Along the main road Podujevo City, women and children held out their hands to passersby as the day’s heat began to decline. Their requests were most often unobtrusive, relying on the kindness of a coin from strangers.
But at 6 p.m. it was getting late. One boy was impatient and screaming loudly for money, maybe hoping this departure from the usual tactic would be enough to get better results. Ardita Bahtiri knelt down next to the boy whose hair was so long it fell into his eyes, close enough to whisper in his ear.
“Stop screaming,” she told him. “No one will want to give you money if you scream at them,” and she pressed a 50-cent coin into his hand. She brushed the hair off his forehead and stood up.
Bahtiri was out with her girlfriends, and they teased her good-naturedly for always stopping and talking to these children. They reminded her of the time in Tirana, when they met a young girl no older than seven or eight who tried to sell them peanuts. They recalled how Bahtiri found the girl’s grandmother and yelled at her, insisting that the woman should be sending her to school. The girl hugged her around her legs. Bahtiri covered her face and laughed, embarrassed by the retelling of the story, not by her actions.
This was part of her calling. And her two friends were another part, because even though Festina Vërshefci was 11 years old, Bleona Jashari was 13 and Bahtiri was 28, the young girls loved spending their summer with the school psychologist. Bahtiri loved it too. Since 2009, she has been a psychologist at Enver Maloku Primary School in Podujevo. With enrollment at about1,000 every year, she was solely responsible for the mental health
of all of these students, and she was proud of that.
“I work to get to know every pupil, to make them feel school is a good place,” she said. “I tell them they’re worth it. Our society doesn’t tell them that, so they see me different. They wonder why I love them so much. I tell them I don’t know, I just do.”
She came to the field just as school psychologists were being placed in schools and mental health was being addressed as a national issue. The stigma around it began to lift, and she was given an office to share with the school secretary.
This arrangement did not work though, because even though her clients were all children, they were entitled to confidentiality. It didn’t take long before she was given an office of her own, where students could come to her to discuss anything from grades to home life, to relationships, to more intimate problems about the changes from childhood to adolescence.
Jashari was second in her class, as was Vërshefci, and the guidance they sought from Bahtiri wasn’t limited to problems. They talked about their favorite movies, romantic stirrings and crushes; and questions they would be embarrassed to ask anyone else — questions about babies and conception, conversations about love.
“She teach us a lot of things,” said Jashari. “Not just theoretical, real life things.” “I want to help other people like she helps us,” said Vërshefci.
All of these conversations were welcomed and encouraged, and Bahtiri’s main goal is to validate everystudent, to make them feel that concerns and questions matter.
“We tend to hide our problems,” said Bahtiri. “In every country people do this, we need to look perfect.”
Naim Telaku, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Pristina and a clinical psychologist, has a finely-tuned understanding of this mentality from an academic point of view and from experience.
“It’s heavily stigmatized,” explained Telaku. “As a rule, you have a label for anything you don’t really understand.”
Bahtiri and Telaku were drawn to psychology out of a desire to understand. For Telaku, it was a need to learn why, 8 -12 years after the war in Croatia ended, the rate of suicide drastically increased. His work is still focused on this, and as he finalizes his doctorate in psychology, he examining how trauma during childhood affects adults. For Bahtiri, it was less of a call for answers and more of a natural tug, a sense of purpose.
“There is something inner that makes you a psychologist,” Bahtiri said. “It was always something I did, even in high school. I would offer help to people, make things seem easier to them.”
Bahtiri and Telaku let their calling catch up to them at home, too. Every Tuesday at 8:55 p.m., Bahtiri sits down at her computer and signs into Nuk Je Vet, a nonprofit with a name that also serves as its mission statement: “You Are Not Alone.”
She is always ready five minutes early. She has clients who rely on seeing her exactly at 9 p.m. and she doesn’t want to make them wait. Once she has signed in the dot by her name goes green, and out there somewhere in the Albanian-speaking region, someone sees a message:
“Bisedo Ne Chat.” Talk In Chat.
