What does a Friday look like at BOSFAM in Tuzla?  Last week, we opened our annual, weekend-long handicraft fair.  The event featured handmade crafts, carpets, clothing, and other souvenirs from BOSFAM weavers as well as other local women artisans.  I scored some beautiful, handcrafted lace earrings and picked up some early Christmas presents (don’t you wish you were on my list!).  I also documented the opening ceremony, so to speak, which include a fashion show, traditional Bosnian folklore dance, and speeches from our founder and director all with a backdrop of our most beautiful carpets.  Here is the short film I made to feature the event’s highlights.  Prijatno (Enjoy)!

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Towers in lower Manhattan, that caused the collapse of the Pentagon’s wall outside of Washington, D.C., and that led to the crash of flight 192 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – killing nearly 3,000 people.  I can hardly believe that it’s been a decade since then, a day which I, and everyone else alive to hear about or see the attacks, will never be able to shake.  We all have those “where I was when I found out the planes hit the buildings” stories: I was in my sophomore year of high school and in my music theory class when, just after 9 AM, we turned on the TV to see the second plane hit the tower.  Because I lived in a town just across the river in New Jersey, one that had many residents working in lower Manhattan, each time a student was called to the administration’s office over the loudspeaker the school shuddered with a moment of dread.

That evening and early the next morning, we could smell the towers burning – the eerie cloud of smoke passed through each town and permeated our noses and memories.  These are collective memories I share with the people who were there that day, but I recognize my luck because I did not lose anyone on September 11^th.  Still, while the point of a memorial is certainly to honor individuals lost, it is also to provide an outlet for collective grief and reflection.  This year, I won’t be able to join friends and family in remembering the attack that changed everything about the United States and, to some extent, the world.  Earlier this summer though, I did attend another memorial commemorating a group killed in a far away country when I was only seven years old living in Rumson, New Jersey.  The Srebrenica genocide memorial and burial ceremony is held every July 11 to remember when thousands of men and boys were killed after the safe zone Srebrenica fell to General Mladic’s paramilitary units, and to bury those newly identified bodies pieced together by forensic anthropologists after mass grave exhumations.

Remembering

This year there were over 40,000 people in attendance – many from Bosnia and its Diaspora, but also many from the international community.  Now, I admit that I have some qualms with the way the town swells to the tens of thousands while the next day it is empty as ever.  I think that we are doing a huge disservice to Srebrenica by seeing it singularly in the light of the genocide, but more on that will come in later blogs.

The most important thing I saw and I felt during July 11 this year was a collective sense of pain that every mother, daughter, or wife who has lost a male loved one can relate to regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, or country of origin.  My home town lost five residents in the 9/11 attacks, including one of my own neighbors.  That day the family lost their husband and father.  On July 11 I could see how women burying their husbands braced themselves for the shock of putting the bones into the ground and saying goodbye one last time.  Their pain was written on their tear-streaked faces, in their hunched-over bodies, in their deep, throaty, primal cries.  The atmosphere was so heavily saturated with desperate anger and sadness that no one there could remain emotionally untouched.

When I was twelve my mother and I buried my father.  He spent nine months fighting cancer, but just couldn’t hang on anymore.  When we parted with his body after the funeral service, my mother’s face filled with something that I will never forget.  It wasn’t just emotion but the very embodiment of loss.  The heaviest burden is to bury someone you love, most of all someone lost before their time because of violence.  Violence in the tumors racking your body and transforming it into a prison, violence in hijacking a plane to crash it into New York City landmarks, or violence in executing thousands of men and boys on local football fields or in factories.

My mother’s face, the faces of the women in Srebrenica on July 11, and I’m sure the faces of 9/11 victims’ families all share an uncanny similarity, which is that loss burdens us with a heaviness we must carry for the rest of our lives.  I’m not sure if there’s much we can do in our everyday lives to make such things better – I’m a true believe that time transforms the sharp pain into a duller one, and that pain finds a way to fit in with the other elements of your daily existence.  However on anniversaries that are as pregnant with meaning as this one for my own country, or yearly burying newly identified bodies from mass graves in Srebrenica, collective mourning helps us to process what happened and consider what we lost as individuals and as a whole during such events.

