Processing.

June 29, 2010:

For some reason, I’m feeling really… numb tonight. I left the café before the Spain-Portugal game ended (gasp!) to come back to the hotel and spend some time catching up on my research and just being alone—I haven’t done that in a while, and it’s necessary. Thankfully I’ve been running every morning in Sanski Most, which helps keep me human. The run is beautiful. Eric and Melanie and I always go the same direction: we leave the hotel and pass the bakery, which smells awesome, and then go past the fruit stand and the building under construction (the workers always give us curious glances). When we hit the stoplight we pause, then cross the road and pass the Catholic church with the mysterious sink in the yard. There’s a slight uphill, a cemetery on the right amidst the rest of the neighborhood, and then eventually the road splits. We always go to the right, which takes us out of town onto a country road. It winds past the most beautiful home in the world (it’s just a little, sorta run-down brick country home, but it’s nestled next to a stream, half-hidden by trees, and right on the outskirts of Sanski Most, right at the base of the mountains. I want to live there). Eventually the road becomes gravel; I assume it continues to wind its way up into the mountains, but we haven’t run far enough to see where it goes. If we didn’t have to do an out-and-back every day, I’d love to run through the countryside. The view is enough to keep me going—that and the funny looks and comments we get from the Bosnians we pass, who apparently rarely see people running. Because we run early in the morning, we always pass old men walking slowly along the side of the road, who usually respond to our “Zdravo!” with a confused look and some mysterious phrase, which I’ve taken to mean “Crazy Americans.” I don’t speak much Bosnian, but I bet I’m pretty close with that translation.

The last two days in Sanski Most have been occupied by time in various internships. As I wrote yesterday, some of our group members are working at Krajina Tear, looking for some grants and learning more about their work in the area. Others are working at the Center for Peacebuilding, which is GYC’s partner organization in Bosnia and is one of the most awesome grassroots organizations for peacebuilding I have ever encountered. I am consistently amazed by Vahadin’s work, expertise, and connections, and the success that the Center has encountered. Amazing. The other students are at an orphanage outside of town, where I hope to spend tomorrow if I get my research done tonight. (Yeah. About that.) But Heidi and Erika and I don’t get to stay at one location—we’re the “documentation team,” so we’re trying to balance visiting and documenting all three locations with doing a lot of research on the people and organizations we’ll be meeting with when we return to Sarajevo: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, various agencies of the United Nations, representatives of the Interreligious Council in Sarajevo, the American embassy, and other NGOs, civic organizations, and government groups. It’s fascinating, but complex, and requiring a lot more time than any of us were really anticipating. Plus, we’re trying to work together on a blog for future funding and recruiting purposes, and keep up our own personal journals so we can eventually write a comprehensive program report. Whew. But it’s exciting work, and we’re certainly learning how much work goes into grant-
writing, keeping nonprofits alive, and funding programs like this one.

But other than those logistics… a review of the day. This morning we visited one of the two sites in all of Bosnia where forensic anthropologists identify and piece together the exhumed remains of mass graves. Located in an old warehouse on the outskirts of Sanski Most, the Center for Missing Persons is filled with white body bags, each carefully labeled with the date of excavation and location where the bones were discovered. Thousands of people were reported missing after the war, and though the work of recovery and identification has been going on for years, the fate of thousands remains unknown.

Honestly, as troubling as it is to walk into a large warehouse filled with the remains of thousands of people, their bones did not horrify me as much as I thought they might. Instead, I was fixated by pages and pages of tiny pictures taped to a wall, each depicting a single person who is still reported missing by their surviving family members. Their faces smiled happily off the wall, cropped out of pictures where they are surrounded by loved ones or caught unaware and happy in daily life. Now their bones sit in big white plastic bags, mixed with the remains of other murdered victims. A few of the bags had been marked with identification tags; I memorized one of the names and went to find the corresponding picture on the wall. There he was: a dark-haired young man, smiling innocently at the camera. And there he was, dead.

Sometimes war becomes very, very real.

This afternoon we went to the Center for Peacebuilding to help paint the outside of the building. It started pouring after we had finished one wall, so we went inside and watched No Man’s Land instead while we waited for the storm to pass. Watch it. Yes, you will probably end up extraordinarily frustrated by the United Nations mission in Bosnia (UNPROFOR). But that’s probably an appropriate response to the politics that prevented the international community from intervening and saving the lives of some of those people whose bodies now lie on the cement floor of a warehouse.

I don’t mean to end on an angry note, but as I process what happened today, I cannot help but be frustrated. As I researched this afternoon, I read over and over about the myriad of challenges facing Bosnia in its recovery from the past. How to reintegrate a divided society? How to heal the wounds of war? There are no easy answers.

Pray for Bosnia.