From "Go Fish" to Kosovo Bears

t was a cold, crispy morning and the humvee's windshield had iced over again. She gave a big sigh, pulled her warm hands out of her winter uniform jacket, shoved her black gloves on and started scraping off the ice. A squeegee wouldn't work on these windows - oh well, work had to be done.

It was going to be a long day, but somehow she felt excited inside because she knew she was going to go to a small village where she had made a lot of friends over the months. She couldn't wait to go drink coffee with them again and find out what was new in town.

Unlike her familiar flat plains of Texas where she was born and raised 1st Lieutenant Rachel Ramos was headed to a countryside full of hills and mountains located in the heart of the Balkans, in Kosovo - a province of the former Yugoslav six-member republic. US troops had been stationed there since the summer of 1999 to enforce a peace plan aimed at returning Albanian refugees to their homes. Over a million ethnic Albanians had fled to neighboring countries because of fighting with Serbian forces on the ground, and a US-led NATO air campaign, aimed at driving out the Serbs.

Although history was never her strong side in school, for this particular job, she had to understand what was going on. Her life depended on it - and so did the mission… She thought of home and where her education had gotten her, as she waited for the humvee windows to defrost and engine to warm up.

"Well this is a far stretch from playing "Go Fish," thought Ramos. She was mulling through her head the first time she ever really had to use Serbian and Croatian as a means of communication. It was with a seven-year-old, at her instructor's house one evening. Thirty-four-year-old Ramos remembered with fondness the time she spent with the family, trying to appear to the seven year-old as if pronouncing the names of various fish on the cards were not that difficult. After all, it was the time she spent at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) as a Serbian & Croatian student in 2001 - 2002 that led to her deployment to Kosovo less than a year later. The names of fish didn't seem that difficult now.

She chuckled as she remembered the diversion tactics her fellow classmates used so the instructor would go off track and start talking about abstract topics such as history. After a few months on the ground in Kosovo, she began to really appreciate all the stories from the classroom, which at times could be utterly boring, but at other times so displaced from reality - as though they were just stories and nothing more. It was fascinating to actually be in the land that she had gotten to know so well through her classes at DLI.

In the case of Kosovo, which had been an autonomous province of Serbia, minority Serbs had been battling majority ethnic Albanians for years, over land, jobs, schools, medical care, etc. Each time things got out of hand, the Serbian police from Serbia proper would be sent down, along with military reinforcements, and they would put things "back in order," mainly by force.

But with the conflict and subsequent war erupting in the republics of Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia in 1992, Kosovo was put on the back-burner by Serbian politicians in the capital Belgrade, as well as by western officials who were preoccupied with the large-scale carnage taking place in the center of Europe. Several years after the signing of a US-brokered peace agreement in 1995 by Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian warring factions in Dayton, Ohio, the Kosovo conflict came back to the forefront of international attention.

"Eno je!" (There she is!) yelled the little boy, running along side the humvee. "Dodji," (come) he waved at her window, "Come see the bears!" She stopped the vehicle, looking at him intently as if she didn't hear well what he had said. "Bears?" she questioned.

"Da, da!" (Yes, yes)! The nine-year-old was jumping up and down with excitement. He new that Ramos had to come down to the village during the week some time, and his waiting paid off. She had finally come, the American lady with big brown eyes, and a bunch of really white teeth. Yes, her teeth were really white, not like anything he had seen around his village, but Americans have good tooth brushes, this must be the reason, he thought.

The little boy, Dado, literally dragged her up the mountain side to a house nestled among pine trees. The owner had already heard the commotion outside, and had come out to greet the American who spoke Serbian.

The story began to unravel… One day the man came home and found two bear cubs scurrying around… tossing tin cans and empty barrels around the house. He befriended them and began feeding the two, who appeared a bit malnourished. Soon, the man realized that their mother was not coming back, so he decided to keep them.

"Wow, the odor," exclaimed Ramos to her partner. Although the cubs were young, they were quite large… They slept in one big cage in a side barn-like structure. The owner was too afraid to let them roam, even though people-friendly, some other villagers might get scared, he said.

"Do you think these bears need a new home," asked Ramos in fluent Serbian?

"Yes ma'am" said the owner. "I can no longer take care of them. I have to clean after them and they eat like cows, but not grass! I don't have enough food for my family, let alone for them. Please find them a home," he pleaded.

While standing near the cage, Ramos wanted to pet one of the not-so-small cubs. As she extended her hand, the cub started licking her fingers, to finally end up with one finger which he sucked on like a lollypop. Ramos couldn't stop laughing. "If only my teachers back in Monterey could see what I am doing now," she thought, "Good thing we went over all the names of animals."

But the day was not over yet. It was time to go to Brezevice, a Serbian ski lodge frequented by both Serbs and Albanians, making it a unique place. Ramos had already made friends there, by simply shocking some store owners when greeting them in Serbian. She immediately became the town's main attraction on her visits, with store owners and locals pouring onto Main Street when ever they saw her humvee.

"Hi Marko, how's it going today?" Ramos asked one of the coffee shop regulars.

"Dobro gospodjice Ramos, (good Miss) Ramos, …and how is life treating our American friend?" he queried.

"Friend," she thought. Serbs did not consider NATO Coalition forces friends. She knew this well. After all, although the air campaign brought the conflict to an end, the ethnic Albanian returnees, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) came back with a major chip on their shoulder. In vengeance they torched buildings and churches, homes were pillaged, livestock slaughtered and the killing turned full circle. She flashed back to reality.

"Good, good. How is your wife, children? Did school start yet," she asked politely. For a split second, she thought of her own children, whom she missed beyond human comprehension.

"Oh, they are all fine, and the kids, thank God and Saint Peter, went back to school. They are so bored at home that they drive me crazy!" said Marko, with a big smile, a cigarette hanging from his lip, while holding a Turkish style coffee pot, the kind that made more mud tasting coffee than what she was accustomed to.

"Want some coffee?" he asked. "Da, zasto ne? "(Sure, why not?), she said, sitting down at the small table with only three chairs around it. The other four tables, just as small, were vacant, and the front window was all steamed up, preventing passers-by from peering in to see who was there. This suited her.

"I have a question Marko," she began. "We are looking for some not-so-nice Albanian guys. We were wondering if you might know something about these people." she said, and pulled out pictures for him to identify. "Maybe they come here to ski," she querried doubtfully.

"Yes, I know of these two men," said Marko. One of them does not come very often, but the other guy loves to ski here, explained Marko. Ramos was stunned and then excited. By the time they drank their Turkish coffee, Marko had gathered some key information about the wanted men by calling people on his cell phone.

"Well, it is time for us to go, and we will be back soon to visit," said Ramos, with her signature smile all had grown to know so well in Brezevice.

As they were climbing into the humvee, her partner started in…"So what do we have, it sounded pretty good by your reaction?"

The day had been successful. Two bears, and good info to take to the commander! Ramos was content that she was able to glean intelligence from a village where this kind of information rarely came from. She was also happy to know that she was able to befriend the people of the village - a place well known for not communicating with Americans. Attempts by others in the past had failed and Brezevice had been simply discounted as a good source of information.

Well, Ramos was glad to have proven them all wrong! She later returned to talk to Marko and this intelligence caught at lest one of the men on the wanted list. As for the bears, Civilian Affairs took them in, fed them and found a proper home for them, of course, only after a few pictures could be taken!