Girls too

By Júlia Celma Werthwein

The streets of Prishtina remind me of home – alive like in Spain and Italy, with kids playing till late hours of the night, street artists adding to the vibrant ambiance, and the community coming together in the streets. The buzz around football, especially when Albania was playing, was infectious. However, amidst the excitement, I couldn’t help but notice one thing as missing compared to back home: almost no little girls were supporting or playing football in the streets, and the overwhelming majority of fans were men – probably around 80%.

As someone who grew up in Spain, where football enthusiasm is now shared by all genders, this contrast was eye-opening. In Spain, the football landscape changed dramatically after our women’s team won the World Cup in 2023. This victory didn’t just bring home a trophy; it sparked a cultural revolution. Now, it’s common to see little girls playing football in the streets and parks, inspired by the women they watched on TV. Football has become a sport for everyone, breaking down gender barriers and encouraging girls to dream big. Coming to Prishtina, where I almost didn’t see a single girl kicking a ball outside, highlighted just how much change still needs to happen.

The joy and excitement of the Euros in Prishtina was palpable, but it was predominantly a male affair. Women were present, but they were few and far between. But it isn’t about the numbers; it’s about what those numbers represent. The lack of visible female participation in football, whether as players or fans, underscores a deeper issue of gender inequality and the broader implications of gender inclusivity in football.

Through our project, which was centered around football as a peacebuilding tool during the Euros, we found that football as a peacebuilding tool is only effective on a local level and not on a national or transnational level. It does, however, unite a community that all support the same team. Nevertheless, if football can unite a community, it should do so for everyone, regardless of gender. My hope is that one day, the streets of Prishtina will echo with the sounds of girls playing football, just like boys do right now.

Language as a peacebuilding tool

By Demir Viden

Hello there! This is Demir again.
 
On our flight back to Amsterdam, I slept quite well. Kosovo really took a toll on me. Meetings every day, traveling to other cities, and visiting sights all over the country, working on the project with my group, and of course, exploring Prishtina's social life—it was all so exciting that every time I lay down in bed, I felt like I was missing out on something, making it hard to fall asleep. 

However, being back in the dorms now, I can proudly say that I used all of my energy and time exactly as I wanted. I witnessed Kosovo and Kosovars from different angles—both political and social. The blank space in my mind, filled with preconceived notions shaped by mere voices on TV or news articles, were replaced with a wealth of new information. I saw Kosovo for what it truly is: a country in a historical tug -of-war between different regional and world powers, that resulted in a divided society, much like many other post-Yugoslav republics.

What surprised me the most, I have to say, were the encounters with Kosovar people. On the flight to Prishtina, to my left on the other side of the aisle was a young Kosovar Albanian named Drit. He took an interest in our loud English-speaking group and, driven by curiosity, started a conversation about our agenda here. One thing led to another, and Drit became a friend of the whole Peace Lab, as you have probably already read in other blog entries. We hung out together, and he showed us the city with his best friend Olti, a specialist in Balkan cuisine. My group's project was related to food, so it was a perfect opportunity to learn from the best. They were the best hosts one could ask for. Whenever we needed anything, they were there for us. Warm and welcoming gestures and tones became what I got used to when interacting with people in Kosovo, whether they were Albanian, Serb, or Bosniak. However, as always, there are exceptions.

Kosovo has had a very difficult past, and the wounds from the most recent conflict are still fresh. The tensions between Serbs and Albanians are particularly prominent. The Bosnian language is quite similar to Serbo-Croatian—more so than British and American English. The difference is mostly dialectical. Knowing that the older generations learned Serbo-Croatian in school up until the 90s in Yugoslav times, I approached people in English and asked if they spoke Serbo-Croatian. Some people shrugged their shoulders and turned away, some nodded in disapproval, but most engaged in conversation, asking where I was from and why I am here. 