As I take my own moment this September 11^th to mourn the loss of American citizens and the violence since that has been committed in their names, I will undoubtedly pause to also consider the loss that permeates my current town of residence, Srebrenica.  For in the end, a mother’s loss is the same in Bosnia, the United States, Sri Lanka, and South Africa.  Observing 9/11 in Bosnia exactly two months after burying 613 genocide victims means recognizing that every country, every community, every person faces loss and the best thing we can do to cope is brace ourselves and support the others around us, whoever they may be, in taking our next steps together.

This Tuesday, 30 August, was Eid ul-Fitr, otherwise known as Bajram to Bosnian Muslims.  Eid comes just after Ramadan, when Muslims all over the world celebrate the end of a month of fasting.  I admit, I felt both badly and amazed for my Muslim friends who fasted this year – it’s August, so the days are very long, and it was incredibly hot.  The dedication they had, fasting without even water for 9 or 10 hours, is admirable if not a little bit crazy (but in a good way!).

Tuzla has been astoundingly quiet for the last month because of this very combination: Ramadan, the obligatory August vacation everyone seems to take “on the sea” (in Croatia mostly), and the blazing heat (we’re talking 98 F every day for two weeks).  Today when I went into town though, the city had transformed itself – like it had come out of hibernation with renewed energy and vigor.  Everyone was out looking happy, walking with friends and relatives, washing cars, eating ice cream, laughing loudly, getting ready for their big meals and night of drinking homemade rakija (plum brandy).

Baklava from Bajram

So while I didn’t fast, I did get in on the post-Ramadan festivities a bit with some of my BOSFAM colleagues.  I had a lovely lunch of homemade lepina (a special type of bread for Ramadan), homemade kajmak (think fattier, more delicious sour cream to go on said bread), and beautiful, local tomatoes.  Since receiving the invite the day before I had been a bit nervous – these are great women, but they don’t speak English and I barely speak Bosnian.  I kept wondering what would we talk about?!  Instead, I felt completely comfortable.  I understood a good deal of what was happening, even if the details were often hazy, and when I spoke they understood me as well!  Even when there was silence, it was the roomy, comfortable type.

This heartening experience came at the heels of several satisfying days of accomplishing a lot for work while also meeting up with new Bosnian friends (a real social life, finally!).  Sunday night a friend and I got dinner and, because I am comfortable with her, we spoke half in Bosnian and half in English.  And I actually understood!  Not only was it exhilarating to feel minorly more competent in the language, but it was great to feel a close friendship developing.  Within those couple of days I also had a stimulating and eye opening conversation with another friend/colleague about nationalism, extremism, and Tuzla as a multi-ethnic city.  I can’t describe how happy I am, not necessarily at discussing such difficult topics, but that my friendships are growing into a phase that we have a foundation that allows us to have those types of conversations.

In a way, I feel like I had my own version of Ramadan fasting for the past couple of weeks – albeit far less spiritual in the traditional sense.  Since Quinn left on 20 August, I have been adjusting to living alone, something that I’ve never actually had to do before now.  With more time on my hands now that Quinn and I aren’t watching silly videos online in the evening, I have been committed to studying the language more formally.  While a necessary evil, the process has proved to me just how little I know and how much I want to learn.  I hate feeling so limited by language, but then again it is coming steadily and slowly.

Socially and intellectually the past weeks have been a bit like emotionally ramming myself against a big, granite wall…. and these not-so-pleasant realities hit as my apartment reached nearly 100 degrees for days on end.  But then, just as Ramadan was winding down, things seemed to shift.  The heat broke.  I had plans for the weekend with various friends.  I was starting to incorporate newly learned words into my vocabulary.  Maybe I’m starting to sync with Bosnia’s unique pace of life, or maybe it is just a coincidence that these things occured at the same time.  Whatever the explanation, I am happy that my own personal steps forward have come as the Bosniaks of the country celebrate Eid.

