Me again. I have had a fascinating, intense, exhausting three first days here at the UWC in Mostar. I'll try to recap them as efficiently (efficiently since I want to be short, but not cut corners, as in still make it interesting...) as I can.
Sunday 5th June
I suppose breakfast kind of reflected the geographical location in which it was being served, as in not quite european (the two options consisted of bread and jam, and tea.) Now I know they're stingy with breakfast on the continent... actually for 15 euros it was pretty good.
I took the bus to Zadar bus station (sadly didn't get to see the sea organ) from where I took the 10 o clock bus to Split, Croatia's second largest city, further down the coast. After this (stunning - sea, mountains) journey I had a couple of hours for lunch in the ancient centre of split. My lonely planet informed me that the locals are proud of being the bearers of the Roman emperor Diocletian´s huge deathplace (literally, it´s basically a palace that he built to die and be buried in). I then took the bus from the bustling sea port to Mostar, another almost four hour journey. Sadly I didn´t get a stamp from the border guard, and I didn´t really feel like asking... It was really interesting the transition from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina (it´s official name is this, however for space let´s just call it Bosnia), almost as soon as you cross you can see that there is less money around, roads, buildings, cars. Also really oddly there are cars parked for kilometres upon kilometres (sorry guys, Europe´s turning me metric...) which have just been abandoned. I later asked a Bosnian, and they told me that since there is no infrastructure for disposal of cars, people just dump them. And then they use them for spare parts.
I arrived early in the evnening to Mostar bus station, expecting to be met. This was not the case, in the end I waited for a while, chatted to a young guy who went to Australia during the war, and then eventually resigned myself to walking to the college (luckily the college is pretty well known, and especially tourist places speak the lingo). Fortunately, as I was walking I bumped into a group of slightly out of place looking people, who recognised my UWC hoodie and all was well...
Monday 6th June
We started off with icebreaker games and introductions; in total there are 70 of us, about 20 UWC students (about half of whom - no idea if that´s grammatically correct - are from Bosnia or the Balkans) and the rest are all local high school students, with the exception of a handful of students from a government sponsored IB school in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srbska, the other autonomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina (it´s incredibly complicated, I shall have a go at explaining at a later point). After lunch, Annukka, the Finnish organiser of the summer course (she is a graduate of UWC USA; the course is funded by a Finnish organisation)gave an introduction to Peace studies, and then we were thrown into the deep end by the college´s (acronomym UWCiM, literally UWC in Mostar) history teacher giving us a three hour talk on the history of the Balkan regions, from mediaeval times until today! In the evening we had a nice time relaxing at a local bar called ´Old Man´s´, so named because normally it is full of old men...
Tuesday 7th June
Annukka led the morning workshop, about tools for conflict prevention. In the afternoon we were joined by Janine di Giovanni, who talked to us about her career and reporting from conflict zones. We then analysed some of her articles in groups, and very bravely of her she asked us when we were all back together again in the hall to give our critiques. In the evening we ended up doing creative stuff, I chose to do some what´s known as ´Theatre of the Oppressed´, I have come across it before and it´s a really interesting way of raising powerful issues. Since we were being filmed for a documentary on the summer course, we didn´t do any potentially controversial issues, let´s say sexual abuse could be an example. We basically showed the scenario of a university Dean (I played the corrupt Dean,character modelled on Tony Blair crossed with Malfoy, not a nice fellow) getting his daughter good grades by putting pressure on the daughter´s teacher. But the twist is that we repeated our performance, and during the second showing, the audience could stop the play at any point to switch themselves with one of the characters (except the protagonists, the teacher or the daughter, so either swapped with me or one of the other students in the class) to try and resolve the solution, without a corrupted and/or conflict solution being the end result. In the end, no resolution was found, but at least it showed how effective this theatre can be at raising awareness of issues.
Wednesday 8th June
Our first lecture of the day was from Annuka again (by the way she has various degrees in Peace and Conflict studies and politics, in case you were wondering about her mandate...) on the subject of UNderstanding conflict and conflict management, focusing on how differently different people see conflicts, and that the only way you can hope to peacefully resolve one is by understanding (not necessarily agreeing with) all the viewpoints of the parties involved. THen we had a fascinating insight from a Balkans analyst, Srecko Latal, on the developments politically, economically and socially from pre war to the present day (he was interestingly highly critical of Paddy Ashdown, when he was UN high representative of the country, as Ashdown basically instead of letting Bosnians take control, added more layers of bureaucracy and took away control from the Bosnian people. He was much more complimentary of Lady Ashton in her recent peace efforts in the region as EU foreign representative) It seems like Bosnia has some interesting times ahead, especially politically (by the way I am forcing myself not to go into much detail, for example about political problems etc, for ease of reading, but if you would like to know more you can either post a comment or ask questions when we next see each other...) Following this we had the afternoon off, taking buses donated ´From the People of Japan´, to a truly spectacular place named Kravice. Basically it is a large waterfall area, where you can swim in the various streams at the foot of the cliffs and just have a great time, enjoying the sun and swimming in the crystal clear water of the river... In the evening programme we watched a (at times harrowing) documentary by an anthropologist following the lives of residents in a village in northern Bosnia during the war, showing how at first the Muslims and Croats were united against the Serb enemy (at the time Sarajevo, Bosnia´s capital was under seige from the Serbs)however for whatever reason, Croatia turned against the (majority in the country) muslims. We also watched the documentary when the anthropologist returned six years after the war to see what had happened to the people she met. It really showed just how devastatingly unnecessary and utterly destructive the war was. Although it was good, since it focused mainly on Croat attacks on Muslims, there was general consensus that we also need to acknowledge that the Muslims committed similar atrocities, as did the Serbs.
