Word: dani
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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These days, rather than be a politician himself, Dani wants to be a political watchdog. He founded an NGO two years ago called INPO, initiative for progress, which has a dozen young staff members who report to him. The organization, which takes pains to stay independent from any political party or business interest, aims to hold politicians' feet to the fire and convince citizens to do the same: protesting against missing traffic lights at a busy intersection, investigating candidates for conflicts of interest, running a get-out-the-vote drive. "It's not only about the idea of democracy...
...oldest and only male child in his family, Dani bears much responsibility. His father, Bashkin, now 57, has been unemployed for the past two years. It is Dani who supports the family on the $1,070 a month he makes as a translator for Irish peacekeeping troops, while studying sociology at the local university...
...When Dani was 14, I must already have had an inkling that he was one of those rare people who transcend age and place - and ethnicity and religion, too. I couldn't know to what extent: a year after the war, Dani converted from Islam to Protestantism after reading a New Testament given to him by American missionaries. "It matched with my philosophy," he says. "Jesus' message is love, to turn the other cheek." Dani keeps his faith close to his chest. "I don't think God wants to be as popular as he is right now," he says...
What he is eager to speak out about is politics. Like most Albanians, Dani still loves the U.S., but "sometimes more the idea than the reality." He's noticed that some U.S. troops in Kosovo come after tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan and bring with them prejudices against Muslims. But his main focus is Kosovo, where he says the "status" question - of when and how to extend independence to the Albanian-majority nation - has become a way for political leaders to distract citizens from more concrete problems. Basic infrastructure is decrepit (electric power is cut twice...
...four days together, Dani took me to a nearby village named Talinovic, which historically was split between Serbs and Albanians. Here, on July 2, 1999, after Belgrade's capitulation, Greek peacekeeping troops told some 300 Serb villagers that they could no longer guarantee their safety. They fled en masse, and every home was subsequently burned to the ground by Albanians from out of town. Last year, the first 40 brick houses were rebuilt on the land, and a few of the mostly older Serb residents began to trickle back from their exile in Serbia...