Dec. 22--BERKOVO, Kosovo -- We spend an awful lot of time in this job rushing from country to country, and from story to story.

One week I am striving to be an authority on the Roma in the Balkans, the next, I am talking, I hope knowledgeably, about water shortages on Mediterranean islands, or swing voters in North Carolina.

Which is all a roundabout way of explaining that it has been an unusual treat these past two weeks to be working on a television project of some complexity and length.

Instead of the normal 2.5 minutes for our pieces, we have been given 25 minutes.

We are making a documentary about a year in the life of a village in Kosovo.

The village is called Berkovo and, following the return of a handful of Serb families who had fled during the 1999 war, it is one of the few places in Kosovo where ethnic Serbs and Albanians live side by side as neighbours.

We started making this film in January, picking a Serb and an Albanian family, who agreed to allow us to follow them for the next twelve months.

We wanted to see how Kosovo's imminent declaration of independence, and its inevitable rejection by Serbia, would impact these families, and the village.

We wanted to know whether there were any prospects of these two communities living in peace, in a land that has been divided by hatred and fear.

Frustration and anger

So, twelve months on, what have we discovered?

Well, the big plus is that it has been a peaceful year in Berkovo (and a largely peaceful year across Kosovo, for that matter).

The two communities are wary of each other, and lead largely separate lives.

But while it has been difficult to get people to speak openly about inter-ethnic relations, there seems to be little animosity between Albanians and Serbs.

Which is not to say there is not plenty of frustration and anger in Berkovo.

For the Serbs, returning to the village where their ancestors lived for hundreds of years -- and which they fled in fear for their lives -- has been an emotionally fraught experience.

They have received help from donors and the Kosovan government, who have provided them with homes, small tractors, and other assistance.

The return process has been expensive, and it has not been a resounding success.

For a start, most of the returnees are over 45 or 50 years old, and most are men. Often, they have failed to convince their children, or even wives, to accompany them back to Kosovo.

Serbs who are doing well at school or at work can see little reason to go and live in isolated, potentially unsafe communities in rural Kosovo.