Gezim--one of the two people in charge of the American Corner in Tetovo--always calls the kids 'chukaluks' and somehow the name has kind of stuck. and yesterday was our "holiday show." In the days/week preceding the show, honestly, I was feeling just a bit anxious--there were so many unknowns. so many things that hadn't come together just yet. and so many things we couldn't predict (like who was actually going to show up on Saturday)--but the kids never ceased to amaze me.
they organized extra practices, stayed at least for two hours each class (which are usually an hour long), wanted to learn more songs ("but teacher," they'd say, "what about Rudolph the red-nosed..." and then they'd pause, looking at the word reindeer, puzzling.) and when I told them to go home and practice Deck the Halls--they did! they figured out the difference between the fa-la-la-las. I think I didn't expect them to be so dedicated, so invested in the show. but they kept surprising me.
Malvina--my fellow fulbrighter in Tetovo (she's here doing research)--and I decided just about a month ago that we wanted to do something for the holidays--and then dove in. I turned "learn English through games" into "chukaluk choir practice," and Malvina organized an adaptation of "how the grinch stole christmas." one girl and her cousin choreographed a dance, we made decorations. practiced standing as a choir. practiced our cutoffs. counting off the songs. practiced being sleeping citizens of Whoville (trying not to snore too loudly, or wake the others with our giggles). practiced holding up our signs for the 12 days of christmas. and then, like any good holiday show, it ended with a group boogie while Rina danced.
adorable. just adorable.
but more than being adorable, I was really proud of the kids. of standing up there in front of a bunch of mothers in headscarves and conducting a program entirely in English--and all the kids were right there, following right along. reading the lyrics, singing, reading their scripts with emotion and feeling.
Last week--in the heat of our rehearsal, it became evident that one of the boys was crying, or had been.
and this was my first real "oh my god what do I do" moment as a teacher. because with 30 kids--I didn't want to turn their attention just to this one kid (I had a feeling that probably wasn't ideal, especially as guys don't really cry here, or at least I get the sense they don't), and couldn't totally abandon the 30 other kids to spend the time with the one kid. After realizing that the issue was bullying--I pulled the two kids aside (bullier and bullied)--basically saying that this wasn't acceptable etc.
and then one of the other kids took over. I asked the kid who had been bullied if he wanted to come stand up towards the front, even though he's one of the taller kids--and then Kadir (who's one of the two kids who usually acts as my translator, and keeps everyone on task. seriously) took it upon himself to make sure this kid was doing ok--they'd disappear into the next room for just a minute, and I could just see that the kid who had been bullied really appreciated having someone support him/defend him/hear him. Kadir acted as his advocate, talking to Me, Gezim and Malvina about what had happened. it was really beautiful for me to see someone who I think of as a "kid" taking that kind of responsibility--of being so empathetic, so caring.
and then a second kid started to cry because he was worried that the kid who had been bullied would be upset with him for not standing up for him.
and on the one hand, I was mortified to have two crying boys in my class. all in one day!
and on the other hand, I was, and am, so inspired by them--because I saw them taking care of each other, and expressing this caring. so, if I didn't love them before, I certainly love the kids now.
we're already dreaming up a spring show.
I can't wait!
and for all you who missed it: how the grinch stole christmas, Chukaluk style and my debut as a conductor!
It also smelled like spring today--dirt-y and muddy, with bits of green poking out from behind the snow (some beautiful days did a number on the snow). although I can't wait for spring--I can't help but think "already? no. please. not quite yet." because I know after spring comes summer. and I want to savor each and every one of these Tetovo days/Tetovo dena/dite Tetova.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
in gratitude/Neruda speaks!
I love the holidays (in part) because they're usually such an overload of people-time (family, friends, the hustle and bustle of doing all your christmas shopping on christmas eve), I'm always careful to find time for myself--to think, watch, listen, reflect. and I think being here, in Tetovo, for the holidays made me even more sensitive to myself, if that makes sense. But these past two days, I had both the opportunity and time/space to be patient with myself--take time to read, write, reflect. and I know this is totally cliche--but so much of my yuletide reflections ties back to gratitude. for having another holiday with my grandmother--even just through skype, for connection, community, family, good food. for coming home with homemade ajvar to homemade raw-milk yogurt. for being here. for having gotten here (and perhaps more importantly, how we got here).
