In Belgrade

I am in Belgrade.
And I want to say a lot more about it, spit some words down on the feelings of the city and the smell of the (trashy gasoline popcorn and stew) air, and how the city is so much bigger than I imagined, and how the people are harder, more stories, less teeth, less development.

Have I said that I desire underdevelopness? Strange but true. Things are so much more powerful and rich in the poor places.

More soon. For now, drinks with Marko, our new Serb friend. Last night I saw a woman run after a man with a rolling pin. And a man followed our tour guide. And this land has 6 million (real number still pending) people die for it.

Love and kisses (Ljubav i puse)
Erica

My First Interview

(the pictures are to remind you that I am still having fun. me and the slovenian alps, spooning party, chilling on the balcony of the SIT office for lunch with Lindsay)

For my first interview, I was lucky enough to have a conversation with two extremely inspirational, accomplished, and hard working women in Zagreb, Croatia. The first, Emina Buzkinic, is the President of Croatia Youth Network (CYN) and a member of the Center for Peace Studies. She is 23 years old and grew up in Sisak, a small city an hour away from Zagreb. The CYN is comprised of 50 organizations (soon to be 65) in Croatia, and works to promote the ideas of equality, integration, and development of standards for the quality of life for the youth population in the country. The Network revolves around 5 programs, development of national youth policy, development of local youth policy, capacity building of youth NGOs, information service and publishing, and international cooperation. The second interviewee was Vesna Kesic. Vesna Kesic is a sociologist, researcher, and a journalist. She was involved with the first feminist initiative in the former Yugoslavia and was one of the founders for an organization, The Center for Women War Victims, which worked with refugees in transition during the wars in the ‘90s. She is presently researching institutional mechanisms for gender equality in Croatia. She is trying to figure out what happened to feminism and the feminist movement and why the current state institutions dealing with gender equality do not function.

It was quite interesting to have these two women sitting in front of me. Emina, a young powerhouse in the activist world, grew up right when the wars in the ‘90s began, right when human rights were pushed to the backburner and territory, power, and corruption were melting the countries, and people, away from each other. Vesna is a part of the established activist community from the 70’s, women who worked very hard to ascertain the feminist movement in Croatia and to put gender equality on the list of things to do. Since the wars have ended, and since Croatia has become an independent entity, how have these two generations coalesced? How are the youth from Croatia learning and understanding their Yugoslav and wartime past? How are they learning about it in school, from their families, in the media? How have ideas like feminism translated to the present time? What does the youth activist movement look like and how has it been affected by the ‘90s, by socialist times, and by the transition into the country we now see? These were some of the ideas that were running through my head as I looked at these two accomplished women, listening to their words and trying to understand what exactly has been created from the days past and how it will affect what happens, and what the youth today make, in the future.

The interview itself lasted an hour, from 3 pm to 4 pm on Monday October 11, 2007. We had a conversation in one of the rooms of the School for International Training office off of Trg Bana Jelacica, Zagreb, Croatia. Vesna was running a few minutes late so Emina and I started without her. About 40 minutes into the conversation Emina had to leave for another appointment, and Vesna and I continued to talk.

Emina told me her background of how she got to the place she is right now. She grew up in Sisak, Croatia, and after living through the wars of the early ‘90s, traveling back and forth from Slovenia and France as a refugee, she attending the Helsinki school for Human Rights in 2002. “I went there and it changed my life. I was there for a week and we had discussions of education communication, team work, human rights, youth rights, women’s rights {…] this completely changed my life and I said yes, this is what I want to be”. After attending a few workshops, where a number of students would meet from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to talk about peace programming, the importance of communication, and what it means for them. She did a few more workshops and came to study political science in Zagreb in 2002. She was one of Vesna students here and understood that she was very interested in youth participation in the local community. In 2004 was asked to run for CYN board and was soon after the Vice President of the movement. Since then she has been working with them and is now the President. This background was very important to me, because it gave the context in which to think of Emina as a person within the feminist and youth movements from the 70’s until now. Since I had just heard small lectures from both of these women, I had many questions. We covered several topics, and one very interesting issue was how the socialist regime of Yugoslavia effected civil society today and the civil society of the ‘90s, how Emina learned about the “history” of Croatia when it was first forming, and how Croatia was represented to her during the war.

