noise like in the city. “The nature is wonderful, the air is clean. We eat homemade, healthy food that we produce ourselves without any spraying. Klaus is fine here. He is in nature and in the fresh air all day long. He loves that he has his dog and horse here, he has already learned to ride them. There are very often children in the village because they come with their parents who visit their houses and properties, so he plays with them,” said Anila.
According to her, life in the village is very different from the one she led in the city. “I had a lot of work there, many customers because I know how to sew all women’s clothing – skirts, dresses, sets. In order to finish all the orders, I used to have to sleep in the salon. I have a lot of work here too, but it’s different, more relaxed. I have responsibilities at home and in the field, and I help my husband in many jobs. Here I learned to plant a garden, to dig potatoes“, says Anila:
Izvor: Facebook/Screenshot
“In Albania, my grandmother had some tomatoes and peppers, but it was about a dozen bushels, and here we have a big garden. We keep cows, and we used to keep sheep too, but we had to sell them when my father-in-law had a stroke two years ago. Taking care of the sheep is a big responsibility, and the husband has a lot of work to provide hay for the cows, and he also cuts wood. In addition, every day he drives Klaus to the school in Red River and brings him back from there, because he has no other way to go to school. The Red River is 14 kilometers away.
She added that these days she passed the driving test and hopes to pass the driving test soon so that she can take on the responsibility of driving her son to school. Anila said that through the Internet she is in constant contact with her parents, brother and sister who live in Tirana, and during the summer she must go there to visit them. According to Temeljko Stefanović (62), a relative of Senta Stefanović, when he was a child, Kosmovac was teeming with people, and the four-grade school had 40 students.
“Klaus is now the only child in the village, and once there were 100 students in the village. They went to school here until the fourth grade, and from the fourth to the eighth grade in Crvena Reka. The school even had its own canteen here. There was no family without households kept hundreds of sheep and dozens of cows, because this area of Suva Planina is a “good day” for cattle breeding. In the area of Kosmovac, there are as many as 60 springs that do not dry up even during the summer when the droughts are greatest, so there is enough water for both people and livestock.Stefanović said.
In his opinion, Kosmovac, as well as many other mountain villages in Serbia, would not have relaxed if the state had introduced agricultural pensions in time, while there were still many people in the villages. “People moved to the cities because of this, because they were afraid that they would be without any income when they got old. They were employed in factories in the cities and there they built houses and formed families. “Young people are used to living there and now they have a hard time deciding to return to the villages,” Stefanović pointed out.
He said that a lot of people from Kosmovac, like him, did not leave their properties even though they live in Crvena Reka or Bela Palanka, but visit them regularly, cultivate the fields and keep their cattle on Suva Mountain. According to him, in recent years, Kosmovac has been discovered by mountaineers and nature lovers, so more and more holiday homes are being built in the village and there are more and more people who want to enjoy the untouched nature of the area.
BONUS VIDEO:
06:21 GORSTAK FROM GOLIJA: WE WILL HAVE CHILDREN AS MANY AS GOD WILLS! Need to spend the winter with the baby, everything is as expensive as St. Peter’s scrambled eggs, I WILL SELL OXES Source: Kurir televizija
Source: Kurir television
(MONDO/Niske News)