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Back from Sarajevo

Just like that, I’m back. 

They lost my luggage again! It showed up a few days later. It was totally destroyed! But everything I had packed was still inside. I did find a belt that doesn’t belong to me though :/

Still processing the trip. I wish i had had more time there. My contacts were really snowballing, right until the last day in Sarajevo. I will cherish these contacts for future endeavours. One woman (that I’ve been reading for my thesis (with a PhD in feminist studies (she’s so cool))) even responded to me saying that my work sounds VERY INTERESTING and she would like to CONTINUE DISCUSSING IT. (emphasis mine.) 

I’m back at Smith, and the weather is cooling down already, someone pointed out a few red leaves to me yesterday and I can’t admit that summer was whisked out from under my feet. 

It was an incredible summer though. Worth the whisk. 

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"For the past 20 years, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been waging a new kind of war using different and more sophisticated techniques. The institutionalized nature of this new war has allowed ethnic and political structures to continue their immoral endeavors. The sophisticated methods of war in the post-conflict era are truly amazing. We [the citizens] participate in this war without even knowing it. We suffer the consequences without even recognizing their origin; we instead recognize the increasing levels of poverty and unemployment, the increasing crime rates, and the decreasing security rates as the natural consequences of peace."

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Last #researchselfie (is that a thing? Did i start a new trend?) as I am flying out of Bosnia tomorrow morning.

“Are you happy to be going home?”

Why would you ask that in a yes/no format? Is anyone ever “happy” to go home? Home means so many things to me - my Smith community, my dog friend, gluten-free meal options, Massachusetts in the autumn, my own bed, the availability of peanut butter, my cell phone, my friends.

But Bosnia has filled me up with its own meanings. How can I forget the feeling of slippery cobblestone after rain, how the river looks in the moonlight, the impatient waiters in the city center, the faded, gorgeous architecture, the summery possibilities of living in a capital city. 

I feel mixed. That’s the nature of travel, isn’t it? Leaving bits of your heart behind?

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My super capable translator and I walk the streets of Srebrenica. He’s a gem. I managed to find him last minute, and we passed the day discussing the political state of the Balkans, our favorite restaurants in Sarajevo, and what it means to be in love (he’s been dating the same girl for the past eight years.) He’s an amicable Bosnian boy who was very willing to discuss issues of feminism with me.

Yesterday, we left at 7 am to travel to the cities of Bratunac and Srebrenica, both sites of wartime atrocities, to talk to local women there. The interviews were long and fruitful. We were back home by 8pm.

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Spotted a gorgeous plot on my walk home from my internship!!

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Three-day adventure

I made it! I was able to successfully interview three women over the course of three days, and spent an innumerable amount of hours sitting on the bus, praying that the traffic-induced sways and jerks were a totally normal part of the journey, and not a symptom of disaster yet to come.

Here’s an image from my first fateful night bus trip. This is a Bosnian/Serbian version of a pit stop. A weird, electro-diner with white lions positioned at the entrance and a rank tub of fish awaiting just inside. 

Here’s the hostel I was staying at in Belgrade. Quaint, and cute. The people were kind and very smelly at night. I guess that’s the nature of ~long strolls through cobblestone streets~ which is an activity that is romanticized by backpackers. Do they even know how bad their feet smell? Is it worth the romance, really?

A side street off of Knez Mihailova, the main pedestrian street in Belgrade. 

The radiant and generous Zlatica, who gave me an interview in Banja Luka. Here she is organizing subsequent interviews for me. 

In between interviews, I was able to visit the newly constructed Serb Church in the center of town. Here’s a bit from the church’s website:

“The construction of Christ the Saviour Cathedral Church, on the foundations of the demolished Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, bombed and destroyed in 1941 has finally fulfilled the eternal desire of the Banja Luka Serbs to have a monumental Orthodox Church at the most beautiful place, in the heart of the town.”

Hmmm. 