Gratitude isn't really a feeling I've figured out how to write about and not feel like I'm just preparing for my future career as a Halmark card composer. which, honestly, I don't think I'd enjoy all that much.
so rather than writing more, I'm giving the floor to Neruda
Your Feet
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts
the double purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
--Pablo Neruda (1959)
Here's to our feet
Gratitude isn't really a feeling I've figured out how to write about and not feel like I'm just preparing for my future career as a Halmark card composer. which, honestly, I don't think I'd enjoy all that much.
so rather than writing more, I'm giving the floor to Neruda
Your Feet
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts
the double purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
--Pablo Neruda (1959)
Here's to our feet
Monday, December 17, 2012
being present/presente*
It's been quite the week--news of Nick's death [Grinnell class of 2013] really shocked me, and left me speechless. and really wanting just to be able to sit at one of the tables in Saints Rest and be with Grinnellians. talk. listen. watch each other. be with each other. hug. cry if we need to. be present with each other.
it's the social part of mourning that I both need, and is oh so place/community specific.
and not quite possible via skype (although it was wonderful talk talk with you Heather!)
and then friday, getting word about the school shooting in CT.
it hits me on the emotional level--of being a human being, mourning the senseless death of other humans; of being a teacher, being the child of teachers. as someone who profoundly believes in education. School, for me, has always been a sanctuary (not that I have a lot to escape from) but schools are sacred spaces for me, the school in West West was literally the heart of the community, and classmates, colleagues, teachers, friends, parents--these are the people who define my life. and events like this both remind me how lucky I am to have school as such a positive place in my life. and how easily violated that sacredness is.
One of the things that I kept coming back to in my research in Bosnia was schools being spaces of violence, literally. Several of my interviewees talked about being detained in schools, and other research/narratives from the war talk about schools as actual sites of violence. and I can't wonder if the symbolic desecration of schools was intentional.
[you could also argue that they are currently sites of violence --structural, gender, and complicit in state-sactioned violence (they're certainly places where power dynamics are played out--which, some peace educators would also term violence).]
it's something I still don't quite know how to wrap my head around. but in these moments--something about our educational system (let alone society) feels broken--be it issues of gun control, violence (individual, structural, state-sanctioned), gender/gender norms, conversations about mental illness (not to add to the stigmas already surrounding mental illness--and not to imply that people with mental illness are dangerous (in fact quite the contrary), but I feel like it's a conversation we need to start having more/more frequently about how our society supports all its members). and then of the media coverage of such events.
One of the issues this brings up is how do we break cycles of violence/norms around violence--and what is my responsibility as an educator to tackle these issues with my students. much of the response that I've heard has been to pressure politicians to change gun control laws. yes. ok. great! let's do it. but I also feel that there's a deeper issue at stake--and one which I'm not quite sure my society is really ready to address--and that's violence in general. Although so much of my gut-reaction to these shootings is "'that' can't be normal"(although as Vahido pointed out--"my story is your story because we are both human. we all have the capacity to be as kind as angels or worse than devils.")--there's so much "legitimate" violence in American society-whether you look at american pop culture or political culture. and a lot of places in between. Gun control is one place to begin combating violence in American society, but it's going to take something deeper and more radical than that to really uproot the many ways in which violence has permeated American society.
and oh man is that going to be more difficult than the debate over the second amendment.
I found out about the shooting over breakfast of the first morning of a non-violent training run by the NGO Loja (someday I'll have to dedicate some serious blog-time to writing about them.) the training was difficult for a number of reasons--and I think, for me, having these two events "set the tone," as it were, only made it harder.
I arrived for the final weekend (phase III) of a three-part training for university students, many of whom are studying to be teachers. Phases I and II consist of a series of workshops around different identity/dialogue/mediation skills, and part three is forming working-groups and designing projects to be implemented in local primary schools--which should be right up my alley.