She never writes first, but she rarely waits long before she receives a message, and then she introduces herself with the standard spiel:
“Hello, you are signed onto Nuk Je Vet, we have an hour. I am a school psychologist, what would you like to talk about?”
She never includes her name, and if her clients ask, she reminds them they are supposed to remain anonymous, for the protection of everyone involved. It also allows Bahtiri to keep her volunteer and paid work separate.
That is way every conversation begins, but from there it diverges. For two hours every Tuesday night, regardless, Bahtiri connects with anonymous clients and let’s them talk.
Sometimes it’s about relationships, or school, or sexuality. Females often want to talk about how the loss of virginity affects their current relationship; males often want to talk about the cultural pressureto marry a virgin. Some clients are lonely and want to be heard. Others tell her they don’t want to live anymore.
She handles each of these with singular attention, adjusting for each, letting them guide the conversation and gently steering it when necessary. Her mantra is that every person’s life is worthwhile — the piece of advice that she lives by. She tells this to the school child in her office, and to the adult in the online chat. She accepts them as they are.
But she braces herself for questions for which she has few answers or doesn’t have the medical training to address. This fear doesn’t go away, but for the two years she has signed on, ready to guide them as best she can.
“I’m not fit for every kind of client. You’re not the hero of everyone, I remind myself. Everybody’s unique.”
Nuk Je Vet is a group that couldn’t exist without certified psychologists like Bahtiri, who provide their time and expertise at to clients who might not have access otherwise. They are volunteers, earning nothing for these sessions.
For Bahtiri, monetary gain wasn’t the purpose. This year her salary at the primary school was 400 euros per month, which she said is not enough for the work she does. She lived with her parents, an arrangement that she didn’t mind. When she talked about her students, she pressed her hands to chest, like she was holding every one of them to her.
“They are my passion,” she said.
When her adult clients struggle with an issue she isn’t qualified to discuss, she knows which of her colleagues is best suited to help. Telaku is one of these colleagues, and his work extends far beyond Nuk Je Vet.
“In the last three years, more awareness has been raised than in the last 30 years. It is closely related to how the nation develops.”
Telaku, 30, has seen a great deal of progress in the field of psychology, especially in the nonprofit UNI, which he founded in 2013. He explained that when its doors first opened, it would often only receive one client each day.
“Now,” he said, “there are usually six or seven. That isn’t a very happy figure, but it’s a positive trend.”
Telaku is finishing his doctoral studies on the long-term effects of traumatic experiences, and though the data is promising, he has yet to formally prove his thesis, that adults who experienced trauma during childhood often have neurotic tendencies and struggle to be open and extroverted. His studies revealed a great deal about the nature of psychology in society. He found that the greatest challenge the field faced was education.
“The main problem is the students here,” he said. “They aren’t studying or reading more, they don’t bother to know about a field they study, but then they’re handed diplomas anyhow.”
Years of teaching at the University of Prishtina gave him insight into the intrinsic problems of the field, and an understanding of how to improve it.
“Institution-wise, I don’t see much changing in the 10 upcoming years,” said Telaku. “Not until education gets better. But if people keep getting good educations abroad and come back here, that will change things.”
Bahtiri, who earned her master’s degree studying science in psychology at the University of Tirana, acknowledged these issues, too.
“There are not so few psychologists in Kosovo,” said Bahtiri. “There are many students who get degrees in psychology from University of Prishtina, but the field is new and there aremany struggles.”
Bahtiri and Telaku dedicate themselves entirely to their field, offering the combination of natural ability and trained expertise that is vital to psychological work. Despite any misgivings, they can see the effect they have on the lives of individuals.
“Things will change, more services will be provided. We’re dedicated to the work, so things will get better,” said Telaku, speaking from a practical perspective. Bahtiri said it more plainly.
“I do this work for them. I accept them. I love them.”
(Alexandria Moore is a reporting intern at KosovaLive this summer in collaboration with Miami University in the United States.)
