Even though it seems very hard to connect people from the Balkans in the post-war period, there are   non-government organizations that work to achieve this connection by organizing different seminars. That is how I had the chance to go to Kosovo for the first time. An NGO called the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) had organized a trip to Prizren to the festival of documentary films called Dokufest. Participants of this trip were from Kosovo, Montenegro, Croatia, and Serbia. Finally, I visited Kosovo of which I have been hearing about for twenty years and I was very grateful to the organization for bringing me there.

There’s another organization that works hard on connecting people from the region and solving issues from the past called Women in Black in Belgrade. Needless to say, I have been an activist of this NGO for three years now and thanks to them and their regional meetings I have learned a great deal about the Balkans, its people and the past. Several times a year Women in Black holds meetings where they invite participants from all countries of the former Yugoslavia. Sometimes participants from Kosovo take part as well but the language barrier is the main challenge for Kosovars who do not speak any of the Slavic languages. I understand this fact and so I try and help them out when I am available by translating into Albanian. 

This September the organization held a meeting in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, and besides women from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro there was also Vetone from Mitrovica, Kosovo. She spoke Serbian very well so there was no need for translation. We arrived at the meeting together by taxi from Mitrovica, where I was staying at the moment. With the young driver we spoke Serbian while with one another we spoke Albanian. He was also from Mitrovica and he expressed his will to learn the language too. He told us how important it is to speak it, especially for the Serbs living in Kosovo. At that meeting, we heard about the challenges the participants face in their cities, and Vetone described the situation in Mitrovica and the issue of two divided communities, the Albanian and the Serbian one. She talked about the north and the south of the city, and the bridge over the river that divides the Serb and Albanian communities.

A similar issue of divided communities can be noticed throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina in cities and villages where all three major ethnicities - Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats - live separately. Women from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also others who lost their loved ones during the wars of the nineties, told their personal stories. Last week Women in Black organized a seminar called the School of Reconciliation. Different generations were present at the seminar. However, there were also some young people who haven’t participated in such events before but they have been active in their own communities. The event was held in a hotel in Belgrade and lasted for only two days. But these two days were enough for us to connect with each other and share our past experiences and traumas. It was a small group but the fact that we created a space where everybody can speak up and be heard without being judged gave us the feeling of belonging and we got used to each other quickly. 

Many of us come from ethnically divided places, yet again, by coming to these seminars people realize that it’s possible to stay together, eat at the same table, discuss painful topics but also laughs and learn something new. In the end, this will make us better understand each other and live in peace together. 

Tomislav Perusic