In Macedonia it takes tourism to raise a dying village

The Macedonian village of Omorani. Photo by Fieke Snijder

Of the approximately 40 houses in the village, just ten are inhabited. “Most of the households have only one or two members,” Tošeski says. He expects his village to become deserted in the next 20 to 30 years. Currently, the twisting dirt roads of the village only have the presence of stray dogs, escorted by their fleas. Options to save Bonče do not exist, according to Tošeski. “There are no ways to bring the people back.”

The 74-year-old lives with his wife, son and grandchildren in a historical Macedonian house. Dirt, water and eggs are the only things that hold the stone bricks of the old house together. Tošeski yearns for better days: “I don’t have a pension and I have to beg for money from my son, just to live a minimal life.”

Seven in a classroom

Tošeski’s son is planning on leaving Bonče in order to better socialise his children. “The elementary school here has only seven kids in the class,” Tošeski says. Even with this low number, the class is supplemented by children from the surrounding villages. In Štavica, a neighbouring village, a middle-aged Dzvonko Miceski leans on his tractor. He just sold his machine to two farmers from a nearby town. He and fewer than 80 others form the population of the old village.

“All the young people are leaving,” Miceski says. “There are three families here with young children and that’s it. There is no school here, and my kids have to go to another village.” He is also planning on moving to the city soon, when his children will go to high school.

His 10-year-old daughter Cvete is happy with that decision. “It is boring in Štavica. I want to live in the city where my friends are.” Her father believes that, like Bonče, his village will die out in a generation. Seventy-five kilometres northwards, huddled in the winding roads leading uphill from the city of Veles, lies Omorani, a village that was on track to a similar fate as Bonče and Štavica. But fate appears to be diverted, or at least delayed. According to Katarina Georgievska, an environmentalist from Skopje (Macedonia’s capital), the flow of tourists into the village has helped revitalise Omorani. Around 70 people currently live in the village, and the majority are old and not well-educated. Most of the working population spend around 15 hours a day hunched in the tobacco fields that surround the area.

Georgievska paid around 2,000 euros for her property in Omorani. She invested 20 times that amount to transform the house into a guesthouse with three rooms that can accommodate nine people. It is not only the tourists who appreciate the accommodation. “When I told the villagers that I was building a guesthouse for tourists, they laughed at me,” she says. “They thought I was crazy. But the locals are slowly learning that they too can profit from the tourists who visit the village.”

Her traditional breakfast for guests includes goat’s cheese from the local goat keeper and fresh eggs that were laid in the barn down the road. “The locals have come to realise that my guesthouse could lead to additional income for them,” Georgievska acknowledges. “I bought a basket and agreed with one of the local farmers that tourists could come to his garden to pick fruit and vegetables. The fixed price for the basket is three euros, whatever you put in it.”

The farmer did not believe Georgievska when she said tourists would pay that amount, when locals only pay around 70 cents for the same basket. “He said: ‘Come on, three euros, that is too much, too expensive!’ and I replied: ‘I deal with the price – you don’t speak English so you don’t talk.’”

The villagers have gotten used to the bed and breakfast and now see it as a positive thing. “They feel proud that someone bought a house, made it look nice and that people from all over the world visit Omorani,” Georgievska says. She is convinced that rural tourism could provide a solution for the Macedonian villages that are slowly dissipating into desertion.

Multiplying effect

Dejan Metodijeski, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Tourism at the Goce Delčev University in Štip, agrees. “Rural tourism can have a multiplying effect. Take the example of the Omorani guesthouse: Georgievska accommodates the people, but buys her cheese and tomatoes from local residents,” he says. But the opportunities afforded to a well-educated Macedonian from the capital, like Georgievska, are different to those given to villagers. “The main problem is that the ones living in the rural areas are not familiar with the opportunities that rural tourism can offer,” Metodijeski admits.

Referring to the Strumica region in southeast Macedonia, he says that “the area is well known for its agriculture, but there is not one single room or bed in the whole region of a hundred villages where tourists could spend the night”. Metodijeski believes that rural tourism must come from the people and it needs a bottom-up approach to achieve results in the long-term.

Yet, rural tourism can begin as a complementary activity. “For example: a farmer grows vegetables or has animals and opens his house to tourists,” Metodijeski explains. “Over the years he learns that he can make more money from tourism than just from agriculture. He stops working as a farmer and lives off tourism.” The image he paints seems simple, but requires local communities to first understand the benefits and then the implementation of rural tourism.

There are further complications with the development of rural tourism, according to Metodijeski. “Macedonians are very hospitable,” he says. “They will welcome you, cook you something, give you a drink.” Yet, paradoxically, when it comes to serving guests in a paid environment, they feel subordinate. Metodijeski finds this phenomenon unexplainable.

Georgievska agrees that this is a problem. “It is very hard to find a worker, someone who could clean or serve breakfast,” she says. “They would rather spend 15 hours in a tobacco field.” While Georgievska could employ these locals with easier work, where they can earn the same amount of money with half the amount of labour, the villagers continue to decline her offers. “They don’t understand the idea,” she says. “Tourists are like science fiction to them. People from the village do not want to work as servers. I even have friends who ask me if I feel ashamed when I serve my guests breakfast!”

