Despite complaints from some local human rights groups that they are now 'forgotten' aid is still pouring in, clogging up the main thoroughfares leading into the province. A lot of it never even reaches its destination, being re-exported and resold, particularly via neighbouring Albania. Some more honest aid workers will admit that the profusion of goodies has corrupted many ordinary Kosovans and is, anyway, unnecessary being totally out of proportion to the need . None of this largesse has reached the inhabitants of the Patriarchate. The mostly elderly nuns grow and cook their own food.
Priests come in rotas from nearby Montenegro and stay for a 'tour of duty'.
Father Jovan Culibrk expressed gratitude to the Italians for their protection. But the monastery lies in an exposed place surrounded by wooded hills where snipers can hide and with an adjoining road leading down the mountains from a nearby Albanian village. Two grenades were thrown into the monastery compound in September and the Italians themselves have been targeted. Since the end of the war some 80 churches and monasteries in Kosovo have been desecrated or destroyed. All those still standing have 24-hour KFOR protection, even when the congregations have fled.