Invited to Present My Work!!

So something unbelievable has happened:

I have been invited to return to Sarajevo in July to present my work about the use of rape and sexual violence in genocide.

There is a conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that will be held in Sarajevo this summer and even though it was later than the last minute, I sent them an email with description of my work. They scrambled to put me on a panel titled appropriately, "Mass Rape and Genocide," with other experts in the field.

I am so excited I am nearly busting out of my skin. Toshi has to keep grabbing my ankles as I float off to unbelievable happiness that they actually want ME to be part of this. As you loyal blog-readers know, I am in love with Sarajevo and looking for any excuse to come back. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be this soon!!

Fantastic Meeting!

Yesterday I met in Sarajevo with Senada Kreso, who is a very well-connected and important person in Bosnia-Hercegovina. She was able to tell me many people and organizations that might be interested in collaborating on a project together. When I said I wanted to work with women who survived the war, she said, "the first thing that comes to my mind are the rapes." Anyone who has been along for the "wild and disturbing ride" of my scholarly and clinical interests will know that this is EXACTLY what I wanted to focus on, but there is such a veil of secrecy, protection, and shame around sexual violence that I was fully prepared to compromise my main interests in order to be in alignment with Bosnian/Croatian collaborators.

So this was fantastic... and it only gets better...

By sheer coincidence, Senada had arranged to meet another friend around the same time and place, and when he arrived, it was synchronicity at its best!

He is the associate dean (vice-dean) of the University of Sarajevo (for education) and he is a professor of political science there. The school of social work is affiliated with the school of poly-sci, and he actually teaches the ethics course for social workers.

He was totally jazzed about my ideas, and said that we could have a great collaboration if I came to Sarajevo fr my dissertation. He said that the SW program is still developing and they do not have a lot of strengths in the area of research. So it is a perfect fit, with my rigorous Berkeley research-centric education, skills, and background.

This conversation was one of the most professinally and personally validating experiences of my life so far! It was all I could do to control myself and not go around jumping and singing for joy... (I did a little happy dance later at the hostel though!)

At the end of this talk, he basically invited me to come to Sarajevo and do my project there; he even suggested that maybe they could arrange for 8-10 of the best students (English and Bosnian speaking) to work on the project (for credit) under my direction. This was my dream come true (as many of you who have patiently listened to me as I formulated the idea of working with a team of SW students... but I thought I would get maybe 1-2 at best!). Of course there are still administrative hurdles (including the possible election of a new dean at the University of Sarajevo which sounds like a poliical nightmare). So nothing is definate... but this fellow seemed to feel that I could bring a lot to the school, the students, and the faculty.

This made me feel so good, because I do not want to just go to a place and gather knowledge for my own use: that is missing the point entirely (and it is antithetical to the core of what I believe social work is about). I really want to have a meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange, which sounds like what would happen here!!!

So I am walking on air and this was a fantastic way to spend my last day in Sarajevo.

Sarajevo

I always wanted to visit Sarajevo, since the winter olympics in 1984 (at the ripe old age of 4).

It is very different here than in Croatia (at least the parts of Croatia I was in). In Zagreb, they laugh about the war... and there was not too much damage. What was damaged has pretty much been fixed, and you would never guess there was a war within the last 15 years.

Sarajevo, on the other hand, holds its war history on its sleeve.


The buildings are riddled with bullet holes, and many houses have been hit by shells and not repaired in the intervening decade. When I was riding the tram from the train station to the hostel, a friendly woman talked to me the whole ride, pointing out important landmarks and other things as we rode by. Passing the street dubbed "sniper alley" during the war, she said in a flat voice as we passed these buildings (each with more than 100 bullet holes and many with gaping holes caused by shells), "too many serbia sniper, no good."

Sarajevo survived the longest siege of a city in modern history (1992-1995-while the world watched and waited), and they have not been quick to cover it up with a veil of collective forgetfulness like their neighbors in Croatia. Perhaps it is because it has not been as easy or affordable to make repairs, perhaps it is because unlike Croatia, in Bosnia they do not want to forget. The world has already forgotten them and they refuse to do the same abuse to themselves.

The hostel where I am staying is in the old town (Turkish quarter). You can hear the people praying in several nearby mosques. I drifted off to sleep last night to the sounds of prayer.

Today I explored the Turkish market, which has been constantly running since the Ottoman empire and was really the meeting point between east and west in those days. I believe it is one of the oldest constantly running open-air markets in the world. You can buy anything from belly-dance outfits (if only they were tiny enough to fit me!) to hookahs to Turkish coffee sets to prayer rugs to magic lamps (genie costs extra! haha!).


You can buy lots of shirts with writing in Bosnian that look very nice until you ask what they say... because they say swear words and politically charged statements. such as... A shirt will have a picture of Croatia-maybe in a checkerboard pattern, which is the symbol of Croatia, or a picture of Bosnia (like this one) and it will say (rough translation) "fuck the country that does not have Bosnia." So I will be careful about what I buy so I am not making a bad statement. I also saw shirts that said, "do not panic: I am Muslim." I liked those ones.

From the main square to the hostel, you pass by the old Turkish cemetary with probably 50 gravestones. Right behind it is a newer cemetary, for those who died during the siege of Sarajevo. There are so many gravestones. I cried to see it; there were so many white pillars sticking up out of the green grass. And these are only those people who dies in Sarajevo and whose bodies were recovered and who were given proper burial here in Sarajevo. So many others were dumped in mass graves or simply never found for any kind of burial. This is one of the primary things that survivors of war generally want-- a chance to bury their dead with respect and in the proper way. Every time I pass by, there are people crying or praying for their lost loved ones. Also buried there is the prime minister of Bosnia during the war, so there are alwasy soldiers stationed there, protecting his grave against any type of molestation.

Less people speak English here than in Croatia, but now I am very good at communicating with body language. One funny example: We were out of toilet paper at the hostel, and I went to tell the person at he desk. He did not understand any of what I was saying, so I said "toilet" and he shook his head, yes... so he had that part. I said "paper" and his quizzical expression made it clear he had no idea where I was going with this. I made a vbery unladylike gesture of wiping my ass and then said "ne" which means no. He jumped up, blushing a bit, and had understood what I said. Problem solved!