A particular situation stayed ingrained in my mind. As I was entering a taxi, I spoke in a Yugoslav language (Bosnian, if you ask me) to our guide Enver, who was showing me the destination of a Kosovar traditional food restaurant. The old taxi driver started driving, and I tried to start a conversation in English. Knowing the chances were that he also spoke Serbo-Croatian, I asked in broken English, “Did you live in Yugoslavia? No?, Yugoslavia?” To my surprise, the driver just looked at me in the rearview mirror with a stone-cold face for a couple of seconds and looked away. He did not speak a word for the rest of the trip, nor did I or my friends in the car. It could be that the sentence was not clear enough or that it was just not his day, but my gut feeling tells me otherwise. The people in the car said things like, “That guy really didn’t like you,” which made me even more sure that it must have been the fact that he overheard me speaking a South Slavic language. I realized that I needed to be more cautious about how I approached people and what I said to them. Sometimes I had to forget that I spoke Bosnian or even that I was from the region at all. Or I would pretend to be someone else to create a sense of closeness to the person I was speaking to, masking my real identity.

 
Truth is that here, my identity can sometimes cause issues as well as back home in Bosnia. In the North, this was more prominent. As you know, the Bosnian War saw Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats clashing. The history of the Balkans is its own curse… When we were visiting the NGO in North Mitrovica I was asking around for an ATM to get some money for lunch, and to my surprise, everyone said there was no bank or ATM. Later, I found out that there were three ATMs just across the bridge, a five-minute walk away, on the Albanian side of the city. I asked one young man, about my age,  in Bosnian, where I could find a shop where I could purchase with my card. He just said, “Go down there and look.” There? He didn’t point where “there” was, nor did he look me in the eyes while talking. He went inside a small cafe with a frowned face. I felt unwelcome in that situation, so when I asked the next person, I tried to imitate the Serbian dialect to see how people would react. From then on, if I thought it would be more appropriate to avoid causing trouble for myself or my friends, I would try to speak Serbian to create a more confident situation for the random stranger I probably wouldn’t see again in my life. It worked pretty well, I must say. To Kosovar Albanians I just spoke in English, if the other party could understand me, if not, there were myriad of other people that possibly could. That is how I interviewed most of the people for our project and the way I communicated with people there. As soon as the young man left, I asked the same question in a somewhat Serbian accent a lovely woman passing by. She pointed in the direction. It was just 100 meters away, around the corner on the left. It was the only shop with a card reader on that side of the city. 

In contrast, the Kosovo Albanians I encountered warmly welcomed the fact that I am Bosnian, with the name Demir, which indicates that I am a Bosnian Muslim. It was important to ensure they understood that the language I spoke was Bosnian, not Serbian. I remember crossing the bridge dividing Mitrovica and visiting a restaurant on the Albanian side. I quickly befriended the waiters by introducing myself as “Me Bosnian, Demir.” Keeping the language simple and broken made it easier for them to understand since many who don’t know it well speak it that way. The waiters were old enough to know Serbo-Croatian, so we chatted for a while about various topics, including the best food to eat there. On the way out, two of the waiters who served us shook my hand in farewell, and one of them said, “This one is good, he is one of us.”

That statement made me think. If I am friends with one group, does it mean I can't be friends with another? Will I have to live in this uncertainty of acceptance and rejection, and will it always be like this? Throughout my life, I have tried not to base my friendships on someone's background or name. So, I can proudly say that I have friends who are Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, Kosovars, Albanians, Slovenians, and Macedonians. I feel at home in every one of these states, although, the reality is that in a wrong place and time this feeling can slowly fade away. At that moment when the waiter said those words, I felt appreciated and welcomed, I felt like home.

 

 

 

Sport as a peacebuilding tool

By Oscar Brown

Well, Peace Lab is officially over. I’m writing this in New York City, a day before the start of my summer internship with the NYC Parks Department. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few days since we were in Kosovo, learning about peacebuilding from a wide variety of organizations, swimming in beautiful lakes, bouncing around on the bus, and working on our various group research projects. Speaking of the projects, I had the pleasure of working with Ben and Júlia on a project focused on football’s potential as a peacebuilding tool in Kosovo.

The idea for this topic emerged from our shared love of the sport, as well as the realization that the European Championship (Euros) would be starting during our time in Kosovo. We also thought sports would be an easy way to connect with the Kosovar locals. Initially, we planned on having our final product be a multimedia article, along similar lines as what you might see in publications such as the Athletic. Our idea shifted, however, after we met with the journalistic outlet Kosovo 2.0. There, we learned about photo stories and realized that such a method might make more sense for our project.

