week 1
Hello from Pristina, Kosovo! It has been an incredible first week. My journey began nearly a week and a half ago when I departed from Kansas City International Airport. After 4 more flights, layovers, and well over three days travel time I arrived in Skopje, Macedonia. From Skopje, I took a relatively inexpensive one-hour cab ride to Pristina. My taxi driver was very friendly and we talked about sports for most of the ride. I was already aware that Football/soccer is very popular throughout the region, however, I was surprised to learn that handball is also a very popular spectator sport.
After arriving in Pristina, I met up with my Airbnb host, who was awaiting my arrival. My apartment is in an older building very close to the center of town. The inside of my unit for the summer is nice and updated, and I have a small balcony overlooking part of the city. Once I had completed check in with my host, I immediately went to sleep sometime before dark this past Sunday. I was very tired from jet lag at that point and wanted to be alert for my first day.
On Monday morning I arrived at Democracy for Development. The office is about a 7-minute walk away from my apartment, however, on the first day, I had difficulty with navigation. Once at the office, I was greeted by all of the D4D staff members and spent the morning learning about the organization and where I would be working for the next ten weeks. In the afternoon, I was fortunate to be able to attend a salon event. These are events that the institute hosts every two weeks that aim to tackle complex social and political issues. Monday's salon was on the issue of parental leave and organized with the embassy of Sweden. The event began with remarks from a Swedish father and a father from Kosovo. The event then moved into a broader discussion on how different societies can work towards greater gender equality.
On Tuesday I began work on my first real tasks for the summer. I will be doing a variety of research and analysis to help D4D prepare to audit the voters' list for a municipality in Kosovo known as Obiliq. Maintaining an accurate voters' list is crucial for a well-functioning democracy. Inaccurate voters' lists give the potential for fraud and make it near impossible to determine voter turnout levels. I worked the rest of the week looking into a voters' list audit the institute had conducted in 2012 for a different municipality in Kosovo. The 2012 audit had revealed those lists were only about 60% accurate.
At the end of the week, I began researching data protection laws in Kosovo. Since 2012 Kosovo has passed a strong data privacy law. I have been working to make sure this law will not affect the institute's abilities to access the voters' lists for the audit procedure.
That is all for this week. Next update to follow soon!