Last weekend my partner in crime, Quinn, flew back to northern California to finish her last semester of a masters program.  When she left, I admitted that I couldn’t bring myself to write her a note – it was both too hard to think about not having her around, and the time we did have I wanted to spend with her instead of writing to her.  It may seem a little odd or a little too touchy to write a blog dedicated to her or our friendship on the Advocacy Project website, but I promise I will convince you of why this is an important subject by the end of the entry.

For the past three months, Quinn and I have worked, lived, and traveled together.  After only three days of our pre-departure AP training in DC were we thrown into the challenges and joys of working in Bosnia.  Whether or not we liked it, we were pretty much stuck with each other.  Luckily for me, I have honestly come to love, respect, and admire Quinn as a friend and colleague.  Even if my fellowship had nothing but hardship besides this friendship with her (which, of course, the fellowship hold much happiness and adventure innately), I would gladly accept the challenge so that I would be blessed with the opportunity to meet her.

At a barbeque with friends in Tuzla

At a barbeque with friends in Tuzla

Without Quinn I’m sure much of the Bosnian grammar would remain a mystery to me…. She came in with previous knowledge of the language.  Yet, not once did she make me feel unintelligent or embarrassed during my slow and sometimes painful language-learning process.  Together (though, mostly her), we were able to figure out the majority of what people were saying to us by the end of her fellowship, and we proudly completed three interviews with other Srebrenica-based organizations without the assistance of a translator.

Over the months we’ve shared experiences that can be challenging to convey to others.  We have laughed a lot, tried to cook in our modest kitchen, we have met interesting characters, and traveled through Bosnia and into Montenegro.  I will always hope that we can spend more times as funny and fun as these again, but what I really value was how supportive Quinn came to be during the difficult moments.  In Potocari, during 95 F degree weather and mourning women fainting all around, she grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd as I cried.  She was always there to hug me or cheer me up or tell me that I was doing ok with language.  She was honest but constructive with me if I was being overly abrasive, or when we’d hurt each others feelings.

New, Surprising Friends

New, Surprising Friends

The truth is that I want to be more like Quinn.  She is open hearted, sensible but sensitive, and giving.  She is loyal, intelligent, and takes life with a grain of salt.  I think that she was a blessing in the BOSFAM center and, as the women keep asking about her, I know that she will always be remembered as a friend and welcomed back with open arms.

So why does all this gushing really matter?  It makes me think about a number of things that I have learned and will continue to learn during my fellowship.  Mostly that relationships really, deeplymatter in one’s life.  They are the substance of life, which is why it is so hard to lose them, whether through death, a breakup, or a close friend moving away.  Another lesson is that relationships can sometimes be very hard, but in the end the work you put in is usually worth it.

My friendship with Quinn just clicked – we shared an odd sense of humor that allowed us to weather the big, sometimes startling differences in the culture (including lack of air conditioning on our long bus rides!).  Other friendships in this country have taken a little more work and a lot more time.  The language is a barrier, and so are our own cultural norms.  Yet, as I embark on a new phase of living in Bosnia during my AP fellowship, one without my compatriot Quinn, I realize from these reflections that I want to put in the effort it takes to make new friends and deepen already-existing friendships.  If I am able to build connections with people that are even half of what I’ve gained from Quinn, then it will be a monumental and long-lasting achievement.

We laugh…. a lot.

My entries have become fewer and far between within the last 6 weeks.  This is, as always, both a good and bad thing.  I am busy!  With work and with friends!  I forgot how incredibly satisfying it is to have produced a solid writing project – which is what I have after a week working on a grant application for the US Embassy.  This came on the heels of my amazing long weekend in Montenegro, on which I will write a fuller entry at a later, less surprisingly busy moment in my life.

For the moment I offer to you all a funny, if not insightful, look into the past three months of my life in Bosnia.

Hope you enjoy a rather light take on our life here.  It’s been a challenging and sometimes emotionally difficult three months so far, but we try to laugh long and hard.  Enjoy!

I have to give credit where credit is due:  not only does David Sedaris accurately portray the long, difficult, and often humbling stages of learning a language, but he also helps me to laugh about my blunders instead of break down in tears.  In Me Talk Pretty One Day Sedaris writes about learning enough French to graduate from toddler-talk to sounding more or less like a character out of Deliverance:

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned “Lie down,” “Shut up,” and “Who shit on this carpet?” The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ‘em.”