I think part of my difficulty stemmed from some unclear communication as to what the training was--so it was only a day into the training that I understood what we were about to do. One of the big pieces of culture shock that I remember talking about before going abroad was the role of different/differing/unmet expectations--and how startling (and emotion provoking) that can be. and yes. if I didn't believe it then, I certainly believe it now.
another huge complication was the issue of language--the training was conducted in Albanian/Macedonian (it was a mixed group, with mixed trainers), and I felt really uncomfortable asking for translation in English--in part because I could watch the two main translators getting more and more tired as each day progressed because as translator/trainer--they never had a minute's rest, in part because of my own complex of not wanting to bother or impose on other people, in part because I didn't want another member of the group to remove themselves from the group/discussion to be my translator, in part because I didn't really see my role as a "participant" but more as an observer--and there's a lot to observe without following the dialogue. and thus there were some unaligned expectations. and for some tasks, language really wasn't a problem--there was certainly a language barrier, but not (at least for me) a communication gap-- or at least not significant enough to pose a real problem. but discussing what informal education is, and designing a project are really hard things to do without shared language. let alone shared cultural knowledge (what does the Macedonian school system look like? what sounds crazy? what sounds reasonable? what is "realistic" mean in this context?). and then I also realized that my pedagogical training is different than that of my colleagues in the training--and that also became a source of tension for me because I felt like, on a philosophical level, we were just in different places around issues of power and control in the classroom. and then throw a language barrier on top of that.
and then this feeling of being responsible for what the outcome is--and how to resolve that tension within myself.
in short, I think identity (and the power/ability to define yourself) is at the crux of the matter (at least from my perspective). and I want to preface this by saying that I also understand how much more sensitive identity is (and differently organized--if that's the right term) here because I think that there's a lot of fear around identity being threatened, and I'm not quite attuned to what or how identity will be sensitive, in part because the ways in which I think about my own identity follow a different logic. For example, one of the activities we did was to pick the three most important items on a list (for example, having the right to choose, time for myself, keeping traditions, being on time...) and the overwhelming majority of the participants chose family relations as being one of their three top priorities. In general, I think individualism is valued (and expected) a lot more in the US, and so I don't quite fully comprehend or understand the importance of family here as a significant component and source of identity.
Additionally, during one of the breaks, when we were walking around Struga (which, like many former-Yugoslav cities (and I don't actually know if this is a result of Yugoslav city planning or something older) has a large pedestrian street (similar to Belgrade, Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Prilep, Bitola, Ohrid, Skopje...), I asked one of my fellow participants how they thought Tetovo would be different if it had such a public space, because for me, I experience Tetovo as a city with a lot of people, and not a lot of places for them to go. There--in my eyes--isn't a lot of public space set aside for pedestrians (most of it we have to share with cars (or in this time of year, snowpiles)). and she (the group was overwhelmingly female) responded, "well, Tetovo is a divided city. if we had such a pedestrian walk, there's be more inter-ethnic violence. who would want to walk down that street?" and this fear, I think, is part of the logic behind, part of the rational of living in a divided society--divided schools, divided public spaces (that's a Macedonian bar, that an Albanian), and as perceiving your context as so unique, so tense, so whatever, that whatever works someplace else couldn't work there. for example, Tetovo doesn't really have a dancing scene, a dancing culture. There aren't many places where you can go out and dance. it's in part, (I think), because Tetovo is a bit more conservative than other places, I think that conservatism is coupled with fear of what could happen if people got together and danced (and yes. it is important to acknowledge that violence does happen here. it is a legitimate concern--but I don't believe it's a healthy status quo to maintain. and, at least to me, the danger of dancing is a far cry from the problems posed by corruption, the mafia...). and yet, when we go out in Struga everyone's up dancing, and having fun. You could watch the Albanian and Macedonian students becoming more integrated through dancing together--in part because you literally couldn't talk (or at least you couldn't be heard) so we had to resort to body language, signing, smiling, the occasional wink. and yeah--the band was clearly Albanian (although their range covered Oh Suzannah, to We will we will rock you, to another song about balkava, to Xhamadani (Xh makes a hard j/g sound) vija vija (proud to be an Albanian)) and in the middle of a long Albanian set, you could see some of the Macedonian students feeling a little uncomfortable. but then the music would change and the dancing would begin anew. I know that participants in a non-violent conflict transformation training are probably not the members of society I need to worry about picking fights. but. how are we going to actually transform the conflict if we're afraid of even dancing together?
