I’ve been trying to write this text for a while now. And it’s difficult. Primarily because my own basic training in peace building had knocked me out of my socks and turned me upside-down, changed everything that was going on in my life, and brought me to a new town, in a different country. More or less in that order.
Anyway, all I knew about the training was what I had read in the application: an organisation from Sarajevo and Belgrade, peace building and facing the past. It said a lot more in there, but that was not why I applied. I could hardly claim to have always been an activist, it would be more accurate to say I had always had a penchant for being socially active. I had to overcome some personal boundaries. And that is basically how I arrived in Tivat.
Already on the first day, quite brashly, as we were introducing each other, in front of a crowd of people from various places, I said I had great expectations and I did not come to do things just for the sake of form. If I had happened to be there in a different capacity, looking on, I would not have liked myself. So, I had a certain scepticism, a few years of experience, and not the highest opinion of nongovernmental organisations. However, I liked the structure of the training, the way space was being constructed for people to say what they really think, and the readiness of people to actually say what they think. I talked too much while I was there, to the point of encroaching upon others, at least that’s the impression I have. I had a lot on my mind. My family had been settled all over the place even before the war, and after the war, the old distribution was just exchanged for a new one. Also, like most people, we did not fare too well during the war. For various reasons to do with my family history, I thought a lot about the causes, the mechanisms that support bloodshed, and especially about the “state building” process I could observe first-hand, a process that irritated me quite a bit in Croatia. All the more because this process would have me forget the symbolic space I grew up in, because that was just the way things were.
That was why it was important for me to be among people with a different view of the same experience, to see what had happened to them and how people actually live in these “other” societies. They did not mind me jabbering on, on the contrary, they supported me, and all the changes I went through before them. I wasn’t the only one going through changes, we were all struggling, we talked at lot, at the workshops and after them. We played around and we worked. And we talked again. We gave each other space and opened up a new common space. It was very important that we all felt safe, our training team was excellent. It was like you were walking a beam, and someone was standing down there, not holding your hand, but waiting to catch you if you should fall. I grew to love those people tremendously. And here’s why.
A few moments at that training completely blew me away. The first, one I will never forget, was the moment I realised I was privileged. Up until then, I had just dwelt on what I lacked. There is an exercise, one I like very much, emotionally very difficult, there are exercises that completely deconstruct your experience, it’s possible. So, I realised I lived in a big city, I could go to school, information was available to me and I belonged to the majority nation. That makes for a relatively uncomplicated life in this region.
I had known from before that I had one thing going against me, I was a woman. But I had already settled comfortably within that identity, I knew my limits, I knew what was expected of me as a woman (though it did not mean I had to necessarily go down that path), but I kept all that under wraps within my personal space. Thanks to what I acquired from my basic training in peace building, I no longer shy away from calling myself a feminist. I consider this a tremendous gain.
The final blow was when I realised that national identity, something I had taken for granted, just like the white colour of my skin, really does establish the coordinates of the world we live in, try as I might to make the whole thing relative. It’s not something you get brainwashed with at the training. The painful thing in that process is that while revealing prejudice, discrimination mechanisms, levers of violence in society, you realise that the basis for division in society and the consequent access to social power always exists. When it’s about national identity, you realise it’s not just some social construct, something you can decide to cross out because it’s pointless and leads to bloodshed. For most people in this region, there are few things that seem more persistent than national identity. You cannot get around it simply by claiming someone had tricked you into it in order to divide and conquer. You have to deal with it, with the ways in which it is constructed, the narratives that support it, with who stands to gain from such social divisions. Otherwise, it will all blow up in you face the way it did for us twenty years ago.
Only some time after the end of the training, however, I realised I was feeling some long-term consequences. I feel responsible for my life, hence the power to think, speak and work. I certainly feel fear, but it is cautionary, and alerts me to the need to seek the support of other people. I have learnt how to lend support, I have rejected the idea that the world revolves around what I do myself, on the contrary, we can only have strength in numbers. And yes, among other things, we must hold accountable people who have been chosen through the political system to make decisions shaping our lives.
For all of the above reasons, doing this training as a trainer was no easy feat. Here was a whole group of participants feeling similar impulses on some level, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. How to design the training, what to insist on, what topics to open up is not just a matter to be predetermined, it will depend significantly on these people, on their mutual understanding, on whether they “click” on some group level, and on the degree to which they are prepared to get involved in the process. Fortunately, as a trainer in the process, you are not alone, you work as a team, surrounded by people with similar dilemmas, going through similar things, watching out for you as you watch out for them, you have a common aim and are committed to it. This will always yield results when it comes to social transformation, and that is what this training is all about.
You feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility, because you are not here for yourself, you are here because of something you believe in and you are aware of its potential power. Not all people will respond in the same way, or with the same intensity of motivation, or with the same views and understandings. Nor should they. What is important is that each of us finds that switch within that will encourage him/her to start thinking about things that had hitherto been served up as “natural” or “unchangeable”, as the “way things are in the world and in life”. That is how you find the level at which you can act. It’s not the same for someone living in a big city and someone from a small town where things are so much more difficult to get going, if for nothing else than because everyone knows who you are and “where you belong”.
The days were very intense, you start something, one door opens up, someone shares an insight, sparks a discussion, the energy level rises, emotions hitting you from all sides. I think there was hardly a moment when I was not wholly involved in the process to my very core. The group was outstanding. They reminded me of my basic training group, but they were even more connected. We broke our backs getting to the conclusion that our initial connection will not dissipate if we accept differences of opinion, on the contrary.
However, in contrast to my own basic training, what we had here was a feeling of fatigue with that whole “national” story, a reluctance to talk about the war. And that in a group of participants that will turn out to have contained children of defenders, those who spent their early childhood under shelling, taking shelter in basements, displaced persons… There were none among us who had not been affected by war or conflict, except this second generation no longer wanted to think, let alone talk about it. Europe, human rights, the rule of law. These were expected to level out our “Balkan” faults. And there was a vague general sense that lasting peace could be built if only everyone had enough work and material means.
I believe this attitude is the product of 15 or more post-war years where facing the past and peace building were often undertaken using shortcuts, insufficiently thought-out steps, or where the whole process was quite deliberately avoided. I do not think oblivion and denial are the way to deal with what happened to us twenty years ago. This “strategy” was already tested following Word War 2, and it is quite obviously misguided to the point of potentially being fatal. All these divisions will be revived when a political elite comes to find them necessary for concrete economic or other interests. I believe that is what we managed to conclude at this training – if we do not deal with our national identities, the histories and memories of our societies, someone else will, until we once again “remember” that we are divided by “centuries-old hatred”. And we have figured out that apart from our diverse names, at least in this national respect, there are few things that make us different from each other.