-David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

So far, learning the language has been the greatest difficulty of my life here – emotionally and intellectually it leaves me exhausted every. single. day.  I’ve never been too much of a language person, but when in a classroom with a teacher and a structured syllabus I tend to do ok.  Unfortunately for me and most of the people suffering my Bosnian around me, I’ve only had about 24 hours total of formal language instruction.  I quickly found a tutor here, in Tuzla, who is absolutely fabulous and who knows both English and Bosnian better than me.  But there are only so many hours (and maraka – the Bosnian currency) I can spend on being tutored.

Inevitably, I’ve been left to my own devices to learn this difficult and confusing language.  I’m still wondering just where to start in learning an entire language while balancing work for Advocacy Project, work for BOSFAM, and some semblance of a social life.  Do I start with vocabulary or verbs?  Grammar or pronunciation?  Besides being generally overwhelmed, I have three major enemies in my battle with the language:

1. My terrible pronunciation (so few vowels in Slavic words and a decade of Italian diction from opera singing means I sound like a Slovenian, according to one friend).
2. Unfamiliar and frustrating grammar with seven different cases (all you classics majors, I envy you for mastering locative and accusative and genitive and dative, etc..).  Seriously though, why do we need to have three genders, singular and plural, and then seven ways to say both nouns and adjectives?  I wander around Tuzla muttering to myself “which is it?  Is it padila sam na ulici or padila sam na ulicu. (I fell in/on the street – but with two different endings – because I’ve failed to fully memorize the locative case’s endings for feminine nouns).
3. My terrible memory.  I simply have a sponge for a brain that is already oversaturated with culture, food, work, and news.  Remembering vocabulary feels like lifting the weight of the world and, more than occasionally, I think it’s just a losing battle.  On the plus side, I can remember such useless words as “leptir” (“butterfly”), “šišmiš“ (“bat”), and “paun“ (“peacock”).  If it’s got wings and is nearly never used in conversation, you bet I know it!

Luckily, I don’t yet know enough of the language to have a complete idea of what is happening around me all the time, so this helps me not realize when someone is trashing my language skills in rapid-fire Bosnian.  Up to this point I also have realized that muttering on, despite sounding like a fool, is probably the most useful thing I can do to improve my speaking.

Over the past few weeks though, I have begun to understand enough that I can easily identify when someone is saying (to me or anyone else around me) how “she doesn’t understand anything!”  I can now say “Ja razumijen tebe sada” (“I can understand you now!”).  I think being in the dark about my mistakes and how people reacted to them was more fun.  Just now, while writing this blog, I heard my colleagues poke fun at me for always saying “mislim da” (“I think that….”).  Since these are my friends and they are kind and patient with my language, it is fine and even a little funny to point out my idiosyncrasies, but there is a point when I just want to yell “I promise, I really am smart!”

Some of my earliest mistakes were probably the best.  Instead of asking a friend “do you want my meat” (since I am still trying to be a vegetarian here, though challenges with that abound as well) I asked – across a room full of people – “do you LOVE my meat?”  He said yes, of course.  This was only after I had already asked a lovely, gentle peacebuilder who I know from Banja Luka if he liked my meat.  He and I were both reddened at the cheeks once I had realized what I had asked him.

Another time, not long after the meat incident, I started to confuse the words “sretna” (happy) with “gladna” (hungry).  This confusion became ultimately apparent when, after my friend Maxime and I successfully scaled a slippery mountain with some Bosnian friends, I proclaimed “Ja sam gladna!”  I meant I was happy to have made it, to be in Bosnia surrounded by beautiful landscape and friends, to be eating fresh, wild raspberries.  I said “I was hungry” instead.  I think they got the point though.

I’m not really sure when the torture will end.  I don’t expect it to cease for at least another 6 months, if not much, much longer.  I don’t particularly care if I don’t sound like an intellectual, but I would really like to be able to use more than the 10 or so adjectives I’ve successfully memorized.  I’d also like to be able to understand everything Tima, one of our older weavers, says so she stops telling me that I don’t understand anything to my face.  Ouch.

