Bosnia has not stopped surprising me. Last night we found a club with Monday night salsa so of course we had to go (my Colombian friends were so excited)! As a person who has traveled extensively and self-defined her major as "Cross Cultural Communication" you would think that I would be expecting these kind of cultural implants by now, but nope I'm still pleasantly surprised.
Salsa night was pretty hopping. I was just trying to remember all of the steps that I learned in Peru and in Val's living room! It was kind of a double edged sword though, nice to unwind, drink, and dance after a not so uplifting day but my salsa moves were served up with a twinge of guilt, the realization that I can escape to this club, that in three weeks I will escape back to America and all of these people will be left to untangle this war-torn mess.
Today we had another full day. After meeting with the PR rep from a Bosnian political party in the morning we drove out to Zenica to visit an NGO that works primarily with women and children affected by the war. The offices are located in their safe house and we were welcomed by the warmest, sweetest women I have met in Bosnia so far. They cooked us all a big lunch and talked to us about their programs. When the organization started in 1993 they dealt primarily with the direct effects of war - women who were raped as a tool of war, or abused or abandoned by their husbands who were fighting. But as the years went on, and until today, while the rape victims may be less in number it is so discouraging to see the rising statistics of domestic violence. The war may be over but it seems the trauma will last forever.
After learning from the women at the NGO we went down the road to volunteer at an orphanage. What shocks me about the orphanages here in Bosnia is that many of the children have families that they know and see fairly often but they have been abandoned because their parents are suffering from too strong PTSD to care for them, or the loss of a parent increases the financial burden of the child, or the child has special needs.
Needless to say, the kids were incredible. We played with them all afternoon, never being able to forget that they are probably stronger people than I will ever be. One of the kids had a photo album of his family that he showed us and you could see the disintegration of his family life as you flipped from page to page. First a standard happy family, him as a baby, and as you turn through you get to a picture where his father has lost his legs, later in the book his mom disappears, she died of causes he could not explain, and his older brother, old enough to care for the boy on his own but perhaps too busy with taking care of their father, or too scared to accept the responsibility of his younger brother is no longer around.
After an afternoon of singing songs, playing animal charades, and trying to fill the orphanage with silliness and sunshine, this boys story, told emphatically with photos, finger pointing, and loose translations, brought the whole experience back down to earth.
This week there is a big theater festival in Sarajevo. A theater right down the street from my hotel is hosting a bunch of the productions so tonight I went to see one...didn't have a name on any of the tickets and there weren't any programs. A loose, shall we say avant-garde, interpretation of Strauss' opera "Salome." Definitely interesting to see a different rendition, especially one in Bosnian, with the same general storyline but with Modern music full of dissonances, 7ths, and 13ths that might have made Strauss turn in his grave. Just another level of borrowing, evolving, and translating between cultures. Also kind of reminded me of whatever that saying is that there are really only 3 or 4 stories in the world and we have just been recycling them for centuries with slightly different elements.
Salsa night was pretty hopping. I was just trying to remember all of the steps that I learned in Peru and in Val's living room! It was kind of a double edged sword though, nice to unwind, drink, and dance after a not so uplifting day but my salsa moves were served up with a twinge of guilt, the realization that I can escape to this club, that in three weeks I will escape back to America and all of these people will be left to untangle this war-torn mess.
Today we had another full day. After meeting with the PR rep from a Bosnian political party in the morning we drove out to Zenica to visit an NGO that works primarily with women and children affected by the war. The offices are located in their safe house and we were welcomed by the warmest, sweetest women I have met in Bosnia so far. They cooked us all a big lunch and talked to us about their programs. When the organization started in 1993 they dealt primarily with the direct effects of war - women who were raped as a tool of war, or abused or abandoned by their husbands who were fighting. But as the years went on, and until today, while the rape victims may be less in number it is so discouraging to see the rising statistics of domestic violence. The war may be over but it seems the trauma will last forever.
After learning from the women at the NGO we went down the road to volunteer at an orphanage. What shocks me about the orphanages here in Bosnia is that many of the children have families that they know and see fairly often but they have been abandoned because their parents are suffering from too strong PTSD to care for them, or the loss of a parent increases the financial burden of the child, or the child has special needs.
Needless to say, the kids were incredible. We played with them all afternoon, never being able to forget that they are probably stronger people than I will ever be. One of the kids had a photo album of his family that he showed us and you could see the disintegration of his family life as you flipped from page to page. First a standard happy family, him as a baby, and as you turn through you get to a picture where his father has lost his legs, later in the book his mom disappears, she died of causes he could not explain, and his older brother, old enough to care for the boy on his own but perhaps too busy with taking care of their father, or too scared to accept the responsibility of his younger brother is no longer around.
After an afternoon of singing songs, playing animal charades, and trying to fill the orphanage with silliness and sunshine, this boys story, told emphatically with photos, finger pointing, and loose translations, brought the whole experience back down to earth.
This week there is a big theater festival in Sarajevo. A theater right down the street from my hotel is hosting a bunch of the productions so tonight I went to see one...didn't have a name on any of the tickets and there weren't any programs. A loose, shall we say avant-garde, interpretation of Strauss' opera "Salome." Definitely interesting to see a different rendition, especially one in Bosnian, with the same general storyline but with Modern music full of dissonances, 7ths, and 13ths that might have made Strauss turn in his grave. Just another level of borrowing, evolving, and translating between cultures. Also kind of reminded me of whatever that saying is that there are really only 3 or 4 stories in the world and we have just been recycling them for centuries with slightly different elements.
drinking from the Sarajevo Fountain in the Turkish Quarter...apparently this means that one day I will return to Sarajevo in good health
waiting at the theater for the show to start (I'm pretty sure Pablo and Camillo in the background make this photo a success)
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