People talk about the Čaršija in Skopje as being one of the last multi-ethnic spaces in Skopje and (not to sound like a broken record, I feel like this is all I write about these days) god, I think that's important for this society. because there's a lot of territory marking going on.
but I know that I also need to be vigilantly mindful that violence--especially inter-ethnic violence, or violence between ethnic groups spurred by any number of issues--is a reality. here and all over the place. including the United States. and it's going to be really difficult to transform the conflict here until there's a meaningful way to express/acknowledge/assuage this fear.
I was really happy that the issue my group chose to tackle was bringing students together from different schools (MK/AL) because we all agreed that this kind of division lead to stereotyping, fear etc. and I think my whole bend as an educator is trying to facilitate meaningful experiences for students (and again, let me introduce Brene Brown, she's got a great article on I-thou-it and cell phones)--and part of that process is letting students define what is meaningful for them. As one of my colleagues said today in a staff meeting for the Language Center--"well, by giving students those choices, we lose some of our autonomy as teachers." Yep--but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing (but, I can also see how loosing (or if we want to put more of a positive spin on it--transferring) that authority feels threatening to teachers). and I keep thinking about what it takes to "know" someone else--and how does education/educators help facilitate that process. of course it has to start somewhere--be it conversations about how we celebrate holidays, or how we cook or dinner. but I guess, my fear is that these getting to know about you activities also help shape and define who "we" are, who "you" are--and makes a lot of assumptions about similarities and differences between students, and already lays out the "identity vocabulary" available in this context, the lens through which we should see ourselves and "others."
how do we give students the power and opportunity to do this themselves--to pick who they are? what they are? and what do we have to do as educators to be ready to hear students?
Obviously, this also raises the question (for me) of what do people here actually learn in school, and, perhaps more to the point, what do they learn about each other in school? but I got physically uncomfortable choosing the topic of "traditional identity" as the mechanism for "getting to know the other." in part because, for me, I'm much more interested in the skills--not the knowledge--that gets transferred (between trainers and students, students and students, students and trainers). and in part because I worry about conflating identities--between the individual and the collective, between religious and ethnic. I feel like tackling the issue of traditional identity will take a lot of skill as trainers/leaders, and honestly, I'm not sure I'm able/trained/ready to facilitate that kind of interaction.
in the face of all of this discomfort--on top of processing these emotional events, on top of linguistic isolation (being "lost in translation" literally, figuratively) on top of being dead tired--I felt myself pulling back, retreating.
and I hate that feeling in myself. I think for me it really gets back to this idea of being present with each other--and my own frustration when I feel that I'm not being adequately present/present enough with those around me, as well as challenging myself to constantly work on being more here.
* at the School of the America's Watch protest I went to last fall, the event culminated in all of us carrying white crosses with names of the dead--and someone(s) reading the names of the deceased. after each name we chanted "presente," and walked in a processional, laying the crosses at the gate of the school. most of us were crying by the end of it.
it's the social part of mourning that I both need, and is oh so place/community specific.
and not quite possible via skype (although it was wonderful talk talk with you Heather!)
and then friday, getting word about the school shooting in CT.
it hits me on the emotional level--of being a human being, mourning the senseless death of other humans; of being a teacher, being the child of teachers. as someone who profoundly believes in education. School, for me, has always been a sanctuary (not that I have a lot to escape from) but schools are sacred spaces for me, the school in West West was literally the heart of the community, and classmates, colleagues, teachers, friends, parents--these are the people who define my life. and events like this both remind me how lucky I am to have school as such a positive place in my life. and how easily violated that sacredness is.
