Leaving it all behind

By Lou van Roozendaal

The title, as my fellow third-year Peace Lab students will understand, is twofold, as we are leaving AUC for good, just as we did Pristina (at least for now). Just a week ago we arrived back in Amsterdam. I think we all needed some time after having lived through those intense nine days, both in terms of impressions, but also in terms of social exhaustion. The Sunday on the boat in Amsterdam, a few days after arriving back home, gave us a little time to reflect, however. During the week that followed my mind was preoccupied with finishing the project. 

For our project Ruth and I made a magazine focusing on the Women of Kosovo. The aim of the magazine was to reach a big audience and thus make it both understandable, fun, interesting, informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking. We were trying for a middle ground between "Vogue" and the "New Yorker". Our main focus was solely on women because we wanted to highlight their voices. All the articles focused on something do with Kosovo’s history, present situation, and societal structure. The magazine consists of a variety of articles ranging from opinion pieces to an event page, or a book recommendation. We decided to not pay special attention to any ethnic differences between the women in Kosovo but rather to unify them under one common theme, womanhood.

This meant that when we were in Kosovo, we had to pay extra close attention at meetings with e.g. the Women’s Network and the Gender Studies Center. Throughout the meetings, we often had the chance to slip in a question about the status of women’s rights or just about their own internal gender quota. Not surprisingly, the gender quota was still far from equal and although women’s rights were of course seen as important, there was still too little done about actually delivering them. 

Throughout those nine days in Kosovo we were tired, impressed, shocked, entertained, amazed, inspired, confused, sad, and joyful. Having studied some post-conflict situations from books and articles we now finally had the opportunity to actually be in one. The nature of post-conflict situations does truly only become salient after having spent time, although limited, in an environment that still feels the results of war. 

Having said this, Kosovo holds also a lot of promise for a bright future. Pristina, with hidden coffee places all around, and so many young students roaming its streets, could soon be the place to be. Hopefully, this also means that Kosovars soon can see the ‘other places to be' around Europe, as the lack of visa liberalization is something that shocked us. The impressions left behind of Kosovo is something to reflect on in good time when the dust has settled a bit. 

On the last Thursday of June we finally presented our finished product, thus being able to share what we had been doing all this time with the rest of our Peace Lab group. Although Friday still held some presentations, the end already felt near. When the clock then finally hit 5.30 pm on Friday it was over, both AUC and Peace Lab.