It is very difficult for me to read the books from school and to understand what happened because it doesn’t relate to what really happened. And if you hear the stories from Croatian books and then from Serbian books and Bosnian books it is very confusing. And I am still learning. I started my primary school in 1990, the first of September, I remember that. And the second grade we didn’t have any school, we had like 100 days. And then after that we were learning something that was very confusing and I hated history […] we didn’t have text books. We had classes like ‘the Serbs attacked us’. It is unbelievable. Okay we learned a lot about Egypt and Roman culture and Greek culture, but when we had history classes on Croatian recent history it was all awful it was disgusting it was all about Franjo Tudman and everything he did for Croatia.

She then went on explaining where she was during the ‘90s and how she was going from place to place and what it was like to be Muslim during the Croatian war on Bosnia. She knew something was biased and that something was wrong. “But I am sure the children that are learning the recent history now, it can’t be clear. And Documenta published this addition to the textbooks on the past and like there are some things that I never knew about, I am 23 years old, and I still don’t know the history, what happened, who did something and who didn’t do anything”.

There is an interesting dynamic between the once unified peoples of Yugoslavia (under the slogan “brotherhood and unity”), the war time when the republics split, and the post-war time when independence over one’s own history is allowed and the question of whether communication with their ex-brothers (sisters and everything in between) does or does not exist. Vesna spoke about the state’s control over what and what isn’t said. “During one period of time they [communist party] managed to impose this politics into the education system, into picking books, and so on. So this is kind of the history that they wanted to teach, this historical creationism of the history, this was intention it did not happen by chance”.

Another interesting topic we discussed was the generation gap between the emerging activist population, and the older more established activists from socialist’s times. I asked a question about this, which actually sparked Vesna to ask Emina a question, of the lack of involvement of women within the feminist movement. Emina responded by saying that today’s youth have gotten some “heritage from the socialist times” but more or ideas are new. Current organizations, like the Center for Women’s Studies and B.a.b.e (Be Active, Be Empancipated) are seen as “too strong” in their feminist agendas, or discriminatory towards men. It was interesting to listen to Vesna and Emina discuss how groups like the Center for Women’s Studies should fully allow men into their program, something they have yet to do. Both seemed to agree that it would open more avenues for activists and widen the audience of people they could work with.

The idea of “passing on the baton” to younger activists was spoken about by Emina. “The younger activist feels that they don’t have the open door that they anticipated. For example, in creating policy. If you see the women’s network, I know we have comments in the youth sector, but these are the older activists, why don’t they get us inside? I think that the women’s network […] aren’t paying attention to what young women want nowadays, and they are maybe not so open”. This was a very powerful statement that Emina spoke of. The two discussed for a while about this as Vesna was explaining how the older generations of activists are very comfortable with what they have, that after working and devoting so much of their life to the feminist movement during a time when the state controlled most everything, is a big deal. New ideas and people aren’t so welcomed because of this. And the younger feminist group, Vesna said, established themselves but didn’t do too much because they just had a lot of ideas. She was also explaining how today, a lot of young people just don’t have it in them to devote themselves to a cause, and how that is a very important part in succeeding in a movement. “These young people aren’t that ambitious, [and] you have to be ambitious if you want to do it.”. Near the end of our conversation, after Emina had left, Vesna asked me a very interesting question. She wondered if the reason why women weren’t trying to radicalize feminism as much as in the past is because the community of men around them is, well simply put, nicer.

It seems that the most prominent issue is what and how youth today are learning, and have learned, about what actually happened during the wars. There is an increasing amount of apathy among youth, or wanting to “move past” what has happened. The idea of “dealing with the past”, something that Vesna, Emina, and myself talked a lot about, I believe needs to have a balanced. It isn’t enough to move into the future, but it also isn’t enough to stay in the past. You need to understand your past, the actions, the stories, the truths, in order to move together into the future. But it’s hard for today’s youth. They grew up, depending on where they grew up, constantly in fear of the bombs and in hiding or moving from place to place. Vesna touched on this saying that there was a lot of apathy towards the past among younger people because of these horrific memories they have, that they want to think what they do about Serbs or others and not think about it further than that. I believe this is a very important theme that I need to dive into more, and see how this is different between more and less war affected areas. It probably has a lot to do with the children’s age too. People among Emina’s age range were old enough to now remember.