The Macedonian handicap

Pece Cvetkovski, a former footballer for Yugoslavia, opened his family-run guesthouse in the small village of Dihovo, in southern Macedonia, ten years ago. He has also observed how people from villages often do not want to work for people they know. He offers another explanation for this: “The older generations lived in a different system. Everybody had a job, an apartment or was studying. Everyone was middle class. It is the Macedonian handicap.” In other words, Cvetkovski believes that this handicap comes from the offset of the former socialist system and people are unaccustomed to working hard to get ahead.

Cvetkovski’s boarding house is in his restored traditional home that was built by his grandfather in 1928. Like in Omorani, the whole village has benefited from the tourists coming to Dihovo. “In the beginning the villagers were not used to tourism, but now they react better,” Cvetkovski says.

His support of local businesses may be a contributing factor. The bee farm of Naco Jovhevski 300 meters down the road is one of these businesses. “I said to the beekeeper that tourists will want to come to his farm. He did not believe me.” But Cvetkovski invested in beekeeping suits anyway and now provides a steady flow of tourists that pay a small fee to visit the hives and taste fresh honey. Jovhevski is pleased with the extra income. His English is limited, but he learned enough to explain to tourists the techniques he uses to make honey. And the beekeeper is not the only villager benefitting from the guesthouse. “If people have chickens, I buy their eggs. The farmer with sheep provides my sheep milk. We are all connected,” Cvetkovski says.

The Dihovo guest house was listed in the top 50 secret travel locations in Europe by the travel guide Lonely Planet in 2015. According to Darko Majhošev, who completed a PhD in tourism and published a paper last year on the possibilities of rural tourism development in Macedonia, the attention of foreign media is one of the reasons why more and more people are starting to come there. Majhošev refers to figures from the state statistical office of Macedonia: “Before 2009 only 1.15 per cent of all the places in Macedonia where tourists could sleep were in rural areas. However based on the latest figures, 15.4 per cent of all places can be found in rural areas.” He explains that the increase is due to an increase in flight paths from budget airlines and Macedonia’s economy making it cheaper for western tourists to visit.

Untapped potential

But there is still an untapped potential in Macedonia’s rural tourism market. Metodijeski, the professor from Goce Delčev University, explains that while the number of beds available versus what is booked in the capital is around 80 per cent, in rural areas the ratio is only five to ten per cent. He adds that the onus is now on the government to further increase the opportunities. “There is no association or law for rural tourism,” he explains. “The government needs a stronger policy in order for it to succeed.”

The process has started, however. The Macedonian government has been providing subsidies for the development of rural tourism, designing more hiking trails and promoting local cuisine, among other things. Yet Georgievska, the Omorani bed and breakfast owner, is not impressed by the steps taken by the government so far: “There is very little local or national help. It is not the government’s priority to support rural tourism.”

One village took matters into its own hands. Vevčani, a dot on the map huddled in the hills near the Albanian border, realised early on the potential that tourism could bring to their local economy. Even though Vevčani was famous for its natural springs it was not seeing many visitors. So the villagers took a rather unconventional approach. What first started as a political demonstration against the Yugoslav government in the 1980s resulted in the residents voting to become a newly independent republic in 1991 following the fall of Yugoslavia. While the unrecognised republic lasted only two years, it recreated itself in name only and in 2000 bid to attract further tourism. And the tourists came, entering through the grand archway, eager to see the tiny village that decided to go it alone. Vevčani created its own flag, currency and offers souvenir passports, allowing anyone to become a “citizen” of the republic.

This strategy has paid off. Fully-loaded tour buses with curious visitors drive in and out, backpackers make their way through the village and the many tourists have light-hearted drinks on the terraces of the main street. Water from the springs gush through the streams lined with the traditional wooden-framed houses, while the friendly locals provide directions in broken English.

According to Kristijan Kukoski, the manager of the Via Ignatia restaurant in the village, the attention Vevčani has received breathed new life into the tourism industry. “We always had the springs, but no one knew about them,” he says. “The declaration of independence put us on the map. And I think it is the reason why many tourists are coming here, as well as the beauty of Vevčani.”

As Kukoski explains, the village came to recognise its uniqueness. “Most of the people come here to visit the springs, the mountains, the traditional architecture and the natural beauties the area has to offer.” He is convinced that if Vevčani hadn’t attracted tourists, the residents would be leaving in droves, like other villages in the country. “When tourists come here, everybody is happy. They go to the shops to buy something, come here to the restaurant to eat … It is a clear connection: tourists come here and everybody benefits. It is really good for Vevčani.”

The village is now taking the next step by looking for foreign investors to build a ski centre. Kukoski says that this will create a higher level of tourism, stimulating economic growth with new hotels and restaurants: “We must be kind to the tourists because they come here for a reason. We want them to keep coming.”

It may take a village to raise a child, but in Macedonia it takes more than that to keep them there. The implementation of rural tourism could be the hope these skeleton villages need to start revitalising rural Macedonia. Yet for these villages to harvest this potential, they will have to act quickly before it is too late and there is no one left.

Fieke Snijder is a Dutch journalist specialising in international politics and Eastern Europe in particular.

Samantha Dixon is an Australian journalist with a deep interest in Eastern European affairs, particularly for new or prospective EU countries.

agrotourism, Macedonia