If there are any language learners out there please give me some information, some advice, some hope!  I don’t know what to expect of myself in the relationship with this Slavic language, but right now I would really like to break up with it.  If I could dump the Bosnian language, I would.  But I realize that learning this language is more than essential to my work here, and my personal life.  Every intellectual challenge – from Smith’s tough classes, to my field research in South Africa, to learning and lobbying on Jubilee’s international economic policy reform – has been easy next to learning this damn language.  So, u Pomoć (help!).  Right now I think I’m stuck between the evil baby stage and the hillbilly stage – hopefully a thoughtful, yet spiteful teenage stage that David Sedaris has yet to write about will come soon.  I think that might more accurately match my current sentiments toward the language.

Fast food and war criminals.  These are Bosnia’s two big stories this week.  Sarajevo opened the country’s first McDonalds on July 20, the same day as the arrest of the last major war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague.

Goran Hadzic is accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including involvement with the massacre of nearly 300 non-Serb men and boys in the Croatian town of Vukovar during the 1991 Croatian-Serbian conflict.  While I applaud the arrest of this man, it is no secret that Serbia has finally “captured” him to assist with its courting of the European Union during the accession process.  According to the New York Times, Serbian Present Boris Tadic proclaimed that the arrest meant the completion of Serbia’s “legal [and] moral duties.”  So that is that?  Time to move on and forget what happened less than a generation ago?

I don’t believe that Serbia should have to continually sit in the perpetrator’s seat – it is neither good for regional relations nor the identity of the Serbian people who generally had nothing to do with the acts of vicious war criminals.  But a government should never be finished with its “moral duties.”  Victims from all sides and all countries must live with their losses, not to mention the destroyed economy, infrastructure, and social welfare system, so it seems counterproductive for the Serbian to simply put a lid on it because they’ve turned over one war criminal to the Hague.

A good friend of mine works with a Bosnian Diaspora organization called the Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Upon the arrest of Hadzic, she sent out a press release that most succinctly expressed concerns I have seen throughout Bosnia.  “While Serbia has fulfilled its international obligation by capturing Hadzic, it must now open a new chapter and focus on the truth and reconciliation process within the region in order for sustainable peace and prosperity to occur.”

So as the last major war criminal was turned over to the Hague, thousands in Sarajevo lined up proudly to have their first Bosnian-based Big Mac.  “We’re a normal country now!” proclaims a taxi driver in the Financial Times blog on the opening of the fast-food chain.  So many things make me sad about this sentence that I could write an entirely different blog that might depress myself and my readers, so I will let you determine the most disturbing aspect of such a phrase for yourself.  The major concern about the McDonalds for me though, is the sudden influx of Foreign Direct Investment.  On the whole, the opening of McDonalds signals that the market is ready for increased FDI; I worry that large foreign entities bringing in millions or billions of dollars will increase political corruption and decrease local ownership of the Bosnian economy.

For a country whose politics are run almost completely on ethnic-based nepotism, more money can only further divide the government and its citizens.  Even cell phone numbers here are ethnically divided – three companies owned by the three major identity groups have turned giving your phone number into an ethnic exercise (I own a 066 number, which means I own a “Serb” number).  With the way the current system exists, new and copious amounts of money cannot simply be divided equally…. some will win and some will lose out on those profits, and most likely it will fall upon ethnic lines.  I, rather pessimistically, imagine that money from FDI will benefit top-level officials and their own ethnic group lackeys, while local Bosnian businesses from all identity groups will be unable to compete.

This week’s news does not provide a sunny outlook, but interesting and a little odd nonetheless.  It seems like the war defines everything, even penetrating the opening of McDonalds.  Only now, after nearly two months in the country, can I see how the media and public narrative still revolves around 1992-1995.  The international news doesn’t help this case at all – the only time I see Bosnia mentioned in any international coverage is when a story recalls death, genocide, and bombs.  I know that Bosnia hold more, but for now I can’t help but think: “you want fries with that [war criminal]?”

How can we ever live with the slaughter of 8,000 men and boys on 11 July, 1995?  One method is remembrance.  On the 11^th of every month, nearly one hundred women walk through Tuzla and convene at the fountain in the middle of old town.  The atmosphere is solemn and congenial at the same time – the women come together to remember their loved ones lost during the Srebrenica genocide, but because it occurs each month there is a level of normalization that allows the women to catch up with each other.