Another thing that really got me during this interview was that the younger activists are feeling a “closed door” from the older activists. Emina especially feels this way when facing policy changes, something that the CNY has had to work for years on changing and being heard. I want to dive into this issue more and flush out why the youth aren’t being taking seriously by the political machos, and why the older generations of activists aren’t helping them more. Vesna said it is because they worked so much for what they already have and they are comfortable with that, but how can that excuse the lack of solidarity? What can come of this?

I think that everything that was spoken about was well rounded because of who I was speaking to. I had a representative from two very different generations, working on very different projects but who both look at the same problems with different (and sometimes similar) lenses.

ISP rambles, Plitvitchka, and London

So, I had to write a proposal draft for my Independent study. Here it is:

- Proposed Title: Our Children, Our Future: How Serb, Bosnian, and Croat Youth deal with the past they avoided and what it means for their collective future (focusing on women in war)

- Question and focus: How are the youth from Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia learning and understanding their Yugoslav and wartime past and, specifically, how women were viewed during this time?

- Significance of Study:

o “We are convinced that young people, as future decision-makers, voters and citizens, hold the keys to building an accountable society in the region. The Youth Program aims to connect people across the region, to educate and to strengthen the capacities of young people engaged in the process of dealing with the past. Also to decrease prejudices and stereotypes, and to actively involve young people in social and political life. Education and work with young people will be based on creative and new methods, thus encouraging learning through doing.” (Youth Initiative for Human Rights website, http://www.yi.org.yu/programs_youth.php). This quote serves to show the importance of this research. But I’d like to take it a step further by attempting to understand how, without such organizations like the Youth Initiative, young people throughout the region have grown up learning about Tito, Yugoslavia, Brotherhood and Unity, the Wars, territories and nationalism, ethnicity and minorities, socialism vs capitalism, etc. This research is very important, I believe, for institutions such as public schools, the media (most importantly television), Non-Governmental Organizations, not for profit organizations, politicians, parents, and academics. The children of today will soon morph into the leaders of this region, and how, when, why, from who, and what they learn about their neighbors will significantly effect how they coexist with them (or don’t coexist with them).

§ Some questions:

· What does a typical Serbian public school history text book look like?

· What does a typical Croatian public school history text book look like?

· What does a typical BiH public school history text book look like?

· How do Serb youth think of their role in the war? Is their guilt? Is their pride?

· What do Serb youth think of Milosovic’s role in the wars and in the breakdown of Yugoslavia?

· How are socialism and Titoism thought of?

o After reading Women Collecting Memories, I realized that I could focus what I am interested more on what was talked about within this paper. I am wondering how feminism is taught, how women’s movements are or are not included within the collective memory, how women played a significant role in the anti-war movement in Serbia, in Bosnia, and in Croatia, and how the youth are learning about this. It might seem a little unwieldy, but this quote really spoke to me: “When the war in Croatia and later in Bosnia and Herzegovina began, mass media promoted national homogenization and the drive towards alleged emancipation through exploitation. Images of young, beautiful women in Croatian army uniforms become symbols. Women who survived sexual violence during the war were turned into metaphors. The came to embody their nations: ‘A raped Croatian women is a raped Croatia’” (11). With this in mind, how do young men and women understand the happenings of the wars? How are men presented and how are women presented? “If women are excluded from memories of the recent past, it is very easy to exclude them from contemporary social and political processes” (12). If rape is only tried at the Hague, how is rape justified in history books? How are young boys being raised to think of women? How are women raised thinking of themselves? How do the youth visualize the “female activist”? Is feminism crossing borders or being left behind? How can forgetting this important aspect (women’s movements) of the anti-war movement creating or possibly create tensions in the future?

What do you think?

I think I might go to London this weekend to visit Nicole, Sasha, Mark, Sara, etc. Then I go to Serbia next week. But i have to figure out how to interview this woman from an organization in Zagreb called Cesi which works a lot with domestic violence, sexual education and reproductive health rights and I need to do this before Friday if I go.

Also, today I went to Plitvitchka, the national park in Croatia. It's right on the border of Bosnia, and is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I've been. we had the day off because it was Croatian Independence day. Some pictures posted throughout.

AHHHHHH.

Excursion one: in photos

Just a few photos from my visit to Porec, Croatia (on the Adriatic), and Ljubljana, Slovenia (the pictures of the crazy graffiti).