Here’s historical information from another source:

“During the Bosnian conflict, the civil war that followed Bosnia’s secession from Yugoslavia in 1992, Banja Luka became the main Bosnian Serb centre in the northern part of the country. Serbs employed violence and other methods of persecution to drive thousands of Bosniacs (Bosnian Muslims), Croats, Roma (Gypsies), and others out of the city and surrounding areas. As part of their effort to expel Bosniacs from the city, Bosnian Serbs destroyed the mosques there, including two large ones dating from the Ottoman period: the Ferhadija, or Ferhad-Pasha (1579–83), and the Arnaudija (1587).” (Britannica Online)

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Here's my 6 am selfie while I waited for the cab and looked forward to a nice nap on the bus. ..... "ALT" is a type of vegan protein bar you can only get in the states.

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I went out last night to see Dheepan, directed by Jacques Audiard, at the Sarajevo Film Festival (my friend got me a free ticket!) followed by a party in the underground club 'Fis.' I got back pretty late, took a shower, made a drunk salad, fed leftover salad to the dogs, and made it to bed by 4. I wake up at 5, get my things together, brush my teeth, call a taxi, send a selfie to friends in the U.S. who are still alive and kicking because Saturday night has barely started. Make it to the bus station, buy my ticket, pull my jacket tight around me in the outdoor bus terminal, and wait for my early morning bus to come and take me to brčko, where I will be conducting interviews, before moving onto Serbia, to continue interviewing research participants. As the bus pulls up, I realize - I don't have my passport. Now I'm home and in bed. It's a cloudy day in Sarajevo. Planning to go to brčko another day.

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Notes from my thesis pt I

“Nationalism in the Balkans has not been only a matter of imagining allegedly primordial communities (that have sprung from the earth itself,) but rather of making heterogeneous ones unimaginable. Histories of heterogeneity were carefully reinterpreted, as evidenced by the political manifestos and constitutions of the Balkan successor states. The majority ethnic group was naturally the only rightful proponent of state sovereignty, excluding any other community in historical imagining.“

- Dubravka Žarkov (1996).

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memories of hot, stony dubrovnik in the summertime.

Live streaming in Dubrovnik : a fashionably clad group of youngsters (majority Australians) sit at a table nearby. They are sharing local seafood dishes. The collective burgeoning hormonal surges bring giggles gargling up the back of the throat to the tip of the tongue. Doubtless a sensual experience, made even more difficult as they attempt to swallow Croatian crustacean delicacies.

A single male sits in their midst. I’m guessing they met at a hostel. His dimpled smile and swarthy blonde hair is doing nothing to ease the social tension. When he mentions his age, a gravity-defying 28, a brief hush falls over the table. The girls with their visible belly buttons and sea-themed pedicures mull over this information until the introduction of another dish sets them off into giggles again.

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10+ Recommendations for Westerners abroad to (try and) not be completely awful

I got a request recently to make this response to an ask of mine about trying not to be a terrible foreigner abroad rebloggable. So I’ve cleaned it up a bit, added some more links and am reposting it here as an expanded text post. Others should definitely feel free to add on. In any case, this was some of what I learned from speaking to local people while I was in Taiwan for a year, reading a lot online, getting called out here on tumblr a lot (as I needed to be) and learning from my own serial fuckups as a foreigner teaching English abroad:

Acknowledge and be cognizant of your privilege from the start. If you are a Westerner, you have privileges and power accordingly due to Western hegemony,and this is also the case even if you are a POC from said countries that may be experiencing other forms of discrimination (e.g. antiblackness) there.

If you are white or white-passing in a given geography, be doubly aware of your white privilege in addition to your Western privilege, and be cognizant of how those two tend to reinforce and compound one another when you are abroad.

Read up on the brutal legacy of colonialism or foreign intervention in your country and be aware of the fact that this is a legacy that you are walking in the footsteps of and which likely made your presence in the country possible in the first place.

Read up on the Western and white savior industrial complex and try to check yourself throughout your time there so that you do not fall into the role of the “well meaning” but incredibly demeaning and patronizing foreigner while you’re there in that country.

Do your best to learn the local language and learn about the local culture and be respectful as you do so, since you are a guest in their country. Explore and learn, as this is a critical part of engaging with local people, being respectful toward them and not just being a stuck up foreigner resting on the laurels of your Western (and typically English speaking as well) privilege.

DO NOT just hang out with other foreigners, especially since so many of the foreigners you meet abroad will just be terrible people (racist and condescending on one hand, or Western “saviors” on the other). Make local friends- it’s important, and it’s impossible to learn about the country you’re a guest in without actually engaging with the people of that country.

