1 Wow, what a week. With NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, humanity has ventured farther into space than ever before. At the same time, US President Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to ​be brought back ​again”.

And on that very same day, Macedonia held the second Strategic Dialogue with the US in Washington. We offered the Americans an antimony mine in the village of Luke, near Kriva Palanka, not far from the former chromium, antimony and arsenic mine in Lojane. That abandoned site is an ecological black spot, still poisoning more than 1,500 residents in the surrounding villages. The state hasn’t dealt with the consequences of the old mine, yet is already planning to open a new mine in the same area.

2 The strategic dialogue concluded with an agreement that the US would provide $3.5 million to modernise the Macedonian police. Perhaps some of that money might go towards training police officers to recognise domestic violence, and even how to respond when they recognise domestic violence.

Testimony is ongoing in the trial against Stojanche Jovanovski, whose wife Ivana Stojanoska threw herself from a building with her six-year-old daughter, Katja, unable to endure years of abuse and beatings. It’s emerged that the police failed to act on dozens of occasions in recent years, and didn’t intervene even on the day of the tragedy. Stojanche beat her in the street in front of the courthouse, she called the police, and when they arrived, they told her that if she reported it again, she’d be charged with false reporting.

That’s somewhat similar to when the Prime Minister, who, true to conservative ideas, tells us stories about the hardships faced by young people abroad, promotes family values ​​and speaks of large families, and even the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy was renamed the Ministry of Social Policy, Demography and Youth, while at the same time, the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination has recorded dozens of cases of women being fired from their jobs the moment their bosses discovered they were pregnant. Our editorial office alone has published at least 5 such individual cases. And how many remain unpublished? And how many go unreported?

Just like the case of Ivana and Katja, which only came to light after the two ended up on the pavement in front of their building, in the capital, surrounded by several hundred neighbours. How many Ivanas are there that we still don’t know about?

Mothers-to-be fired from work for being pregnant. And women abused, beaten and killed for being women.

3 Reality swings from one extreme to another.

In Veles, a foreign company, owned by Veles residents, traditionally distributed free eggs ahead of Easter. The police had to intervene because citizens were on the verge of fighting. Within an hour, 2,000 trays of eggs were handed out for free.

Last October, during the traditional Pitijada[1] festival in Veles, a fight nearly broke out over a giant pastrmajlija more than four metres long and over a metre wide.

In the same city last month, seven days before the opening of the 5RE Theatre Festival dedicated to Petre Prlichko, residents arrived at 9 a.m., before the box office had even opened, and patiently queued to buy tickets for the performances.

These are the two faces of the same city. These are the two faces of Macedonia.

And, as we can see, the two faces of the world. The civilization that reaches for the universe. And the civilization that destroys another civilization.

4 In fact, we live here between two extremes. What is it like to live every day with the belief that you’re at the centre of the world, while at the same time fearing every day you might disappear?

I don’t know about other peoples in the world, but we Macedonians don’t have it easy.

5 Happy Easter to all who celebrate it. And to the rest, enjoy the long weekend. And – good luck at the EU border crossings. Arm yourselves with patience.

The government boasts that it’s making history every day. And our two or three hours at the border, just to enter the EU, even for a long weekend, are – nothing in historical terms. A mere blink of an eye.

What are two or three hours of anger and humiliation compared with 35 years of waiting to join the EU? And twenty years of waiting just to start negotiations with the EU. And who knows how many more decades still to come.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski

[1] A traditional food festival held in Veles, dedicated to pastrmajlija, a local baked dish typically topped with diced meat (translator’s note).