Thoughts coming soon.

Love,
Erica

My Fabulous Weekend u Zagrebu

I’ve had the best weekend ever, and I’m so glad it happened this way because I most likely would have been depressed if it were any different.

So, school has gotten a bit frustrating. I miss my professors at Clark, how inspiring they are, how engaging they are, how applicable they make things seem. Well maybe I’m mostly talking about Duncan, and he’s not even at Clark anymore.

I told my academic adviser here, Orli, I might be interesting in doing my ISP on consciousness raising through dialogue, how different people (children vs. older generation) are dealing with the past, how the younger generation learns their country’s past in school, etc. And how dialogue can be used as a reconciliation and peace building tool. This is Orli’s academic niche, which means she has a smörgåsbord of contacts and references, which is great. On the other hand, she could become too controlling, too critical, too…present in what I want to do because it is her thing. We'll see!

So with this in mind, I’ve been getting a bit nervous with the ISP. I was talking to my friend here, Becca, (who I’ve been getting a lot closer with and whose just a great person), about how her mother goes to Africa with nurses and travels around caring for the women the nurses treat. This is anything from giving them massages to painting their nails, talking etc. I have been thinking a lot about this kind of work, especially since I am interesting in going to massage therapy school to get the tools. I noticed it when I was in Mexico, how there are people who work so hard who don’t have any attention paid to their body. It’s important and it’s something that I really care about. Is it good enough? I don’t know. But I might go with her to Kenya next spring break, oh yeah Mom and Dad, just to let you know I’m going to Kenya next spring break! I might want to add this kind of theme to my ISP. Who knows.

Anyway, so that is why I needed a nice weekend. Friday night, after helping a local PhD student with her research (I volunteered to have my head hooked up to a machine to follow my brain activity with learning Croatian, weird I know, but interesting), I went to Becca’s host family’s house right outside the city. They live on a mountain in a very beautiful area. Her and her host bro’s and sister watched “Step up” and vegged out. It was exactly what I needed! I got 10 hours of sleep and we woke up and ate muesli with warm milk and coffee out on their deck. We decided to ride bikes into the city, down tot Lake Jarun, the biggest lake in Zagreb. Becca lives to the north of the city and Jarun is in the southern part. It was the most gorgeous day and I was so happy to get out into the sun and work my body. It has been really hard to stay active here for many reasons so I could feel my muscles remembering what work feels like. We got a bit lost but made it to the lake and rode around it twice (it’s 8 lm around). We got cappuccino and watched the swans waddle through the water. We checked out the night clubs that are the most popular in the city there. We rode back up to my apartment (in the center of the city) and ate lunch, where I proceeded to eat liver for the first time. I told becca not to ask what kind of meat it was because that is my policy here as a meat-eater. What I don’t know can’t hurt me. It turned out to be pig liver and I almost upchucked my lunch.

We rode back up to her house, up the god damn mountain! It was hard but worth it. That night we went back out to the city to dance and have a few drinks.

I woke up this morning and went on a 4 hour hike/walk with my family in this big national park. It reminded me of Beaver Brook at home, except a mountain and a lot more people (and of course in Croatia). I spoke with cousin dzenia, who came with us, a lot about Porec and Lubljiana, Slovenia, where I am going this week with SIT.

This trip has come at exactly the right moment. I am feeling myself feeling annoyed and overwhelmed by my host sisters, which is good because it means I am comfortable. I want to be with the group more, we all get along so well and have a great time together, and I want to travel! We leave in the morning to Porec, on the Istrian peninsula until Wednesday, when we’ll head to Slovenia for 3 days. The academic schedule is turning into more what I thought the program would be. We have been studying the history for so long that I forgot why I came here! Our schedule next week looks so interesting and fun! I might even get to swim in the Adriatic!

I hope everyone is doing well. Tomorrow marks one month since I left home. Happy (30^th) Birthday Momma Getto, I love you so much and I keep you with me always! I love you too, Dad! Take mom for some LA Dim Sum.

Hair Fury

This is completely (well almost completely) unrealted to my experience in Croatia. I am attempting to grow out my hair and it is in that fro-messy-i actually might have to brush it faze. And it is pissing me off. Ethan, one of the students on the trip, buzzes his hair regularly aand makes me very jealous. One of the reasons I decided I would grow my hair out was I didnt want to stick out more than I had to here. BUT THERE ARE SO MANY WOMEN WITH BUZZED HEADS! I told my host family that I was thinking of buzzing again and the little girls basically said I would be ugly and I wasnt allowed in the house with that hair. They were kidding but not really.

