Macedonia recently marked 35 years of independence.
The Macedonian community in the United Kingdom is, in many ways, almost the same age as the Republic itself. Large numbers of us arrived in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with another significant wave after 2010.
Three decades on, I found myself asking an uncomfortable question:
What have we actually built?
Despite several “declarative” Macedonian organisations, we still too often find ourselves attending foreign concerts, singing foreign songs, worshipping in foreign churches and, ultimately, being laid to rest in foreign cemeteries.
A community needs more than Facebook groups.
What we still lack, in many places, is the infrastructure that a mature community needs to outlast the people who founded it: schools where our children can learn the language, cultural centres, professional networks, youth initiatives, and, perhaps most importantly, people willing to volunteer and take responsibility rather than sit on the fence, complain about what we don’t have, or wait for someone else to build it.
I didn’t fully understand what was missing until recently, when we said goodbye to our dear friend. She was laid to rest at the Serbian Orthodox Cemetery. The funeral was dignified and very well organised, and I am grateful to everyone who helped give her the farewell she deserved.
But standing there, I found myself thinking about a conversation from many years ago, when we were working to establish the Macedonian Orthodox Church in London.
Our priest, my dear friend Father Victor, said something that seemed almost absurd to me at the time:
“We need to buy a cemetery.”
I remember my reply:
“Let’s build a church first.”
I didn’t understand his vision then.
I do now.
A church is not only a building where people gather to pray.
A community is not only a name, an organisation or a Facebook group.
A real community is a place where its people can begin their lives, live them, celebrate their culture, support one another – and eventually be laid to rest among their own.
This is not an attack on anyone. And please don’t confuse this reflection with nationalism.
My own circle of friends has always been international: Macedonians, English, Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, Persians and many others. We have always respected one another’s cultures, backgrounds and traditions.
I believe living in a multicultural society makes us richer, not poorer.
Respecting someone else’s identity has never required abandoning your own.
You can be proudly Macedonian and genuinely international at the same time.
That, I think, is the real challenge for the next generation of Macedonians in Britain.
Not to close ourselves off.
Not to compete with other communities.
Not to tell anyone what they should be.
But to build something of our own. Something our children can be proud of.
Something that gives our community a place to gather, learn, celebrate, support one another and preserve what matters.
Something that will still exist when we are gone.
Because the true measure of a community is not how many organisations it has.
Perhaps it is what it leaves behind.
KM