One of the things that I kept coming back to in my research in Bosnia was schools being spaces of violence, literally. Several of my interviewees talked about being detained in schools, and other research/narratives from the war talk about schools as actual sites of violence. and I can't wonder if the symbolic desecration of schools was intentional.
[you could also argue that they are currently sites of violence --structural, gender, and complicit in state-sactioned violence (they're certainly places where power dynamics are played out--which, some peace educators would also term violence).]
it's something I still don't quite know how to wrap my head around. but in these moments--something about our educational system (let alone society) feels broken--be it issues of gun control, violence (individual, structural, state-sanctioned), gender/gender norms, conversations about mental illness (not to add to the stigmas already surrounding mental illness--and not to imply that people with mental illness are dangerous (in fact quite the contrary), but I feel like it's a conversation we need to start having more/more frequently about how our society supports all its members). and then of the media coverage of such events.
One of the issues this brings up is how do we break cycles of violence/norms around violence--and what is my responsibility as an educator to tackle these issues with my students. much of the response that I've heard has been to pressure politicians to change gun control laws. yes. ok. great! let's do it. but I also feel that there's a deeper issue at stake--and one which I'm not quite sure my society is really ready to address--and that's violence in general. Although so much of my gut-reaction to these shootings is "'that' can't be normal"(although as Vahido pointed out--"my story is your story because we are both human. we all have the capacity to be as kind as angels or worse than devils.")--there's so much "legitimate" violence in American society-whether you look at american pop culture or political culture. and a lot of places in between. Gun control is one place to begin combating violence in American society, but it's going to take something deeper and more radical than that to really uproot the many ways in which violence has permeated American society.
and oh man is that going to be more difficult than the debate over the second amendment.
I found out about the shooting over breakfast of the first morning of a non-violent training run by the NGO Loja (someday I'll have to dedicate some serious blog-time to writing about them.) the training was difficult for a number of reasons--and I think, for me, having these two events "set the tone," as it were, only made it harder.
I arrived for the final weekend (phase III) of a three-part training for university students, many of whom are studying to be teachers. Phases I and II consist of a series of workshops around different identity/dialogue/mediation skills, and part three is forming working-groups and designing projects to be implemented in local primary schools--which should be right up my alley.
I think part of my difficulty stemmed from some unclear communication as to what the training was--so it was only a day into the training that I understood what we were about to do. One of the big pieces of culture shock that I remember talking about before going abroad was the role of different/differing/unmet expectations--and how startling (and emotion provoking) that can be. and yes. if I didn't believe it then, I certainly believe it now.
another huge complication was the issue of language--the training was conducted in Albanian/Macedonian (it was a mixed group, with mixed trainers), and I felt really uncomfortable asking for translation in English--in part because I could watch the two main translators getting more and more tired as each day progressed because as translator/trainer--they never had a minute's rest, in part because of my own complex of not wanting to bother or impose on other people, in part because I didn't want another member of the group to remove themselves from the group/discussion to be my translator, in part because I didn't really see my role as a "participant" but more as an observer--and there's a lot to observe without following the dialogue. and thus there were some unaligned expectations. and for some tasks, language really wasn't a problem--there was certainly a language barrier, but not (at least for me) a communication gap-- or at least not significant enough to pose a real problem. but discussing what informal education is, and designing a project are really hard things to do without shared language. let alone shared cultural knowledge (what does the Macedonian school system look like? what sounds crazy? what sounds reasonable? what is "realistic" mean in this context?). and then I also realized that my pedagogical training is different than that of my colleagues in the training--and that also became a source of tension for me because I felt like, on a philosophical level, we were just in different places around issues of power and control in the classroom. and then throw a language barrier on top of that.
and then this feeling of being responsible for what the outcome is--and how to resolve that tension within myself.
in short, I think identity (and the power/ability to define yourself) is at the crux of the matter (at least from my perspective). and I want to preface this by saying that I also understand how much more sensitive identity is (and differently organized--if that's the right term) here because I think that there's a lot of fear around identity being threatened, and I'm not quite attuned to what or how identity will be sensitive, in part because the ways in which I think about my own identity follow a different logic. For example, one of the activities we did was to pick the three most important items on a list (for example, having the right to choose, time for myself, keeping traditions, being on time...) and the overwhelming majority of the participants chose family relations as being one of their three top priorities. In general, I think individualism is valued (and expected) a lot more in the US, and so I don't quite fully comprehend or understand the importance of family here as a significant component and source of identity.
