Lori Merrill's Sabbatical
Six volunteers moved to the Serbian side of the Ibar River today, so I had to leave the apartment I have been living in on the Albanian side and venture over to the north. The north side of the river is very different from the south, mostly because Americans are not automatically liked over here. Living with people who view my country negatively is just a bit stressful. This morning I participated in a group clean up of the city to get things ready for the upcoming conference. I was working around a fountain in the city center when a group of men stood up and moved the benches they were sitting on so that I could get behind them to pick up the trash. I didn’t know the Serbian word for thank you yet, which was poor planning on my part, but I knew not to respond with “faleminderit”, which is thank-you in Albanian. Instead, I used English, and I was shocked to see the reaction on the faces of the men who had just helped me. After an awkward moment of silence, one man stated that I must be Canadian, because Canadians are good, unlike the people who live south of Canada. I was somewhat isolated from the other volunteers at this point so I thought it unwise to challenge this man’s opinion. I just smiled and continued on with my cleaning. From that point on I was more cautious about making sure I worked closer to other Serbian volunteers.
A little while after my experience at the fountain, a local shopkeeper brought bottles of water out to my group. When I thanked him, he asked where I was from, and a young Serbian volunteer answered for me—America… The man nodded his head and began to walk back into his store, but he stopped and turned back. He came up to me and asked why I was helping them clean up the city. I told him that I was working with the Cities in Transition Forum, and that there was going to be a peace conference in Mitrovica later this month, with people coming from all over the world. He paused for a few seconds and then said “good”. His English turned out to be very good, and he went on to tell me that he worried that Americans were getting the wrong story about Serbian people in the news. He told me he has relatives who live in America, and that America really isn’t a bad place, but we don’t know the truth. I wanted to ask him to tell me what the truth really is, but he turned and walked back into his store. I was left wondering about the parallel realities that exist on the two sides of the Ibar River. I thought about how the Albanians are still so afraid that the violence will return, but the Serbs are also afraid that war will return.
The issues that divide these two groups of people seem nowhere near being reconciled. The EU, UN, and NATO presence is everywhere in the city. The Serbian North is covered with graffiti calling for the removal of all international troops. The South has its own graffiti, filled with slurs against Serbia. Trust is a commodity in short supply in the divided city of Mitrovica, yet in a couple of weeks the Cities in Transition Forum will take place in this city. Participants from ten divided cities will come here. They will live in one of the three hotels being used to house the delegates. Yesterday I worked on completing the room assignments, making sure not to put delegates from Beirut in the same hotel as the delegates from Haifa and Jerusalem, etc. It is unfortunately true that Mitrovica is not the only city that has to deal with parallel realities, but hopefully after the conference, the cities that are participating will be closer to viewing their problems through a common lens. This seems a first step in the process of reconciliation.
A little while after my experience at the fountain, a local shopkeeper brought bottles of water out to my group. When I thanked him, he asked where I was from, and a young Serbian volunteer answered for me—America… The man nodded his head and began to walk back into his store, but he stopped and turned back. He came up to me and asked why I was helping them clean up the city. I told him that I was working with the Cities in Transition Forum, and that there was going to be a peace conference in Mitrovica later this month, with people coming from all over the world. He paused for a few seconds and then said “good”. His English turned out to be very good, and he went on to tell me that he worried that Americans were getting the wrong story about Serbian people in the news. He told me he has relatives who live in America, and that America really isn’t a bad place, but we don’t know the truth. I wanted to ask him to tell me what the truth really is, but he turned and walked back into his store. I was left wondering about the parallel realities that exist on the two sides of the Ibar River. I thought about how the Albanians are still so afraid that the violence will return, but the Serbs are also afraid that war will return.
The issues that divide these two groups of people seem nowhere near being reconciled. The EU, UN, and NATO presence is everywhere in the city. The Serbian North is covered with graffiti calling for the removal of all international troops. The South has its own graffiti, filled with slurs against Serbia. Trust is a commodity in short supply in the divided city of Mitrovica, yet in a couple of weeks the Cities in Transition Forum will take place in this city. Participants from ten divided cities will come here. They will live in one of the three hotels being used to house the delegates. Yesterday I worked on completing the room assignments, making sure not to put delegates from Beirut in the same hotel as the delegates from Haifa and Jerusalem, etc. It is unfortunately true that Mitrovica is not the only city that has to deal with parallel realities, but hopefully after the conference, the cities that are participating will be closer to viewing their problems through a common lens. This seems a first step in the process of reconciliation.
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