Giving change a human face

By Szymon Bajerski

At first, I thought I would write my final blog post about political change. When I entered my first Peace Lab class at the beginning of June I expected to be flooded with information about institutions: UNMIK, EULEX, the government. As a law student I always tend to focus my attention on the official communication, binding instruments and large-scale governance. If the government fails — I was thinking — maybe NGOs could provide answers to the questions regarding Kosovo’s status. Organise everything in Excel, exercise political pressure and then you can succeed.
 
What has come afterwards can only be described as a series of disappointments. Firstly, the interview with New Social Initiative, who expressed their concerns with a stagnant, or at times even worsening political landscape. It was difficult to gather my thoughts. “Describing Kosovo as a pre-conflict society — peculiar.” Then came the inability to contact EULEX, reluctance of UNMIK officials to answer questions, a recurring theme of exclusion, even around issues disconnected from ethnical tensions. I felt frustrated, tired, even disillusioned. Until I realised I was looking in the wrong direction.
 
In my own considerations of change I failed to give it a human face. Rather than look at statistics on the conflict, one can try to feel what it is like to live through it. Numbers don’t speak; People do. Together with my friends Ella and Elena we wanted to understand what it is like to visit Kosovo, to be Kosovar. Therefore, for our final project we decided to explore how people connect and the spaces they require to do so. Interviewing former Peace Lab Kosovo students, as well as Kosovar locals, we created a guide to where, how and with whom individuals interact.
 
One might think that such a project is predestined to fail. Perhaps it would run a risk of becoming a “he said, she said” publication, struggle to achieve academic depth or even collapse, with few or no interviewees. At first, we did indeed struggle, especially because we were not in Kosovo in person. We even considered withdrawing. Then, we finally secured our first interviewee and started listening.
 
Our guests told us simple stories: of their everyday lives, trips, meals. As I listened, my eyes would open wider and wider. Suddenly I could smell the hot air in Pristina, feel the burning sun on my skin. I could hear the crowds making their way through Mother Theresa Boulevard, taste the wine. I was no longer in Amsterdam, but rather caught in what I can only describe as the magic of listening. For once I could feel that Kosovo comes to me, as a place where people fall in love and get heartbroken, are born and pass away; they laugh and cry. Kosovars are not political actors, they are humans. Many of our interviewees shared that, politics aside, everyday conversations shape how communities interact. Those everyday dialogues are really when change occurs, not in Brussels, or in shiny parliamentary halls.
 
It is difficult to recognise the importance of conversations. Sometimes you really need to “shut up and listen”. Only if you recognise a human in the other, can you find out what stories they carry. Those stories hold the power to change you. With this shift, peacebuilding can start.