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I get up, I wash my face and teeth and, suddenly, I remember: "I did not write to him yesterday, maybe he thought I got cold feet, I have to send him an email as soon as possible, or maybe I should call him?" I just hope he won't get someone else to call me instead of him, or even worse, lead me to try with a different number. Have you ever been writing to someone for days, weeks, months, hoping that you will get an answer one day? Well, that has become my life in the last year. I wrote when it was needed and when it, maybe, wasn't needed, maybe I was a psycho for a little bit, but, in my own defense, the only thing I wanted to achieve was simply to get an answer. Two letters, two words, sentences, it didn't matter - if it was only an answer from him. I wrote to many. I was not faithful, I confess. And some of them actually answered my calls and messages, although those were few. However, those who can be reached easily, whatever they might say, are never remembered as much as those who ditched you, and there were too many of them. After all, all those answers I craved for have never arrived to my address. However, that did not stop me from trying to get to him. I spied on him on all social networks, wherever I could, just to get to the real number he could be reached at. I wrote to him over his friends, acquaintances, colleagues, at every address I could find. There were dozens of them and they were all the same, and everyone had, if anything, a moral obligation to answer me. Sometimes I would be so overwhelmed with despair that I would ask myself whether the problem could, God forbid, lie with me. Then I start overthinking whether I have made a mistake, I analyze everything and come to a conclusion that I am great and I replace despair with anger. Emotions take over me, so I start thinking about burning his things, puncturing his tires... But stupid hope brings me to my senses: "Let it be, he will call you tomorrow, he has to, we didn't just meet yesterday, this between us has been going on longer than that, he knows it, too." My persistence sometimes pays off and I get an answer: "Boss, I have prepared your papers for Montenegro, have you confirmed the participation in the conference?" Well, it's not the answer I asked for, but at least I know that he opened my message, that he knows that I exist and that I'm waiting for the answer. Then I continue to write and write and write and write to him... He continues to ignore me, until one day I get cold feet or interested in someone else. Unfortunately, as I have already said, every next one is worse than the one before him. Ignoring me completely. It did come to my mind that I could drop by his place, to see what he would do then, but, time, expenses, innate shyness... And I would most probably end up behind bars. Let me be straight with you... I am not a crazy psychotic fool who is eager for attention, but a journalist, and this is, neither more nor less than a pictorial description of my everyday communication with the institutions in Kosovo, which is, by the way, my job, to seek answers. It would not be so terrible if this was an exception. However, the problem is that this has become a rule in attempts to obtain official information from those who should be obligated to provide them. Over time, I classified them into the following groups: - Unicorns - those who answer the specific question (close to extinction, literally); - Three questions, one answer, and sometimes not even that - those who answer you whatever they want, ignore the rest of the questions and, then, every next time you send at least five questions, because there are more chances to get a response to at least two of them; - Sexists - those who hang up on you, or do not have time to answer when they hear a woman's voice, then you learn that it is more likely that you will get the information if you pass the phone to your male colleague; - Repeaters - those who always have the same answer to the question asked, no matter how much time has passed, simply, sometimes you just want to write an answer on your own and not even bother to call; - Fakers - those who kindly respond to you, explain in the nicest possible way that they will give you an answer in half an hour at the latest, as their grandmother has passed away, or their cat, or they are at a meeting, and they ask you to call them back later, so that they would never answer; - Those who do not see any reason why they should be obligated to answer you at all - and, of course, the Ombudsperson: "I will receive any of your questions, I will answer that I have no answer, because if no one has filed a complaint, why should I even need to have an opinion on any issue of interest to the public, if I do not have any real power to change anything, anyway?" So, this is the first problem that a journalist encounters when reporting in Kosovo. It is important to note that I am working for an information portal reporting on everyday events. So, most of the questions I pose to institutions are not like: "Provide me with a bank account balance and an extract from the cadastre of all your employees because of the suspicion that they are involved in corruption and your institution is involved in a fraud worth millions", but essentially service information necessary to write proper news and to report about events. In general, I ask for some information to be officially confirmed to me, in addition to obtaining answers to the questions: "Who?", "What?" and, possibly, "When?", "Where?" and "How?", I ask to be provided with a document, which, if we were lucky enough, would be on an institution's website, as well as to get clarification on some bureaucratic procedures... Institutional vow of silence - the first obstacle you face when you begin to deal with journalism here, and for other "more serious" problems I would need more space, which I do not have, and I have been working as a journalist for less than a year. After all, people are barely interested in that - nothing here works properly, there are problems at every corner, so why would the journalists be better? So, let this text be for those who are interested, as a pilot guide for communication with institutions, or, simply - you may have called the right number, but you did not get what you asked for.
