We're back! Back from our trip to Greece and Bosnia, that is. We had a wonderful time with wonderful experiences, conversations, and learning. The 10th International Conference on Education in Athens included a lot of sight-seeing, so in addition to the Conference we got to experience some Greek restaurants, islands, and even the start of the legendary long-distance run from Marathon to Athens. As a marathon runner myself, you can imagine my joy of seeing where it all began (not to mention the historical significance of the Battle of Marathon itself).
From Athens we spent more than four days in Bosnia & Herzegovina with our foreign-exchange "daughter," Dina. After spending a couple days in Sarajevo, the capital, we went south to Mostar and then north to Tuzla. It was our first experience of being in an Islamic country, replete with the calls to prayer of the muezzins, five times a day, from the minarets of the many, many mosques that dotted both the cities and the countryside. We were pleased to be reminded to take breaks and to reconnect with life.
In Tuzla, which experienced the horrors of war from 1992-1995 not long after the country hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, we stumbled upon Peace Flame Park & House sponsored by the Peace Flame Foundation of the Netherlands. Here is how they describe their purpose:
"The aim of the foundation is to contribute through the raising of awareness to the inspiration of people in post-war areas on the individual as well as on the collective level. It does so by helping us to remind ourselves of our qualities: to care, to inspire, to accept responsibility, to create and to love unconditionally."
In Tuzla, it does that through a Park and House that serve as "a meeting place for the people of the Tuzla region to find and bring peace within each other. This is initiated by organizing activities which contribute to personal development and the relief of trauma in a way that sustainable peace is stimulated on an individual and social level."
"The organized activities are of great variety to meet the local needs. The consist of various workshops, training courses, individual consultation and seminars containing themes and activities like healing arts, creative and much, dance, and drama therapies, capacity building, education, inspiration, meditation, promotion of human rights, strengthening of civil society and democracy, minority awareness, and more."
You can read more by visiting them on the web at www.peaceflame.nl and www.kpm.ba. Given my own interest and involvement in the work of Marshall Rosenberg and the Center for Nonviolent Communication (NVC), www.cnvc.org, it brought me great joy to learn that NVC has a presence in Tuzla. In fact, they had an NVC training on the calendar for just this past week. People really can learn to appreciate each other through all manner of differences and difficulties. It would seem that Bosnia & Herzegovina is setting a great example for us all.
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1 comment:
I so enjoyed reading your account of your recent travels. I may have told you that my father and I ran the Athens marathon in 2003, which, as you know, follows the original route. The course was hellish (6 miles flat, 13 up and 6 down), but I highly recommend the experience!
Even more meaningful, however, was your description of Bosnia. William & Mary sends a group of six students to Zenica (central Bosnia) for 4-6 weeks each summer to work with children through an organization called Sezam -- which means "Open Sesame" and symbolizes the opening of a child's heart. Sezam has many of the same aims as the Peace Flame House, apparently.
They were the first NGO in Bosnia after the war and have continued to work to help children and families to deal with the aftermath by running workshops for parents and teachers, and teaching self-esteem and non-violent communication skills to children and teenagers. W&M students who go during the summer teach English and support the non-violent communication program, which is also based on the work of Rosenberg and the Center for Nonviolent Communication, I believe.
I had the privilege of coordinating W&M's program for three years when I worked at the Reves Center, and I got to visit for a week while the students were there in the summer of 2001. I spent most of the time in Zenica, but also got to spend a day in Sarajevo, as well as side trips to some of the nearby smaller towns. It was, without a doubt, one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had in my professional and personal life.
Although I am no longer involved in the program in any official capacity, I am so happy that it is still going and continues to evolve after 10 years. I envy this year's group of students, who leave for Bosnia on Tuesday, in fact. They cannot fully grasp what lies ahead of them and I am excited to think of how they may be affected by the experience. (It is fascinating to me to know where some of our Bosnia Project alums have gone in life -- founding their own international non-profit organizations to help struggling communities, working for human rights in Rwanda and Myanmar, some even returning to Bosnia.) I know it broadened my thinking about the world, about war, about Islam, about resilience, about so many things.
Someday, when I am working and can afford international travel again, I want to return to Bosnia, this time with my husband. I hope that many of the reminders of the war that remained in 2001 -- land mine zones, bullet-riddled walls, etc -- will have been repaired by that time, and I hope economic conditions will have improved vastly, but I expect it would still be a stirring experience for him, as well as for me. Thanks for your account of your trip and, by extension, the opportunity to reflect on my own.
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