An invisible country and its youth

By Anicca Marie Juraschka Sullivan

 

“Kosovo…? Where’s that…?” - the staff member at Amsterdam Schipol Airport looked at my boarding pass, visibly puzzled. I can’t blame her. During my first week of Peace Lab, my friends would often ask me whether Kosovo is even a country. To be honest, prior to taking this course, I also wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint Kosovo on the map. Despite the fact that the country lies at the heart of Europe, it remains invisible and unheard of for many.

 

Now, I am sitting on my bed back in Amsterdam and the normal city life has engulfed me and has made me feel like our trip to Kosovo was just a surreal dream. Even if the whole experience seems to be slightly slipping away with each day back in Amsterdam, Kosovo and its people will never be invisible to me again, and I want to make sure they become visible to you too.

 

You probably all know Maya Angelou’s famous words: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Well, I can tell you that I will never be able to forget how deeply inspired Kosovo’s youth made me feel. Already in our very first days, Annemijn and I started realizing that there was something special about Kosovo’s young generation. 

 

We soon decided to discard our initial idea for the final project, and to focus instead on exploring why we were so fascinated by these encounters with Kosovo’s youth. Many of our afternoons were spent at the University of Pristina, listening to what students had to say, and asking them what we could learn from them. I remember sitting on a library couch, heavy rain pattering against the glass ceiling of the building. A young first-year was looking us in the eye, telling us, "When we want something, I think we're gonna get it - no matter what. We sacrifice everything to reach something." During this whole conversation, I had goosebumps. I was in awe of how despite facing so many difficulties, restrictions, and disappointments, young people in this country were doing everything in their power to make Kosovo a better place. 

 

Every one of them seemed so driven and determined to create change, there was something so vibrant about them, something resilient and fierce. I remember thinking that young Kosovars have this spark inside that seems to have slowly faded away in the comfortableness of living in our western European countries. I feel like this comfortableness sometimes makes us give up on things when they become too difficult, whereas Kosovo’s youth seems to become more creative, ambitious, and determined with each new arising challenge. 

 

Listening to these young people’s thoughts, opinions, and stories, we knew we had to find a way to share this inspiration with other students back at AUC. In order to do so, Annemijn and I decided that our final project would be dedicated to creating more opportunities for exchange and collaboration between students from Kosovo and Amsterdam, so that they could share their sparkle with us and let us learn from them. If I’ve learned one thing during this trip, it’s that Kosovo’s youth should be seen. Should be listened to. Should be visible to the world, despite living in an invisible country.