Bosnian Bulletin #16
May 16, 2000
Greetings Friends and Family,
We are back in beautiful Sarajevo after several weeks in the U.S.
touring with our choir, Pontanima, and some time visiting family
and friends. We had a wonderful trip but are happy to back
in Bosnia getting back into our life here.
Where do I start?!? The choir tour was amazing.
Everything went more smoothly than we expected and the reception
was warm everywhere we went. We really feel that many lives
were touched by the experience -those of our choir members and
those of the people we met along the way.
It was a great cross-cultural experience for everyone! At
our first host homes (in Boston) a couple of young women from the
choir were mortified when their host picked up the remote control
and explained, "this is a remote control -when you point it
at the TV, and press these buttons...." They were
quick to explain that Sarajevo is a progressive city and assured
them that they know what remote controls are!! They were
pleased that they were able to inform their American hosts about
Bosnia. Many Bosnians have a complex that the rest of the
world thinks of them as barbarians and primitive people (due to
the war and years of socialism). The choir seemed to feel
that they were able to fulfill their mission of showing Americans
another side of Bosnia -one that is looking forward to a peaceful
life among diverse peoples.
Meeting people along the way turned out to be very positive
experiences which deeply effected many of them. (How can we
adequately thank all of the hosts and people that helped to make
our tour so successful??) The choir members were so
surprised at the genuine care and interest that their hosts had
for them. Many of them came into the trip with negative
stereotypes of Americans based on movies, TV and their
interaction with Americans here in Bosnia who have come to
"fix Bosnia" with little regard for the people or the
culture. We were so happy to see those stereotypes
challenged! Many of them commented that there didn't seem
to be nearly as much drugs, crime and violence as they see in the
movies (perhaps they were expecting to see cars exploding in the
streets like some Bruce Willis movie!).
The concerts (18 of them!!)
went very well and we were overwhelmed by the response of the
audiences. At every concert we received a standing
ovation. Afterwards people spoke to us about how the
concert affected them and the need for more dialogue between
diverse groups of people -different faith groups, ethnic groups,
racial groups, etc. We received abundant encouragement for
the work we are doing. One morning, in a meeting with our
choir and people from the Harvard and Boston College communities,
a professor addressed the group. He said that in his
Communications Theory classes, his students read 300 pages of
text a week -10 texts a semester -but he believes his
students could learn more from one evening with our choir than
they could in a whole semester in his class!
Comments like that are great affirmation for our group who
are often criticized here in Bosnia for crossing ethno-religious
boundaries.
And yes, we did have fun, too! Through some generous
donations, we were able to do some great sightseeing: Going
up the Hancock Building in Boston, attending performances of
"Miss Saigon" and "Swing!" on Broadway and
visiting the Statue of Liberty in New York City, touring the
US Capitol and parts of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the
college scene (the choir referred to the cafeterias as "very
good restaurants"!) and rural life in Virginia, Ohio and
Indiana, a tour of Amish areas near Goshen, and a visit to Shedd
Aquarium and a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field in
Chicago! Needless to say, the group was happily exhausted
by the end of the tour. And so were we!!!!
It was very special to us that
my parents drove the 13 hours from South Dakota to Indiana to
hear the choir and travel with us for the last few days.
The choir loved it and now ask about them on a regular
basis! We saw the choir off in Chicago and we traveled
with Mom and Dad back to South Dakota. After
a few days there, we drove down to Kansas to visit friends
in Newton and then back to South Dakota via Kansas City
where we visited my brother. We then had
just over a week in South Dakota before flying out
of Minneapolis and eventually back to Sarajevo.
An extra bonus was seeing
John's parents in South Dakota who were
there for John's nephew's high school graduation.
We got to spend some time with them at Gregg and Audrey's (John's
sister) and all made the trek to Minneapolis to see us off.
It was wonderful to see many
of you along the way. For those of you that were able to
come to one of our concerts, we want you to know that it means so
much to us that you made the effort to support us. And for
those of you that we saw in South Dakota and Kansas (sorry the
choir tour didn't make it that far west!) we were happy to
have some time with you! Unfortunately, our time was too
short.
We realized that many of you asked us the same questions and
we thought we could try to answer them in this letter.
Here are two that were asked most frequently:
**********
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are you experiencing "culture shock"
being back here in the United States?
I don't think "culture shock" is the way to
describe the weird feelings we had about being back in the
States. Yes, the culture is different -more excessively
materialistic, a bombardment of advertising, a
faster pace, etc, but it is a culture we lived
in for 25 years and are familiar with it.
The most difficult thing about being back was trying to figure
out how we fit back into the relationships we have and places we
used to be. We, of course, have changed during our
time here in Bosnia and can't just slip back into our old
roles. We discovered that we have a great need for talking
about our experiences here in Bosnia, but find that
difficult to do. Many people mean well and would like to
hear about our experiences but perhaps aren't prepared to do so
-or simply don't know how. We often found ourselves trying
to set Bosnia on the shelf and focus on life in the States,
which does feel rather fragmenting. We now have a
glimpse of that "re-entry shock" that other
overseas workers have talked about and we realized it will be a
difficult process to reintegrate into life in the US, while not
denying our life-changing experiences in Bosnia. We will
need your patience and support!
2. Are you safe there in Sarajevo?
Yes, we are. Politically speaking, the war in
Bosnia stopped in November of 1995. The process of
rebuilding peace, is still on-going. The war in
Kosovo/Yugoslavia did not directly affect us.
Indirectly, we were effected by the international
community's concerns that Serbs in Bosnia (and all over the
world) would retaliate against people from NATO countries because
of NATO's bombing campaign. At that time, we lived in Banja
Luka (the political center of the Serb-majority entity of
Bosnia = Republika Srpska) and were forced to evacuate
by the American organization we were associated with there.
Those concerns turned out to be unwarranted. Bosnia did
receive a lot of refugees during that time and we worked to
distribute some MCC humanitarian aid -mostly the "Balkan
buckets" filled with hygiene products.
In Sarajevo we feel safer than we did in most American
cities. Crime is very low -especially physical assault
crimes.
This spring there is great concern that conflict will again break
out in neighboring Yugoslavia -this time between the remaining
two republics, Serbia and Montenegro. There is a
growing movement in Montenegro to push for independence from
Yugoslavia and a referendum could be held as early as this
summer. This could produce conflict between Serbia (led by
Slobodan Milosevic) and Montenegro, as well as within Montenegro
itself -separatists and unionists. Though we live less than
50 miles from the Montenegrin border, there is no expectation
that conflict would spill into Bosnia. Nevertheless, we are
praying for a peaceful resolution between the two sides.
**********
As this letter is getting quite lengthy, we'll close for
now. In our future "Bulletins", we will try to
answer more of those questions we heard. In the meantime, please
continue to ask them!
We will continue to try to get caught up in communications, but
we appreciate your understanding if it takes some time to respond
to all of your personal e-mails. Don't stop sending them,
though!!!
Thanks again for your love and support. We have been
reminded once more of how much all of you mean to us and how much
we miss you when we are apart.
Much love and gratitude,
Karin & John
Face to Face Interreligious Service
Splitska 39
71000 Sarajevo
Bosnia-Herzegovina
home tel: 387 71 207 860
office tel/fax: 387 71 442 468
home: jandk@bih.net.ba
office: ociuoci@bih.net.ba
http://www.progressive-bih.com/ociuoci
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