Additionally, during one of the breaks, when we were walking around Struga (which, like many former-Yugoslav cities (and I don't actually know if this is a result of Yugoslav city planning or something older) has a large pedestrian street (similar to Belgrade, Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Prilep, Bitola, Ohrid, Skopje...), I asked one of my fellow participants how they thought Tetovo would be different if it had such a public space, because for me, I experience Tetovo as a city with a lot of people, and not a lot of places for them to go. There--in my eyes--isn't a lot of public space set aside for pedestrians (most of it we have to share with cars (or in this time of year, snowpiles)). and she (the group was overwhelmingly female) responded, "well, Tetovo is a divided city. if we had such a pedestrian walk, there's be more inter-ethnic violence. who would want to walk down that street?" and this fear, I think, is part of the logic behind, part of the rational of living in a divided society--divided schools, divided public spaces (that's a Macedonian bar, that an Albanian), and as perceiving your context as so unique, so tense, so whatever, that whatever works someplace else couldn't work there. for example, Tetovo doesn't really have a dancing scene, a dancing culture. There aren't many places where you can go out and dance. it's in part, (I think), because Tetovo is a bit more conservative than other places, I think that conservatism is coupled with fear of what could happen if people got together and danced (and yes. it is important to acknowledge that violence does happen here. it is a legitimate concern--but I don't believe it's a healthy status quo to maintain. and, at least to me, the danger of dancing is a far cry from the problems posed by corruption, the mafia...). and yet, when we go out in Struga everyone's up dancing, and having fun. You could watch the Albanian and Macedonian students becoming more integrated through dancing together--in part because you literally couldn't talk (or at least you couldn't be heard) so we had to resort to body language, signing, smiling, the occasional wink. and yeah--the band was clearly Albanian (although their range covered Oh Suzannah, to We will we will rock you, to another song about balkava, to Xhamadani (Xh makes a hard j/g sound) vija vija (proud to be an Albanian)) and in the middle of a long Albanian set, you could see some of the Macedonian students feeling a little uncomfortable. but then the music would change and the dancing would begin anew. I know that participants in a non-violent conflict transformation training are probably not the members of society I need to worry about picking fights. but. how are we going to actually transform the conflict if we're afraid of even dancing together?
People talk about the Čaršija in Skopje as being one of the last multi-ethnic spaces in Skopje and (not to sound like a broken record, I feel like this is all I write about these days) god, I think that's important for this society. because there's a lot of territory marking going on.
but I know that I also need to be vigilantly mindful that violence--especially inter-ethnic violence, or violence between ethnic groups spurred by any number of issues--is a reality. here and all over the place. including the United States. and it's going to be really difficult to transform the conflict here until there's a meaningful way to express/acknowledge/assuage this fear.
I was really happy that the issue my group chose to tackle was bringing students together from different schools (MK/AL) because we all agreed that this kind of division lead to stereotyping, fear etc. and I think my whole bend as an educator is trying to facilitate meaningful experiences for students (and again, let me introduce Brene Brown, she's got a great article on I-thou-it and cell phones)--and part of that process is letting students define what is meaningful for them. As one of my colleagues said today in a staff meeting for the Language Center--"well, by giving students those choices, we lose some of our autonomy as teachers." Yep--but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing (but, I can also see how loosing (or if we want to put more of a positive spin on it--transferring) that authority feels threatening to teachers). and I keep thinking about what it takes to "know" someone else--and how does education/educators help facilitate that process. of course it has to start somewhere--be it conversations about how we celebrate holidays, or how we cook or dinner. but I guess, my fear is that these getting to know about you activities also help shape and define who "we" are, who "you" are--and makes a lot of assumptions about similarities and differences between students, and already lays out the "identity vocabulary" available in this context, the lens through which we should see ourselves and "others."
how do we give students the power and opportunity to do this themselves--to pick who they are? what they are? and what do we have to do as educators to be ready to hear students?
