Since moving to Kosovo, the most frequent question she is asked is whether she knows the meaning of her name.
Instead of the name Janet, in Kosovo the American woman was given the Albanian name Xhenetë.
The 71-year-old American, who has decided to spend the rest of her life in Kosovo, has already become familiar with this name.
The intonation with which Albanians call him also sounds beautiful.
“For my mother, it was just a name. My brother and sister have names with Xh, and when I came here I realized that it has a different meaning. People come here and ask me if I know what Xhenetë means in Albanian and Arabic. When I was there at the market, I heard the elders saying, is there a name Xhenetë? Oh Xhenetë, they call me in the village. It was like a small village, it was a neighborhood in Breg të Diellit, and that’s how they called me,” she said.
What prompted her to come to Kosovo in the 80s was the Albanian language and culture, which, according to her, differed from other Balkan countries.
“For the first time I was a researcher of Balkan culture, I was a dancer as a child and an anthropologist and I wanted to study somewhere in Zagreb, I was there in the 80s and I heard Albanian and I said to myself this is very different, this is different from all the cultures in the Balkans because I was in Bulgaria, Macedonia and when I heard Albanian I knew that this is the culture that I connected to immediately. I wrote at a wedding in Gerrnova in a village in Ferizaj and I stayed there for a week and I decided to come back here from America and study here. I stayed here for a few years in the 80s and completed my master’s degree,” added Reinceck.
So she also started learning the Albanian language.
“When I came to live here, I studied through Albanological research, with the dictionary with me, and through dancing in Shota. I also learned the song “O zambaku i bardhë”, the problem was that what was in the book is different from what people here are saying now”, she said.
In recent years, she decided to return to Kosovo again, but this time to live permanently.
“It’s interesting that there’s something in my heart that wasn’t something more logical than oh I have to go to Kosovo. The work I did in America has freed me to live here. Now I’m 71 years old and I’m free to live anywhere in the world, I’m connected to that work, my heart is at ease here. I like it here a lot. I have friends who are jealous of me for living here and not in America,” she declared.
He has integrated so well into our country that he has even started working. This work is keeping him even closer to Albanian traditions, the very thing that had prompted him to come to Kosovo for the first time.
“Falka Surroi is grateful because I have known her for several years from her mother. When I came here to Kosovo now, I came to see Flaka and we had a conversation and she offered me to do a show on KTV. Everything has been spontaneous and I am grateful because through this show I can get to know more about Albanian culture. For me, it is a new life that I have come to Kosovo. Every day I learn something new, I was shopping one day for a national dress and I asked her if I could borrow it and she recognized me and sent me to some people who make these clothes that I myself would never have been able to find. I want to show what Kosovo is and what culture there is here that is not found anywhere in Kosovo,” Reineck said.
But there is something that has impressed him the most about this place.
“The hospitality, the love for America is what impresses us. It is very rare in the world and this is something good, but the music and dance are also special. It is in my bones. I love the language very much and I don’t know now whether I am speaking Albanian or English, I don’t distinguish it because I am very comfortable here. And with KOHA television I am very satisfied. I have found myself well”, she appreciated.
And now she knows Albanian dances better than the Albanians themselves.
Although she has studied a lot about Kosovo, she continues to be amazed by Kosovar traditions, which she touches on closely with her show on KTV.