Walking to Remember

We found out that Zifa doesn’t usually attend only after we returned to BOSFAM.  Why?  Because this memorial is like a funeral procession.  BOSFAM helped women survivors to sow the names of the lost on pieces of fabric, and made it into a long string similar to Buddhist prayer flags.  At the top of the procession is a banner with photographs of the men killed.  There is a photo on the banner of Zifa’s son, who was 25 when he was murdered in the forests outside of Srebrenica.  Zifa has an understandably difficult time seeing her son’s photo.  I knew that Zifa lost her son, as well as her two brothers and many nephews, and this information often brought me to silence.  To see Zifa put herself through this for us though, her ljepotice (“pretty ones”), brought a landslide of emotions – of love, guilt, deep sorrow, and sympathy.  I was so proud to be Zifa’s “pretty one” as we walked back through town to BOSFAM.

Upon our return we realized our trip had been out of the ordinary for Zifa.  She took a tablet to calm her nerves and laid down, scarf over her face.  At this moment, I felt a need to protect Zifa from anymore pain life might bring her.  Never before had I so fiercely wanted to rewind history and change its course – my own, personal losses seemed bearable if I could only go back and tell Zifa’s son to get out of Srebrenica a week or a month earlier.

One of 8,000

All I can say though is zao mi je (“I’m sorry”).  Even with better Bosnian, it might be all I can ever say to these women, because I simply don’t understand what they’re going through and I certainly can’t shed any light on why this terrible thing happened to them.  As I stood in the center of town, holding one of the flags memorializing a man killed, I turned to my neighbor.  This stranger was my mom’s age, and I spoke a bit with her in my basic Bosnian.  She lost two sons – one was 24 – my age.  Suddenly, I found myself looking at a picture of this young man she always keeps in her wallet.  A man who could have been any of my male friends back in Washington, DC.  She and I stood, both at a loss for words.  I said I was so sorry, that I couldn’t understand how it all happened, and she replied to je to.  That is that.

Before leaving the gathering, I turned to the woman I had befriended and thanked her.  I said I might see her in a month at the burial ceremony in Srebrenica.  We held hands, we hugged and she kissed my cheek.  I’m not sure who was more moved – I suspect it was me – but what had passed between us reminded me that solidarity is important.  My small attempts to express my feelings had built a bridge between me and the woman.  A relationship such as this, based solely on respect, compassion, and love, can ease the pain for a moment or two.  The loss of my father at the age of twelve taught me that sometimes a moment or two, a pause in the pain, is just enough to keep us going.

Watching, Waiting, Praying

That is life here in Tuzla.  You might not always see it, but there are ghosts that follow around people.    Don’t get me wrong, everyone who has experienced a loss or trauma of any kind has a history that they must learn to manage throughout life.  I know these struggles intimately.  But a town of 40,000 refugees who fled ethnic cleansing and genocide carries a weight unique unto itself.  So if to je to, that is life, whether we like it or not, why not try and find some meaning in it all?  My small connections with the woman at the event, and with Zifa, have brought meaning to their and my own losses.  Author Milan Kundera says it best in my favorite book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground.  But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.  The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become…”

In Tuzla's Old Town

Tuzla is a beautiful city, and not at all what I thought it might look, smell, and feel like.  It is much busier than I imagined, though everyone seems to know each other as if in a small village.  I probably should not have underestimated the pace and size, as it is the third largest city in Bosnia.  In a way, it reminds me of another European city I’ve lived in – Cork is one of the larger cities in Ireland, but feels like an intimate community that is full of character, colors, and out of the way places to discover.  Thus far, Tuzla feels the same.  The buildings range from orange to green to red, and the locals at the open-air market always have a smile (sometimes toothless) on their faces for me.

