Civil Society, Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

BALKANS: Civil Society Plays Matchmaker

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

SABAC, Western Serbia, Aug 8 2009 (IPS) - Ljubov Obradinovic only cried when her neighbours complimented her that she was hardworking. “Vredna”, they said. Except that in Ukraininan that word means “wicked”.

“Now that I know Serbian it’s not a problem any more,” says Ljubov (29).

Life is good in other ways, “cultivating the land, seeing the result of your farming, and living in an area surrounded by orchards, vineyards, hills and so much greenery.” She lives in Stitare village near Sabac town, some 100 kilometres west of capital Belgrade.

Ljubov came here after marrying Dusan. The two are among 300 couples who married through the non-governmental organisation Village Sill Plate, that finds matches for lonely men in this part of Serbia.

Serbia has a rising number of single people. The wars of the 1990s saw poverty at home, and huge waves of emigration. More than 300,000 young Serbs left at the time. And then came the transition to the market economy, which led to more and more lonely people.

Since 2000, when transition began, many of the young began leaving villages to find a better life in cities such as Belgrade, Novi Sad or Nis. The government’s Statistical Bureau says that of 4,528 villages, 674 are now almost completely deserted. Only some people remain, mostly above 65 years of age.

And like many European countries, Serbia is also witnessing a sharp decline in births. Of its population of 7.5 million, about 1.3 million are above 65.

“Young girls and women are leaving villages because they think there is no future in farming,” sociologist Stjepan Gredelj tells IPS. “Young men, however, are pressured by their aging parents not to leave the land that they want to keep in the family. So many men remain in villages – but also remain single.”

The Statistical Bureau says there are almost 260,000 single farmers all over Serbia at age 50 who have not started a family because of such circumstances.

“We decided to help these men,” head of Village Seal Plate Slobodan Nikolic tells IPS. “Matchmaking was the least the organisation could do, but Serbian girls did not seem interested. That is why we turned to Ukraine and Russia, and the result in the past several years is 300 marriages in this part of country.” Nikolic works mostly through the Internet to keep up a 19th century tradition.

Such marriages work because “we have similar roots, share the same (Christian Orthodox) religion, and the languages are pretty close. Besides, women from these countries are not afraid of hard work.”

But religion does not seem to matter much when marriage is sought by single men of a certain age. Some 200 Catholic girls from northern Albania have married into largely Orthodox families in central Serbian villages around the small town Ivanjica, some 130 kilometres south of Belgrade.

It began three years ago through contacts between Ivanjica and humanitarian aid groups in the northern Albanian town Shkodra.

“We had Albanian girls who had no one to marry, and Serb men who were growing old without starting a family,” Vojin Vucicevic from Serbian NGO Stara Raska told IPS.

“They (the girls) come from mostly poor villages in the north, from large families. They are hardworking, and happy to start a family; they quickly learn Serbian and join Orthodoxy,” he added.

Meetings for matches are mostly organised at the traditional summer fairs in central Serbia that mark the end of the harvesting season. Such fairs have been an occasion for decades for the young to meet or families to agree marriages.

Busloads of young women and their families came from Albania for this year’s fair in Ivanjica. But now civil society has stepped in to bring hearts and homes together.

But loneliness is not just for farmers. Recent surveys show that Serbs are reluctant to leave the comfort of parents’ homes to marry and set up home on their own. Having children is delayed, if it is considered at all.

According to a study by the Medium Gallup Agency last month, Serbia has 1.9 million people aged between 20 and 40 in Serbia. In that age group, 47 percent, or 920,000, are still single, and many do not even consider marriage.

Besides the comfort of living with well-situated parents, many simply do not want to share their life – and income.

“Such behaviour leaves no room for those bitter-sweet engagements over family, responsibilities over children and the like,” says psychologist Vesna Brzev. “Many of these people just work long hours and have no opportunity to meet someone new. That is why one can see them in crowded bars or cafes, sitting in groups – young women in one corner and young men in the other.

“They are just a step away from possibilities, but who wants to take it.”