Kakanj // The Air, It Weighs a Ton
© John Bills
A fresh coat of paint, preferably on the colourful side of things, solves everything. Okay, not everything, that is a little too excitable, even for me, but exchanging tired facades for freshly painted ones can give new life to a city. Many years ago, Tirana (the capital of Albania) was plastered over the news because the then-mayor Edi Rama decided to do just as the opening lines here suggest. In place of grey concrete facades, Rama kicked off a sprucing up of the city’s many asphalt delights. BBC called him the ‘mayor that brought colour to Albania’, a terribly patronising claim if ever there was one. When Rama became Prime Minister of Albania in 2013, The Guardian followed a couple of years later by referring to him as the country’s ‘artist prime minister’. I mean, that is true, Rama has done plenty of writing and painting in his time, but hopefully, the point stands. If you’ve got a grey city, pick up a bucket or three of colourful paint and spruce the place up. You’ll get some attention, at the very least.
But what happens when the bright paint begins to fade? Is it really feasible to expect a city to paint the buildings every decade or so, or however long it takes for paint to lose its shimmer? The short answer there is ‘no’, such things aren’t feasible, but since when has long-term sustainability been the aim? Start a project, finish the project, pat yourself on the back, move on to the next one.
Ignore my cynicism, please, and I shall return to the subject at hand. That subject is Kakanj, a small city in the centre of Bosnia and Herzegovina, known for industry and factories, although they might as well be synonyms. Before coming here, I asked someone if there was anything to see in Kakanj, and she replied (cheerfully, admittedly); “oh yes, there is. They have industry, factories, that sort of thing”. Factories as tourism is a stretch, even for me. Like many other cities in this part of the country, Kakanj is industry, industry is Kakanj.
© John Bills
But Kakanj didn’t begin with the flowering of industry. There is vaunted evidence of Neolithic culture in these parts, of stone houses busied by tools made of bones, but that will wait for its own chariot. In terms of the official documentation, the story of Kakanj begins in the 14th century with King Dabiša, the half-brother of Tvrtko, who was less than half as competent. Dabiša basically gave the town to Croatian Duke Hrvoje Vukčić for his sterling efforts in fighting the Ottomans, efforts that would be rendered useless when the Islamic empire overrun the area within a century. There are plenty of important sites in the surroundings, but they too will get their own chariot in time. Kakanj was mentioned again in 1468, but things were quiet for a few centuries, at least in the ‘history that gets recorded’ stakes.
Quiet until 1899, by which point the Austro-Hungarians had taken over. They were a money-hungry empire, as we all know, and their eyes lit up when brown coal was discovered here in the final year of the 19th century. A whole heap of the stuff too, and soon Kakanj became synonymous with industry. Mines sprung up, and settlements sprung up around them. Those settlements spread organically to the rivers, and a village soon became a city.
So yeah, Kakanj is industry, industry is Kakanj. People came here in search of work, much as they did in other regional towns that developed in the early 20th century and have stagnated in the 21st, places like Trbovlje in Slovenia, nearby Zenica and the like. There were the disasters that plague all industrial towns, tragic events that put the microscope firmly above the dangers of such a world. 127 died in an explosion in 1934, another 120 in 1965. Gas explosions. Accidents led to firings but no real change in the safety of the job.
© John Bills
The road leads to today’s Kakanj, a city that still revolves around industry, although that itself translates to around 25% unemployment and an increasing desire to leave. Coal is dead, and cement is being sent away. Factories squeak on, with the emphasis on ‘squeak’.
All of which makes for terribly downbeat-sounding copy, and so it should. But take a few steps backwards, or in this case, many steps around the town, and you will find a city that remains defiantly proud of its history, present and future. Nowhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina have I met friendlier people than in Kakanj, which covers a whole heap of territory. 20 metres from the most popular cafe in town stands a monument to the trucks that carried coal from the depths to the surface, complete with a plaque that leaves no confusion where its heart lies. This translation isn’t entirely accurate, but it isn’t inaccurate either.
In the cradle of our homeland in 1902, a mine was opened. Kakanj was created from a mine, the city of Kakanj will preserve and nurture memories of what the mine went through and its history. Kakanj will help its work in the future.
© John Bills
Kakanj was created from a mine, and the city of Kakanj will preserve the memories of that mine. Across the road, on an innocuous wall, is a mural of a similar train, splendorous in green and transporting a disparate settlement into its urban future, a future that the city is currently in the middle of. It would be patronising to try and glow Kakanj up as a tourist destination waiting to happen, a city of glowing potential that is misunderstood. It isn’t. It is a hardworking town with an industrial heart that grew around its factories and lives with the ebbs and flows of its shifts. Kakanj is industrial and damn proud of it, and I think that is worth celebrating.
Many buildings in the centre of town have been given a new coat of paint over the years, mint green and salmon pink replacing the deathly beige of old concrete. The new coats have begun to crack, becoming old in their own ways, but Kakanj does not live and die on the aesthetic charm of its residential and government buildings. It just gets on with its work, whether that work is to be done or not.