After a week with BOSFAM, I absolutely feel that I’ve been  adopted into this carefully cultivated, diverse “Bosnian Family” (from which BOSFAM derives its name).  BOSFAM was started during the recent war – founder Munira “Beba” Hadzic recognized a pressing need for women survivors of ethnic cleansing, rape as a weapon of war, and genocide to have a safe place to process their trauma and relate to others who lived  through similar events.  BOSFAM was born in 1994 as that space, providing a community where women could share with each other but also give their minds a much needed break through weaving traditional Bosnian carpets and other handicrafts.  The organization is  currently based in Tuzla, where many of the Bosnian Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) settled during and after the war.  In addition to providing a psycho-social outlet for women survivors, it now provides income-generating projects through the sale of such handicrafts.  Their work is beautiful – each carpet, scarf, or pair of slippers is handmade with love and deep concentration.

Tuzla in Mosaic

Orthodox Cathedral in Tuzla

Srebrenica is a town in the east of Bosnia, practically within earshot of the Serbian border.  During the early years of the war, the town swelled in size with IDPs escaping from smaller towns and villages that were suffering from ethnic cleansing.  The majority of these people were Bosnian Muslims, called Bosniaks, who were fleeing from the Serbian and Bosnian-Serb Army.  In 1993, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia (UNPROFOR) turned Srebrenica into one of the six total “safe areas” in the country – providing humanitarian aid and a modest level of security for its inhabitants.  However because of the incredible 40,000+, mostly Bosniak residents, Srebrenica became a perfect target for decimation by Serb politicians, military, and paramilitary bent on creating an “ethnically pure” Serb state.

In spring of 1995, the Serbs in eastern Bosnia increased their military efforts and in July 1995 successfully took the town of Srebrenica.  On July 11, 1995 the town fell and UN Peacekeepers watched as Serb paramilitary separated the women and young children from the men and boys; the women were shipped out on buses to towns in the Bosniak-held territory, and the men and boys were slaughtered over the course of a week.  In factories, barns, and on sports fields, Srebrenica’s male Muslim population was eliminated.  Other Bosniak men who tried to escape through the woods from Srebenica into free territory were also hunted down by soldiers, or killed by landmines planted in the forest.  In total, more than 8,000 people were killed.  Each year on July 11, tens of thousands of Bosnians and internationals come together to remember, mourn, and bury their dead.  BOSFAM works with women who survived this unimaginable trauma – supporting the women the 364 days of the year when the international community turns away from the victims who still live with this haunting past.

One of these survivors is Zifa.  Unfortunately, her male relatives did not survive the genocide – two of her brothers, many nephews, and her twenty-five year old son, were killed by Serb paramilitary.  Zifa greets me every morning with a huge, four-tooth smile.  It lights up her face, and I do everything I can simply not to hug her each time I walk into the room.  I will be sure to write about Zifa in the future, for she deserves far more than a paragraph mentioning her in a short blog entry about Tuzla.

Domaci (Homemade) Treats with Kafha (Coffee)

Tomorrow though, will probably be a new and longer chapter in my time at BOSFAM.  Our tireless, strong Direktor Beba has returned from a funding trip to Slovakia.  She has a lot of ideas that will shape my work at BOSFAM, and tomorrow we go to Srebrenica to see a new BOSFAM center that has just opened.  I can tell that Tuzla will hold a lot for me – a lot of challenges, a lot of rewards, a lot of tears, and a lot of smiles.  Hopefully, I can help these women as much as they’ve already helped me, though my first week has been so lovely that I doubt much of anything can live up to it.

To learn more about Srebrenica, see the BBC’s timeline and related pages for the event.

I arrived in Bosnia on May 28^th.  After nearly a year of being away, I sat in the propeller plane full of nerves.  I was energized by what I saw: a country lush with green mountains and clear, blue rivers.  To me, Bosnia really is the most beautiful place I have ever had the privilege of visiting.  My first video blog is simply to share the beauty and, in a way, begin to deconstruct the stereotypes of Bosnia as only a war torn and “lost” country.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

I know that multitudes of challenges will present themselves to me, but I find that in difficult times I can return to Bosnia’s land and people and feel restored and ready to face the next day.

More to come soon, including a brief stay in the hospital, the language barrier, news on Mladic’s trial in the Hague, and my first days in Tuzla…  In the meantime, check out my latest photographs from Bosnia here on flickr.