If you do learn the local language and about local cultural traditions, do not think for a second, though, that you are now an “expert” on that country, its people, etc. because of it. You’re not, and you never will be, and acting as though you are is insulting to say the least.

Don’t act like local people owe you anything (and this includes the ability to speak our imperialistic tongues), because they don’t.

Don’t go abroad just because you want to “grow” through your experiences with poor brown and black people in an ~exotic~ “foreign” place. Don’t treat human beings as an “experience” for you, asshole. Stay at home with your racist Western hegemonic bullshit if that’s the case.

Don’t fetishize the culture or its people if you do come in with an already established “interest.” Yes, an “interest” can go way too far, as they are formulated in our Western (US dominated) white supremacist societal contexts,and when it does it’s gross, disgusting and VERY wrong.

Read up on cultural and linguistic imperialism and understand how your very presence in these countries contributes to these systems of oppression in many ways.

If you decide to teach English abroad, (something which I now personally STRONGLY discourage having been a part of that Western neoimperialistic machine myself), DO YOUR RESEARCH and understand the damage you are both implictly and directly causing from day one and every single time you walk into the classroom.

Respect, respect, respect! Always remember that you are a guest (which colonialism and Western hegemony have made possible in the first place) and that you need to be incredibly respectful toward local people, their traditions, cultural norms, etc. Always listen to them and their concerns and come in with an open heart and mind.

Don’t expect to be perfect, because you will make mistakes, and I know that I definitely did a lot during my short time in Taiwan, but you NEED to try and not be terrible like the vast majority of us Westerners abroad are. I hope this is a helpful start at least, so that you all can do way better than I did for the vast majority of my time abroad and do so from the get-go— as this is all really important.

P.S. If you are a POC, also be very aware of the fact that, depending on the way you are racialized in that country, you may likely experience discrimination accordingly. Your experience will not be like that of white people from your country at all, as their white privilege will compound and reinforce their western privilege, so read POC Travel Blogs and Vlogs from that country to try to educate yourself in that regard. Best of luck.

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Sarajevo just a few minutes from my house, on my morning run along the river.

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the last two hundred emails I've sent:

"Dear ____,

I interned at the Post-Conflict Research Center last year, and Leslie gave me your contact info. She said you might be able to help me out with my thesis work. I see that you currently work at the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika Srspka. I actually interned at the Belgrade office last summer!

I am studying Gender/Feminist studies at Smith College, and am writing my thesis. In my thesis paper, I intend to explore the notion of feminine subjectivity in regards to citizenship and the processes of nation-building. Femininity has been intrinsically and fatally linked with victimhood throughout the discourses around ethnic cleansing of the Balkans, and I hope to shift the dialogue beyond a dichotomy of victim/perpetrator in order to examine complicity.

This summer, I have received funding to return to the Balkans and conduct research with Serbian-identified women, hopefully working in the human rights sphere......"

I have sent out so many emails, hoping against hope that someone will help me with contacts now that some of my interviewees are dropping out.

Send me good cyberspace vibes!

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Other major life events in Sarajevo, Bosnia i Hercegovina. >.<

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Updates from Sarajevo:

I’m living with two dogs, four girls, (sometimes five) and someone’s boyfriend, who is a frequent visitor. 

I’m a lot more tired here than I was during my last trip to Bosnia. Is it possible that the mental effort of trying to process everything at once (thesis editing, contacts & regional networks, immersing myself in ethics of interviewing) is making my bones weary?

I met two Germans and a Brit yesterday outside of one of the only veggie restaurants in Sarajevo. I was actually able to provide them with recommendations for the city. Exciting that I know it well enough to have my opinion become the voice of authority.

I have an evil spider bite on my elbow that I’m trying to ignore.

I haven’t actually completed any interviews yet. Yes, this trip has already proven beneficial to my thesis work. Yes, i am anxious about getting enough done while I am here.

Finally, when I explain my thesis topic to locals, it has been met with “wow! No one has researched that before!” which is so validating/exciting. 

More soon!

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“Do you know what it meant at that time to feed four people for 43 days?”

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Sarajevo looks