Obviously, this also raises the question (for me) of what do people here actually learn in school, and, perhaps more to the point, what do they learn about each other in school? but I got physically uncomfortable choosing the topic of "traditional identity" as the mechanism for "getting to know the other." in part because, for me, I'm much more interested in the skills--not the knowledge--that gets transferred (between trainers and students, students and students, students and trainers). and in part because I worry about conflating identities--between the individual and the collective, between religious and ethnic. I feel like tackling the issue of traditional identity will take a lot of skill as trainers/leaders, and honestly, I'm not sure I'm able/trained/ready to facilitate that kind of interaction.
in the face of all of this discomfort--on top of processing these emotional events, on top of linguistic isolation (being "lost in translation" literally, figuratively) on top of being dead tired--I felt myself pulling back, retreating.
and I hate that feeling in myself. I think for me it really gets back to this idea of being present with each other--and my own frustration when I feel that I'm not being adequately present/present enough with those around me, as well as challenging myself to constantly work on being more here.
* at the School of the America's Watch protest I went to last fall, the event culminated in all of us carrying white crosses with names of the dead--and someone(s) reading the names of the deceased. after each name we chanted "presente," and walked in a processional, laying the crosses at the gate of the school. most of us were crying by the end of it.
Friday, December 7, 2012
No Country for old (or young) Citizens
In Spring 2011, one of the women I interviewed for my research in Bosnia commented, "a country without citizens,
it’s not a country"--and her words have stuck with me. She was speaking specifically about citizenship policies in BiH--and how belonging to one of the three constituent peoples (Bosniak, Croat or Serb) is considered both necessary and simultaneously detrimental to the idea of Bosnia as a state--rather than Bosnia as a home of three nations, doing their own thing, pursuing their own objectives. At least for Bosnia--this three-nations under one state deal has created ample opportunities for nation-building, and not a whole heck of a lot of state-building. Although, of course, things have gotten better since '95 when Dayton was signed--there's now a united police force, common currency, a single flag, there are movements towards some common curriculum (although at least in 2010 that had stalled at covering math and science because they were the least controversial subjects, and therefore least likely to have an impact on national-identity development in schools/in youngsters. Virtually everything else is considered a "national subject" and the content varies considerably between schools/communities. which not only impacts what students learn but decreases mobility considerably (complicating processes of return) because schools are not comparable (for example: which year do you start studying English? how do you integrate a student who is one year, two years ahead or behind his/her peers?). In my research, I came across an amazing article called "Smoking Doesn't Kill, it Unites!" (what a way to kill those years of PSAs we all were subjected to in the States?) by Azra Hromadzic about inter-ethnic mixing in a two-schools-under-one-roof in Mostar over cigarettes smoked between classes (illegally) in the bathrooms (oh coffee and cigarettes. coffee and cigarettes). This isn't the exact article--but looks to be based off of that same fieldwork. and it's another fantastic read--she's doing some really great ethnographic research in BiH. who thought peace-building in Mostar begins in bathrooms? and let it begin with me? the image of hanging out in bathrooms over smokes... sign me up!(?))
I didn't expect Selma's (a pseudonym) words to stick with me, or to find parallel relevance here--but tonight I found myself re-reading the transcript of our interview. but one of the things that concerns me is that there's some vibrant nation-building going on, but not a whole heck of a lot of state-building. especially with politics so corrupt (I feel like I can say that pretty safely--but these are my own thoughts--not those of employers, state department etc.) there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on the part of politicians to really invest in Macedonia the state (Macedonia, or X the nation is so much more sexy. or perhaps more importantly, emotional. there are are a whole heck of a lot more heartstrings attached, that's for sure) and money that should hypothetically be invested in the state--well, a lot of it ends up other places. which makes it even harder for citizens to feel like they belong to something called "the State"--and I mean that not in the socialist sense--when the state doesn't do much in return.
