Humans of Kosovo

By Ana Carolina Pinto

Inspired by ‘Humans of New York’ created by Brandon Stanton, our project is called ‘Humans of Kosovo’. The content of the project was shared through an Instagram page (Instagram: humansofkosovo) in which photos of individuals accompanied by a quote encompassing their story was published. Today, the page is private for security reasons, however your follow request can always be accepted. 

The intention of this project was to capture the diversity of the human experience in Kosovo, including the experiences of locals, internationals, politicians, and international organization workers in Kosovo and in post-conflict daily living. Some focus was put upon the success and failure of peacebuilding efforts and Kosovar identity. Initially we sought to interview at least 30 people during our time in Kosovo and ended up with 29 posts encompassing around 35-40 people. Furthermore, we felt interested in pursuing this project as citizens of western Europe are fairly misinformed about Kosovo. Their image or view of Kosovo is often strongly influenced by their knowledge of war and peacebuilding efforts in the Western Balkans, resulting in a flawed view of Kosovo, one of being a “third world country” on the brink of poverty and war. Through the execution of this project, we wanted to break this misconception and illustrate the multiplicity and variety of stories and experiences in Kosovo.

Through this project and our time in Kosovo I learnt an immense amount. Firstly, our project taught me how to approach strangers and speak to them with kindness and respect. Due to the nature of our project, we were highly encouraged to speak to strangers yet, at times I felt as our actions could come off as quite intrusive. However, over time we learnt how to approach individuals in a kind manner and with the upmost respect. During these interviews, I also learned to respect and not force my own opinion on certain subjects to strangers who share a different opinion then my own. That is not to say you shouldn’t challenge an individual’s opinion but, you should do it with respect and without the expectation of changing their view. Secondly, I learned to listen. As a person who is rather talkative sometimes I can forget to listen. In Kosovo, I realized that you can learn a lot more when you listen rather than talk. Listening also made me aware that often how someone says something can provide a lot more context about their statement than the statement itself thus, why listening is so crucial in interviews and in life.

Now, there is so much more which I learned about Kosovo and myself in Kosovo and throughout Peace Lab, however I’d like to take this last paragraph to thank Anne and Erik de Graaf, Enver, Bardha, Nini, and Katerina for making our Kosovo experience amazing. Without you we would all be chickens with our heads cut off. Peace Lab has allowed me to better contextualize the last three years of my studies and I wouldn’t change this experience for anything else. Thank you very much!