Although the province is governed today by the United Nations and relative quiet reigns in the region, ethnic mistrust runs deep. Ethnic Albanians harbor a deep hostility for and live separately from the Serbian neighbors they consider their former oppressors. But in spite of the fact that ethnic Albanians are free to study once more in Albanian, have reclaimed the schools, and have mandated a different curriculum, unemployment is over 70%, poverty is rampant, and infrastructure is slow to recover, three years after the end of the war.

I have been living in Kosovo with my spouse, who does humanitarian development work. I have enjoyed exploring my new home and have found the Kosovars exceedingly warm and hospitable. Thus, I found myself wedged against a woman in a taxi-bus one morning, who I soon learned was a high school English teacher. Having been an English teacher myself, I solicited an invitation to visit her school in Kosovo's third largest city.

The school, a building as dilapidated inside as out, is home to 1,200 Albanian pupils who study -- for lack of space -- in three daily shifts. Salaries for teachers are paid by UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) and most teachers bring home less than $150 a month. There is virtually no money for materials, teaching aids, and renovation. The halls are layered with dirt. Classes are essentially large rooms with mismatched desks (built for two, but seating three), wobbly chairs, windows layered with grime, and bare electric cords powering one or two light bulbs. Teachers work from scratchy blackboards, students from workbooks they struggle to purchase with their own money. Classes are compressed such that each runs for 30 minutes rather than the 45 I was used to. The uneven cement floors appear to have not been cleaned in years. The only heat emanates from small electric stoves in just a few of the classrooms. Water and electricity are spotty during the day, and the sole generator can hardly support the computer lab that has been donated to the school.

Invited to meet some students and teachers, I found it hard to hide my dismay at the conditions in the school. Nevertheless, wandering the halls, I was struck by the most winsome quality of the Kosovars -- their absolute warmth and hospitability. Headmaster, teachers, and students alike welcomed me and seemed eager to exchange ideas.

Anisa and Lavdrim were two such students. Anisa is the 16-year-old girl vice president of the school's student council; Lavdrim is her 18-year-old male schoolmate. Both spoke a quirky, slang-filled English, heavily influenced by television and music. I sat in a little cafe near school with these two charming, earnest, unaffected and idealistic youths and discussed life in Kosovo. Lavdrim spent three months in a Macedonian refugee camp during the war and developed a strong attachment to all things American. Anisa practiced karate for seven years, but eventually gave it up to pursue work as a junior reporter at a radio station. She dreams of being a journalist; Lavdrim, an English professor.

I listened to Anisa describe her current project to raise money from local business people to fund basic student projects in the school: painting over offensive graffiti, cleaning up the garbage-strewn yard, patching over major holes in the walls. As she spoke, Lavdrim nodded vigorously, interjecting from time to time when he thought his friend was downplaying her role, and stumbling over his words in an eagerness to laud and support her effort. For the first time, when asking Kosovars about their take on the ethnic tension between the Serbians and Albanians, I met an untarnished vision of coexistence and goodwill. Both teens were at their most eloquent and outspoken in making a case for people being judged on their personal merits rather than their ethnicity or religion. Both had participated in conferences sponsored by international non-governmental organizations to promote youth activism and leadership in fostering peace and coexistence. Although they had both lived through the war, they were ardent proponents of peace and of finding the means to reintegrate the Serbian youth into their school and daily environment. As Anisa said to me, "It is up to us to create a place where people are judged for who they are as individuals, not for being Serb or Albanian."

Passionate, committed, and unabashedly idealistic, Anisa and Lavdrim made a huge impression on me. Equally impressive was the degree to which they and their opinions were respected and validated by their peers. These two were a shining example of the best their part of the world has to offer. A school might just be a shell of cement and steel, a muddy yard might point to the struggle to afford even a meager basketball hoop, but the future of Kosovo rests in the hands and hearts of its Anisas and Lavdrims. Their potential brightens their school's drab hallways and lifts the spirits of those around them. The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." Indeed, it's starting to soar in Kosovo, and tomorrow looks promising.

:: Yaels Sachs

Yael was born in Israel, raised in Japan, and educated in the US. When not out pestering Kosovars and butchering the 20 Albanian words she knows, Yael battles the spotty electricity to write on her laptop, attempts to create gourmet meals with limited ingredients, and reads, reads, reads.

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