AHHHHHHHH.

But, what is making me keep going is the fact that I had a dream the other night where my hair was grown out. I think it is a sign for me to keep trying. Wish me luck.

ps i go on a week long excursion starting monday to Poreć, Croatia and Slovenia.

Basically, it was Woodrow Wilson’s fault

I am in constant awe of this place’s history. For so long I have studied development mostly focused on Latin America. For the past two years I have been learning about IMF/WB intrusion on economies, capitalism as the evil doer, cultural survival, anti privatization, corporate scum, the big bad globalization force, hegemony and homogeneity and hierarchy, partiarchical structures, social structures, economic structures, theory and theology and ideology and partisanship and corruption and values and exploitation…

Now I am hearing about the ex-Yugoslavia, specific to Croatia (for now), and how their economy, their government, and their society has been transforming since independence in 1990. The HDZ (The Croatian Democratic Union, the “right” Christian democratic party which won in 1990 under the leadership of Dr. Franjo Tudjman) is pro-family (but in their minds pro family is a mother-father lead family, giving no rights to the single mother or the lesbian couple or the gay couple, simply mother-father lead families), “the family comes first!”, where all the members are devout Catholics who attend Church and who are very involved in looking towards the future of Croatia. They are for a speedy transition into the European Union (they want it by 2009), they love the legacy of Tudjman and what he (and the HDZ) did for Croatia, they are for liberalization of the market, privatization, they want to reduce unemployment and get more of the youth into tertiary education. I only know all of this because we met with the leaders of the MHDZ (the Croatian Democratic Union Youth Organization, the biggest party affiliated Youth organization in Croatia). If you ask me, Croats and United Statesians are very different breeds. I caught myself gasping at some of their thoughts. But it was cool to listen to them, to hear their side of things.
But was has caught me the most (as we’ve begun digging deeper into the economic development of the area), is their move from socialism to capitalism and how it has been doing wonders for the economy. How they WANT privatization, Europeanization, Westernization, Globalization, Homogenization (seemingly). It’s just a mind screw for me. People really think this way here.

And I think it’s interesting to think of the demographics here in comparison with the demographics in the US. We have so many more ideologies, so many more religions, so many more languages and backgrounds and POPULATION (Croatia has half the population size of Manhattan), that macroeconomic policy, macropoltiical policy, is very hard to create while at the same time making people happy. Here, it’s just a lot more mono-everything. Sure there are still a few jews, a few Serbs (they are the biggest minority and I think they are 4% or something), Italians, Albanians, Greeks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, etc). By think of it regionally: most of those people are from Eastern/Southeastern Europe. Think of the States – people are coming from everywhere in the globe. How can we make things that fit everyone’s needs?

But there is definite dissent in this region as well. When people think back on the ‘90s in the Balkans, they think of how crazy Milosovic was and the Serbian nationalists. But what was covered up in all of that were the thousands of people set against the war, against nationalism, against conquering of land and people. These were the activists, the women, the teenagers, the men—who wanted to preserve their ties with their brothers and coexist peacefully.

And when people think back on the Croats, they think of how crazy those people were to elect Franjo Tudjman—the man who lead the slaughtering of so many Serbs during the 90s. But what they don’t hear are the stories of why the people chose to elect him and the HDZ—because if you wanted independence, you went with the HDZ, if you wanted to keep communism, you went with the Communist party. People didn’t elect Tudjman, they elected democracy and independence, they needed jobs and to lower the 1000% inflation in their country, they needed international recognition and respect. They needed to be seen.

And as I look back on what I just wrote I think I have learned a lot. Maybe this program is working out (and it’s only been a month). Maybe my ideas can get me somewhere here. Maybe I am learning the people and the language.

Oh—and today we met with a professor of Political Science at the University of Zagreb, and he said this: It’s a common misconception that Serbs and Croats have always hated eachother. Basically it happened in 1918 when US President Woodrow Wilson announced the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and put all of those people together for the first time. They had never had major tension before, so basically, it was all Wilson’s fault.

The end. For now.