The Kosovo Experience

By Maaike van der Kolk

Coming back to Amsterdam after our 10-day-trip in Kosovo felt pretty strange. You’ve
learned so much while being in Kosovo, but you get sucked into the Science Park bubble
right when you come back. The next day most of us went to Dormfest and when people
asked me how Kosovo was, I didn’t really know what to answer. It is impossible to give them an impression of Kosovo by merely mentioning a few things. Also, it was so easy to forget everything and to get used to your normal life again - although you might have come to appreciate it more when you were away. It was very nice to have a boat trip on Sunday with the group again, to get back into the ‘peacelab vibe’ and as a way to kind of end the trip.


Also, working on our projects was in fact very enjoyable, as it allowed us to get back into
everything and put everything we have heard into place and as a way to process things.
The project that I worked on with my group was ‘Kosovo dreams’, a book/magazine
composed of interviews we had conducted with Kosovo’s people with regards to their
dreams and their picture of the future. Before arriving in Kosovo, we had only been able to
hear about the ‘bigger stories’ of Kosovo and this would allow us to get to know better what the individuals within Kosovo actually want. Your background does shape your dreams, and this project would allow us to compare the dreams of the people of Kosovo with our own, coming from a completely different background. 

What we didn’t expect though, is that it would also be so apparent that your background not only shapes your dreams, but also your ability to dream. It was rewarding to talk to people who had a sense of hope and still dared to dream. Yet, talking to people who felt like they weren’t able to dream at all and had nothing that still gives them hope was extremely confronting.
 
This already shows how diverse people’s dreams and perception of their ability to dream is.
And we only interviewed 15 people. This is why having conversations is so important to
understanding the situation at least in some sense. After the first interviews you conduct, you think ‘this is the solution’. But after each interview, you hear a new problem that needs to be solved in order for people to have a feeling that they can live in peace. Although there are of course problems that form an obstacle to many people, the only thing that you can
eventually really conclude is that everything is just extremely complex. Peace means so
many different things to different people, and there just isn’t one single solution.
 
Those who do dare to dream often had dreams that were very ‘practical’ or ‘factual’. They
would answer in terms of the job they wanted to have or the wider problems in Kosovo that
should be fixed. In a post-conflict environment such as Kosovo where the conflict is still so
recent and fresh in people’s minds, it’s almost impossible to have dreams that are unrelated
to the future of Kosovo. I guess the more adversity you face, the more factual your dreams
are because these are just things that should be fulfilled for everyone but are not fulfilled for
you. For us, dreaming is more of a privilege, as it goes beyond those basic things, and for
the people of Kosovo, dreaming is more of a necessity. Or in other words, as one interviewee made us realize, wanting these basic things shouldn’t be called ‘dreams’; they
should fall under normal human rights.
 
All of this also made us reflect on what our own dreams are. Still, I wouldn’t be able to give a clear answer to this, again also because it’s not necessary to think about it. Everything is
pretty secured for me, and dreams are rather something ‘fun’ to think about; not something
that needs to be achieved on the short run. Although I still don’t have a clear answer to the
question that I, ironically, asked so many people, talking about it so much has made me
realize how privileged I am to be able to dream, and to have pretty big dreams, and knowing that I might achieve them. This is confronting but also a gift; being aware of that makes everything a lot more valuable.
 
Despite these confronting conversations and the conflict still being visible everywhere,
Kosovo has made me pleasantly surprised - the vibe can be extremely good as well and I’ve never been to a country where the people are so extremely welcoming and warm. For some reason, I really have the feeling that I will come back to Kosovo, something that I would have never expected before going there. Kosovo is just a place that you will not forget easily and although I don’t know for what exact reason I’ll come back, I’m pretty sure the Kosovo experience, for me, is not over yet.