Thursday 9th June
The day´s proceedings were mainly taken up by people from the Red Cross, who were running workshops on International Humanitarian Law. Through a series of interactive workshops and scenarios we came to learn what IHL is, and what its purpose is. IHL basically is only applicable in times of armed conflict, and aims to protect the needs and dignity of those involved. Human Rights Law is what is applicable in peace time. Interestingly I had not realised how much the Red Cross´s work focuses on IHL in times of conflict. Following lunch, a graceful old gentleman came to talk to us about the importance of dignity and its role in avoding conflict. He spoke little English, since his work consists of training teachers and students around the country, but managed to engage us in thinking about ourselves and how important dignity is (the most effective thing was when we looked at the case of Elizabeth Eckford and Grace Lorch, the black student who was nearly mobbed by a crowd determined not to let her be the first student at a previously all white high school, and the white woman who led her to safety. By looking at why Grace Lorch did what she did, and cosnidering things such as making up Lorch´s biography, profiling why the conflict occurred, among others, it really made all of us think about compassion and dignity). After this workshop, which the man very tactfully finished an hour early (on top of the packed programme - from 8 till 8 most days we don´t go back to the residences where we´re staying, especially because it is quite a walk from the school to the residence - it was hot and people were tired) a big group of us (when I say ´us´and I am not talking about in the workshops or scheduled stuff such as the trip to the waterfall, I normally mean the UWC students, local UWC students from Mostar, and the students from the IB school in Banja Luka, with a couple of high school students) went to the old bank building. The school building the UWC uses is basically the ´gymnasium´(grammar school) which was completely bombed in the war, but was rebuilt with donations from various european governments (although not ours) and is now a truly magnificent building to study in. This is situated on ´Spanish Square´, a major junction in the road that seperates the Muslim and Croat sides of the city (prior to the war these divisions did not exist). Burnt shells of buildings can be seen on both sides of the road, still left over from the war. THis is normally because of lack of funds and/or ownership issues (many people left the country during the war and haven´t returned). In the case of the old bank building (or actually it was pretty new, it was only just finished at the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992), the bank is currently in turmoil and so has left it completely untouched. You can literally walk in the 15 (approx) storey building right off the street, into where the rotating doors should be, into what used to be a large welcome lobby. However everything is just burnt out or vandalised. The first floor is the only one that seems to have avoided being trashed, my supposition is that this was too low to be of strategic use (snipers easy to spot, trees blocked vision of gunners etc) so avoided being emptied. Or maybe it was the only floor in operation since the builidng was new. It is strewn with papers, computer manuals, smashed screens, desks, everywhere there is glass since the building was coated in glass. We went to the top and saw a spectacular view, Mostar is nestled in mountains, but you can still see the destruction, fifteen years on.
A great day was capped after dinner by a man from Finland who was part of the Finnish NGO, SaferGlobe, who gave a talk about the arms trade, not just on Finland (who is surprisingly bad on the arms trade) but the world. The man (whose name I don´t recall, the Fins are fond of their syllables...) was kind of young, in his thirties and was clearly dedicated to his work. And the work he does is really important. In broken English he managed to explain to us just how many armed conflicts there are in the world (this website shows all the ones as of 2009, and you can look at the world map showing all conflicts since 1975, and you can explore different types of conflict and look at the conflict histories of each country)we looked at how much money is spent on the weapons trade (this website shows the realtime increasing debt of the USA, there is also a link to other countries´. We discussed how powerful the armaments industry is, especially in suppressing awareness raising (becuase if more people were aware, there would definitely be much stronger political will to clamp down on these companies, as we have seen political will in Germany especially clamp down on nuclear power)and also the damages on societies following armed conflicts, as well as the impact on guns on society and also the growing ´de-personalisation´ of armaments, as weapons (for example a man sitting clicking a mouse to fire a missile from an unarmed drone does not really think about who he is killing). What makes me disgusted is that we have one of the world´s largest weapons companies, BAE systems in Britain, so really we are disgustingly hypocritical when talking about human rights, since we aid so many abusers of rights. Although the timing wasn´t great (evening was the only time since the guy had flown literally hours before to Sarajevo, and is going back six hours after giving the talk, as he is running a scout camp!) and the guy wasn´t so used to public speaking, it was a really insightful evening.
ok, that´s me for now, sorry about the length,I kind of got progressively longer, I will try harder next time... but it´s just there´s so much to write about!
I will also include a brief summary of the causes of, events and consequences of the ethnic wars in 1992 - 1995, as it really is worth knowing about.
I will upload photos when I´ve taken ones of all the stuff I mentioned (eg school building).
Robin
No comments:
Post a Comment