During the first few days in Pristina, we began to notice that all over the city, Albanian symbols and flags were mixed in with Kosovar symbols. These were mainly impermanent symbols raised specifically for the Euros. Seeing these symbols was a key reason for our decision to lean into photography for our final product, as we felt it was important not only to explain, but also to show the experience of the Euros in Kosovo. Of course, text would still be very important in explaining and analyzing the meaning of the photographs, as well as to present what people told us during our semi-structured interviews and explain how we interpreted those responses. 

In those conversations, we quickly settled on a central question that emerged from the symbols we were seeing —  "Who would you support in a game between Albania and Kosovo?" The responses were mixed and not always entirely clear. We ultimately identified the common theme that, while the older generations identified much more with the Albanian national team, young people tended to be more conflicted about who they would support, indicating the rise of a distinct Kosovar identity within a broader Albanian identity.

In our research, we were also curious to here how Kosovo Albanians would feel if Kosovo were to play Serbia. Due to the violent and traumatic history between the two nations, asking such a question included some risk. For this reason, we tended to steer clear of this question and focused rather, on examining the changing Kosovar identity. There was one conversation, however, where asking this question seemed appropriate — we had just played basketball with three locals (two teenagers and one slightly older) with whom we had built a solid rapport. 

After asking our central question about Albania and Kosovo, I asked the slightly older one about how he would feel if Kosovo played Serbia. Without skipping a beat, he jumped into a tirade about his hatred for Serbs without once even referencing football. I won’t repeat his exact response here so as not to reproduce the sentiment. Later in the conversation, he told us how he was born in Germany after a number of his relatives were killed during the war and his mother was forced to flee Kosovo. This was exactly why we were worried about asking others this question and revealed how easily those who have experienced traumatic violence in the past revert to violence or at least violent rhetoric themselves. This response also illustrates how football, at least on a national level, is unable to help heal a society suffering from shared trauma. 

Ultimately, what resonated most with me throughout the making of this project is this idea that Kosovo’s present continues to be influenced, if not defined, by its unstable past. Each person’s personal history, combined with collective memory leads to a reproduction of hatred and instability. International football is unable to solve this equation, serving, at best, as a reflection of societal anxieties. As a generation of educated young people without personal memory of the war grow into adulthood, it will be up to them to redefine what it means to be Kosovar and find a way towards sustainable peace with Serbia. Any peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts should thus be focused on the youth. At a local level, football may thus be a useful tool to begin this process.

Go ahead and check out our final article to see more pictures and read a more in-depth analysis of football in Kosovo: https://peace037.wordpress.com/2024/06/28/passion-peace-and-politics-the-euros-in-kosovo/

I am unbelievably grateful to Anne de Graaf for her dedication to this course and for guiding us through this amazing experience. I am also thankful to my fellow students for their kindness and camaraderie — I could not have asked for a better group <3.

The power of youth in peacebuilding

By Salomėja Siparytė
 
Hello again,
 
It's now been a week since we got back from Kosovo, and I'm currently writing this post on my way home  to Lithuania for the summer. It feels strange - I miss Priština a lot. I keep looking at all the pictures and videos, and rereading blog posts. It's odd to think 20 of us spent ten days living together in a hostel far from home, and now I might never see some of these faces again. We are still all (I think) attached to each other and the memory and trying to spend as much time together as possible. I feel like a 12-year-old coming back from summer camp, where everyone was from different cities and there’s no way my mom will let me visit them during the school year.

Boat ride in Leiden the Sunday after our return

On a positive note, we just presented our projects! Ellen, Paola, and I worked on a documentary exploring food as a peacebuilding tool. We started by asking our interviewees simple questions like "What is your favorite food?" and "What ingredient could you not live without?" Gradually, we deepened the questions to explore the connection between identity and food, feelings of belonging, and views on "the other side." It was fascinating to learn about traditional food directly from the people of Kosovo. It definitely feels like a privilege.
 
Privilege is one of the main things I learned about in Kosovo. Everything, from interactions on the street to our food project, reminded me how privileged I am. One of the most significant realizations we had as a group came after interviewing our hostel manager on the last night of our trip. Despite it being the final interview, it was probably the most insightful one. We suddenly felt like fools - coming from our prestigious university, asking people about their favorite foods, and trying to connect that to peacebuilding. The hostel manager offered a whole new perspective, explaining that food is simply something needed to survive and that traditional foods often stem from poverty. It felt unfair that we hadn’t asked these questions to our other interviewees, and that we hadn’t arrived at this perspective ourselves earlier. 

