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Global connection links Fort Dodge, Kosovo

Worlds apart, now together

-Messenger photos by Hans Madsen Surrounded by a table of brochures and photographs, Jehona Gjurgjeala, director of Camp TOKA in Kosovo, at left, stops to talk with Elizabeth Wunn, 15, of Des Moines and Michael McCarville, of Fort Dodge. Both are considering a trip to the summer camp.

By BILL SHEA

bshea@messengernews.net

When the people of Kosovo began the tension-packed process of separating from Serbia to become an independent nation, soldiers from the Iowa Army National Guard were sent there to keep the peace.

The first of those troops deployed there in 2003. Their presence led to a lasting relationship between the people of Iowa and those of the new nation in the Balkans.

That relationship is now emerging in Fort Dodge. On Wednesday, about 25 people attended an open house in the Municipal Building at which the history of the Iowa-Kosovo connection was explained, and a chance for local teenagers to go to a camp in Kosovo was outlined.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen Jehona Gjurgjeala, director of Camp TOKA in Kosovo, speaks Wednesday evening during a visit with officials and the public in the City Council Chamber at the Fort Dodge Municipal Building.

“There is an opportunity for young Iowans to have potentially one of those growing experiences,” said Jehona Gjurgjeala, the founder and executive director of TOKA, the nonprofit organization that runs the camp.

The connection between Fort Dodge and Kosovo will become closer next week when Mayor Matt Bemrich will be joined by his counterpart from the city of Gjakova to sign a sister city agreement.

A citizen of Kosovo is already a temporary resident of Fort Dodge.

Olt Sallauka, 16, is from the city of Prizren. He is an exchange student at Fort Dodge Senior High. He had never been to the United States before he arrived this year.

“I wouldn’t expect Americans to be this friendly,” he said. “I was surprised.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen With a map showing Kosovo in relationship to Iowa on the projector screens, Jehona Gjurgjeala, director of Camp TOKA in Kosovo, speaks Wednesday night at the Fort Dodge Municipal Building.

Sallauka recalled that during the first week of school, he got completely lost trying to find his classes.

“Everyone was trying to help me,” he said.

The chain of events that made it possible for Sallauka to even be in the halls of Fort Dodge Senior High began with the first deployment of Iowa troops to Kosovo in 2003.

Lt. Col Michael Wunn of the Iowa Army National Guard said Wednesday evening that more than 800 troops have been to Kosovo during deployments in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008.

One of those soldiers was Chris Weiland, a Fort Dodge police officer, who retired from the Iowa Army National Guard in 2012. He returned to Kosovo last summer and worked as a counselor at the TOKA camp. Dawn Larson, the economic development specialist for the city, also worked at the camp as a counselor.

Wunn said the frequent deployments “really started the special friendship between the Iowa National Guard and the Republic of Kosovo.”

He said that in 2011, the Iowa National Guard became a formal partner with the security forces of Kosovo. Since then, troops from Kosovo and small groups of Iowa soldiers have trained together regularly.

Maj. Gen. Timothy Orr, the adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard, sought to expand the relationship beyond military matters, according to Wunn.

“It really occurred to him that there was a bigger opportunity there than just the security relationship,” Wunn said. “He realized that it would be an opportunity to get other sectors of Iowa involved. He really kind of came up with this whole concept of what he called the whole of Iowa for the whole of Kosovo.”

In 2013, Kosovo and Iowa became sister states.

“It’s really led to a lot of exciting things,” Wunn said.

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