insists on showing the cow. Thanks to this milk, once the family is fed, Rabije produces cheese she can sell at the market.

Hope is a cow. To be precise, a patched "Friesian", white and brown. She has got a horn curiously chopped in the middle. Each day she delivers milk and her owner Rabije Gashi, a thirty five-year-old blond, tall Kosovar peasant, is very happy. She insists on showing the cow. Thanks to this milk, once the family is fed, Rabije produces cheese she can sell at the market.

But hope has got a price as everything in life. The cow costs 1.200 DM (German currency is the official one in Kosovo) which means 1.200.000 Italian Lira. And Rabije hasn't got it. To give her the money there is another woman, who has come from far away. Jannat-e-Quanine comes from Bangladesh. Small in figure as much as Rabije is tall. Dark in complexion and hair. She obstinately keeps on wearing the veils and sari of her country. In the foggy and cold hills of Bardh I Madh, the village twenty kilometers from Pristina where Rabije lives, nobody seems to pay attention to the contrast. Women and children surround and hug her, smile with her and she hugs and smiles back. Jannat speaks English and needs a translator to communicate with them. The young translator is Merit Krasniqi. Nothing appears to unite them, other than their common Islamic religion. She has been here only for few months, but "Inshalla" — she is giving hope and money to many poor women with a long list of victims behind them. She is a senior manager of Grameen Bank, which invented micro-credit without collateral that continues to leave the World Bank perplexed, but which has given hope and pride to thousands of have-nots, mainly women. The "banker of the poor" has come to Kosovo!

Grameen Bank was invited to Kosovo by Missione Arcobaleno, who put at their disposal five million US dollars. "This is likely to be the money best invested by us", says Guido Artom, the Sole Commissioner of Missione Arcobaleno, the mission which is going to close by the end of the year. "I have seen many things in my life; but the collection day led by Jannat has given me deep emotion". In the little village of Bard I Madh, Io Donna also has witnessed one of these meetings half way between a business meeting and ritual ceremony. The appointment is in a small house in a poor state like all the rest. This is the countryside where the poorest of the poor live, ideal clients for Yunus and Jannat. On the raw wooden door a paper says that here the meeting of Loan Center Number 5 will take place. It is behind the door that the emotion starts. The room is small, maybe three meters by five. The light blue walls are scraped like the ceiling. On the wooden boards, old military blankets replace traditional Islamic rugs. Everything smells of misery. The small room is occupied by thirty women and it is easy to count they are thirty; they are sitting in six rows, five in each row, one next to the other, in a tidy manner. They all stand up together like a disciplined platoon. Some are old, some are young; some are wearing the typical foulard, some are not. Before the front row there is a desk, with a bunch of wild flowers for Jannat and two chairs. Here sit Jannat and Merita. They begin. They smile and laugh, though discipline is tight and rigorous. The six rows have five places each and a precise meaning. Each row is a "loan unit". Grameen does not lend to a single woman. They have to form a group vouching for each other.

Have Gashi, the person responsible in the first row, is also responsible for the entire Center. She briefly reports. She has also asked and obtained DM 1200, but for a sewing machine. "Here it is the cost of a cow or and given that the majority wants either a cow a sewing machine which cost about the same, we established that this should be the upper limit of our loans" Jannat explains. The collection ceremony starts for repayment of loan instalment. Women take out of their pockets, wrapped in a handkerchief, a badly kept banknote and many small coins. Merita, the interpreter who also acts as secretary and cashier, counts. She speaks loudly the amount, so that everyday can listen. Then she writes on a blue notebook the amount received. There is also a second yellow notebook. This is the one for savings. At each meeting, each woman gives one DM. At the end of the year she will have saved 25 DM and a little interest. The meeting is closed. It lasted almost one hour. All the women clap their hands and before going out all together, they repeat the Grameen Slogan: "Unity, discipline, hard work". The next appointment: after two weeks. Maybe Piero Borghini, the former Milan mayor and the operational manager of Missione Arcobaleno in Kosovo, is right. "The Grameen Bank mechanism reminds something between Maoism and Calvinism. But it works. We thought that the upper limit of DM 1200 was too low. But Jannat demonstrated that it is right"