Regarding peacebuilding, this project taught me that making distinctions and assumptions is unhelpful. I also learned that food can be both a cause of conflict and a tool for peacekeeping. I’d love to share the project video with you so you all can draw your own conclusions, but we promised our interviewees it wouldn’t be shown outside the classroom.

Our presentation of the documentary

Moreover, since experiencing Kosovo, speaking to the people there, and attending all the important meetings, I've realized just how confident I am in the power of youth in peacebuilding. Youth need a voice, and they are the hope for the future. Anne would sometimes say in class that our generation is already almost too old regarding peacebuilding, and that children are the real hope. However, from what I saw in Kosovo, our generation is definitely making progress. Let's not give up :). I also must admit, I had my prejudices before the trip. I remember telling my mom that I was scared to even go. However, I was proven so, so, SO wrong. The people in the Kosovo were incredibly welcoming, sweet, and open, always ready to help and recommend a nice place to eat :).
 
I wish I could go back to Kosovo and relive everything again. When people ask about the most difficult part or my least pleasant memory, I can only say it was leaving Kosovo. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Unity through graffiti

By Shree Dubey

Alice and I spent the entire trip taking photos of graffiti in Pristina and Mitrovica. The project started out somewhat unplanned - we agreed that we would go there, see what we could find and think about the rest afterwards. While in Kosovo, we realised that we needed to interview some locals about some of our selected graffiti, and so we spent a lot of time on the 12th of June, the 17th of June and the 18th of June taking photos at Rruga B., Pristina University Rectorate and in Mitrovica, respectfully. 

I believe that our project was perhaps the best way to explore Pristina. We would just walk in whatever direction and come across interesting things on the walls of random buildings. It was very intriguing trying to understand Kosovo through messages like “Women work even on Sundays”, “Astrit Dehari” and “Is life always this hard or is [it] just when you’re a kid?” It pushed me to explore the underlying issues of society even deeper, and meeting with organisations like the Kosovo Women’s Network only added to my learning about the young country’s grievances.

 

Going to Kosovo, I was excited to explore the “hidden meanings” of the country expressed through unspoken words. We came across numerous social and political graffiti, but I found it ironic that although these messages were probably left when no authorities were around to stop people, in no way did I see the messages as “hidden”. They were clear, bold and challenged everyone to see them and deal with the issues head-on. I learned that a lot of messages are another perspective of the locals in Kosovo. The messages in Mitrovica were more ethnically divisive, for example, and that makes sense given the geographical location of the city and its connections to Serbia.

 

Whatever perspective Alice and I stumbled across, I appreciate that the one thing in common they all had was that they were written or drawn with the motive to express socio-political ideas and frustrations. The graffiti in Pristina and Mitrovica unite through this very factor of shared personal discontent with the issues Kosovo has faced in the past and is currently facing. 

One of the biggest things I have learned throughout the trip and our graffiti project is that peacebuilding needs to be sustainable. Youths, minorities and disadvantaged groups need to be a part of the process to rebuild society into a better state than it was before, and this cannot be done without a mutual understanding of personal narratives and how it collectively shapes history. I found it inspiring that, despite past events or maybe also because of it, a lot of people like the staff at Community Building Mitrovica and the locals we interviewed in Pristina were willing to work together to move forward as Kosovars.

Looking back at the trip

By Ousman Mbengue 

As Peace Lab comes to a conclusion, I have a lot to talk about from the last few weeks! The trip to Kosovo was an incredible experience, which gave me a new perspective on the country itself, as well as its people and its history.

I wrote my first blogpost entry on the day that we met Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Elizabeth Gowing: since then, I have focused my efforts on a group project with three other members of the team, Demir, Anna and Chynna. We were interested in looking at how food can be used as a peacebuilding tool to promote unity and reconciliation, since we all felt that food was one of the most candid expressions of people’s traditions. Our efforts culminated in the creation of a digital cookbook, which you can find here!

The cover of our cookbook!

Above and below: An example of a bean stew recipe from the two groups

The booklet features recipes that were given to us by people from Kosovo Albanian and Kosovo Serb communities. When you read it, you should be able to see the similarities between the two cuisines: this highlights how there are bonds between the cultures of the two ethnic groups, despite the many narratives which oppose this concept. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it!

