THIS IS THE VILLAGE WHERE YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T LEAVE: They graduate from colleges, improve their surroundings, and build new houses! (PHOTO)

If you travel from Leskovac towards Vučje, but via Donja and Gornja Jajina, eight kilometers from the city center, you will encounter a small village with an unusual name – Palikuća. A place where life is good for the inhabitants, despite the lack of city water and sewerage. A place from which, to everyone’s surprise, young people do not leave, but instead strive to maintain what they have, and some even build new houses.

At the entrance, you come across a sports field surrounded by overgrown grass and full of garbage. Because of this, one might think that they will be greeted by the same sight inside Palikuća.

However, the entire village is covered in asphalt, and passing by canals full of water, you see many newly built houses and a few unfinished ones, in which, according to Nemanja Savić, the locals will move when they are finished.

PRATITE NAS I NA FEJSBUKU:

“All the young people try to fix up the village as much as possible, to make it beautiful, to enjoy it. I don’t know of any young people who have left from here. They’ve only added a few houses because we’re close to Leskovac so it’s not a problem for us. If we were a bit further, we would try to be closer to the city”, Nemanja tells JuGmedia.

Villagers have two problems

This 28-year-old said that the villagers face two problems – the lack of city water and sewerage. Passing through the streets, they had the opportunity to see everything he was talking about – that there are children in the village, even though they do not have adequate conditions for staying in a place so close to the city. Furniture surrounded by overgrown grass is almost invisible. You find children playing in the street.

Although they are primarily engaged in livestock and agriculture, it is not difficult for parents, grandmothers, and grandfathers to drive them to Gornja Jajina or Veliko Trnjane, where the schools they attend are located. There is no organized transport to these places for students, and it often happens that teachers take them with them. To the city, as the interlocutor added, there are several bus lines during the day.

“Buses run, there are about 4-5 lines, but we mostly go by car. Those who don’t drive mostly take a taxi”.

For large purchases, doctor visits, and other institutions, people go to Leskovac. The only village shop opened about a year ago.

“For about 2-3 years we didn’t have a shop. In the meantime, we supplied ourselves from Leskovac. It’s not a problem, we’re close, but it still means something when there’s a shop”, Nemanja continues.

And they would like, he says, for the asphalt on the road to Jajina to be better. Garbage, apart from what careless villagers “dispose of” everywhere, is regularly taken out.

The perspective of an older villager Svetislav Savić, 77 years old, a retired man, full of energy and enthusiasm. He worked for years, did not stay in his hometown, but now he has a “fine life,” as he claims. “I live it well. I have something to eat, to sleep, we watch TV with my grandma until 2-3 o’clock and it’s a pleasure. I’m satisfied.”

Young people graduate from universities, some even in factories Some graduated medical students have come from Palikuća. At least that’s what the younger interlocutor says. Some, he adds, are employed in factories in Leskovac, and many also work in the furniture production of the 4M company, which is located in their village. Even without a clinic, larger stores, a school, a kindergarten, and other facilities, the villagers live “well”. The most important thing, it seems, is that young people stay – which seems promising for the survival of the village in the future. And that is the general impression with which we leave from here.