While I was conducting interviews to create this booklet, I realized that people were more open to acknowledge the similarities between the two cuisines than I had anticipated: when asked, many people would say that they knew about a variation of the dish they were describing that was commonly prepared by the other group, and would acknowledge them as variations of the same dish. I realized that this was a sentiment I had felt quite consistently among the people in Kosovo: I often felt that when talking to people, many of them mentioned how the ethnic conflict was not something they personally wanted to continue, even though they understood the reasons for the tensions. I found that people seemed less preoccupied with the ethnic divisions than with living a happy life, and they cared about the tensions only because they affected their ability to do so. This was a powerful learning, because it helped me understand what made people receptive to the narratives that were pushed onto them.

A picture of a local dish: grilled trout with vegetables

I also learned that asking people about food often organically led to them opening up to deeper, more meaningful conversations: in a way, food helped us not only as a peacebuilding tool, but also as an ice-breaking tool to show people our genuine interest in their identity and traditions. For example, a casual question on the preparation of a dish to a server in Mitrovica led to a long conversation about Turkish influence on the Kosovar cuisine, which developed further into his beliefs regarding the identity of Kosovo as a state. I learned that often, the best way to understand people’s true, unfiltered perspective about a topic was actually not to mention it at all: through organic conversation, people would reveal which topics they were actually passionate and eager to talk about. This realization will help me approach difficult conversations with more ease in the future, and I will keep it in mind when trying to approach people whom I want to learn more about.

Another local dish I tried there: steak with vegetables and potatoes

Before I conclude, I want to thank my friends Drit and Olti again for the help they gave us in creating the cookbook: Olti’s knowledge of recipes and food was particularly important for the development of our manual. Now that I am back in Amsterdam, I am glad to be able to say that I have friends in Kosovo that I plan to see again. This Peace Lab left me with new important realizations on the way I should approach people, and a new perspective on the feelings of the people of Kosovo; and, most importantly, new friendships which I will continue to cultivate, both at AUC and in Pristina. It was a beautiful experience and I am grateful to have been able to be part of it. 

By supporting each other

By Anna Paoli

“I think this is how things will change, how society will change. By supporting each other”. On a warm June day, in the heart of Pristina, Gresa was explaining to us that women empowerment and solidarity is the key to trigger social change. My group and I had the chance to meet these two incredible women, Adelina and Gresa, owners of Tartine, the first women-owned restaurant in Kosovo, as part of our project. 

Katharine, Stefanía, Mathilde and I interviewed some of the lovely people of Kosovo throughout the ten days of our stay on the topic of female empowerment in Kosovo. We ultimately created a magazine which includes all the insights, experiences and advice they have given us. Adelina and Gresa’s story, journey, accomplishments and motivations were equally inspiring and truly taught us a lot. I also think that their story somewhat reflects the journey Kosovo has made since the end of the conflict in 1999. As our trip progressed and our meetings with local NGOs and governmental agents took place, I came to realise that many grassroots organisations and movements have a direct impact on decisions that are taken at the governmental level in Kosovo.

Conducting these interviews not only made me aware of the importance of female empowerment in peacebuilding, but our project also made me realise the significance of everyday idols. Mothers, their constant dedication, the sacrifices they make and the responsibilities they take on, was the answer that came up the most when people were asked who they looked up to. Although these answers did take us by surprise at first, we came to realise the importance of these commonplace idols in our lives too. This is why we decided to dedicate a whole part of our magazine to mothers, in an attempt to bring these lessons to life. 

From the warm and lively streets of Pristina to the late-night card games in the kitchen of our hostel; everything we got to experience made this trip unforgettable. Mitrovica, Prizren and Pristina were all beautiful in their own way: the astonishing view from the top of the hill in Prizren, the peace bridge of Mitrovica, our hostel street which we walked up and down more times than I can remember to get drinkable water from the 24h shop. The warm weather of Pristina, the kindness of the people met, the city’s hidden markets, Euro football games being shown everywhere, the night life, 1-euro coffees, the saxophone player standing on the pavement of the main street, even the sunscreen I had to frantically apply every two hours - these are all things I like to believe that I’ll never forget. Faleminderit to all the people who contributed to making this trip such an amazing experience!