I didn't expect Selma's (a pseudonym) words to stick with me, or to find parallel relevance here--but tonight I found myself re-reading the transcript of our interview. but one of the things that concerns me is that there's some vibrant nation-building going on, but not a whole heck of a lot of state-building. especially with politics so corrupt (I feel like I can say that pretty safely--but these are my own thoughts--not those of employers, state department etc.) there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on the part of politicians to really invest in Macedonia the state (Macedonia, or X the nation is so much more sexy. or perhaps more importantly, emotional. there are are a whole heck of a lot more heartstrings attached, that's for sure) and money that should hypothetically be invested in the state--well, a lot of it ends up other places. which makes it even harder for citizens to feel like they belong to something called "the State"--and I mean that not in the socialist sense--when the state doesn't do much in return.
dialogue with me/the invisible knapsack
I hope this is the only time in my life where I will promote past blogging through more blogging.
but, if you're already here, reading this--you might be interested in my only other foray into the blogosphere: in the spring of 2011, I kept a blog while participating in a peace and conflict studies program based in Belgrade/Bosnia/Kosovo and run by the School for International Training. re-reading it, I can totally see how I ended up here--back in the Balkans, rehashing questions of identity, place, space, power. if you're interested, it's here, and I don't think it's going anywhere fast anytime soon.
and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts/ideas/feelings/reflections. and reactions. I'm not much for the monologue.
I've had some interesting conversations in the last few days about the Albanian perspective on things--especially the view from Tetovo looking outward. And I do want to just acknowledge that discrimination/prejudice exists--not like that is unique to Macedonia--and there is some justification to a lot of the victimization narratives which have been shared with me (for example people being denied service in restaurants for speaking the "wrong" language.) But I also hear a lot of "us"-"them"-ing in these narratives (for example, we're not the ones who have a problem with them...) and I'm not sure how to move beyond this--but I listen to these framings of the conflict/tension, and I don't know how sustainable, how long-term these narratives are--when there tipping point is, when things will snap.
One of the most important things I learned from Vahidin was that victim narratives are, of course, compelling. But it's also easy to get lost in them, to get consumed by them, to get stuck behind that frame, those lenses, and how damning that gaze can be--and it takes a lot of cottonballs not to hear the song of those sirens. When really, victim narratives (perhaps more accurately suffering-narratives)--especially in a post-conflict/war community--can actually bridge, rather than reify, exclusive ethnic/linguistic/identity boundaries. For example, Vahido talked about wanting to do an oral history project with the families of Serbs in his village in north-west Bosnia who had been killed during the initial invasion/occupation of his village for harboring/sheltering/helping Bosniaks and Croats from the village--in essence for defending an identity rooted in place, in their community, rather than ethnicity. politics. Or another woman who arrived at one of their dialogue/trauma workshops for women impacted by the war (the war in Bosnia). Like many of the other woman there, she also lost a son and husband during the war--also killed by the Serb forces--but she was a Serb, not a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim). These narratives aren't popular purely because they confound those neat, clean victim/aggressor narratives. and that's exactly why we need to also make space for them in remembering/recovering/reviving communities devastated by war/violence.
But there's also a huge imbalance of power here in Macedonia--and that shapes so much of the inter-ethnic/inter-linguistic relationships here. and it's difficult to see how the situation will change without some fundamental shift in the distribution of power in society.
However, speaking to a Macedonian Turkish colleague, she mentioned how even within the minority communities, there is still a hierarchy, a pecking order--so questions of power extend not only to the level of Macedonian-Albanian, but all the way through the diversity chain. And like Peggy MacIntosh's essay "White Privilege--Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" says about American society (or more accurately being of a certain race, a certain class... in American society), I presume there is some privilege-blindness all the way through the power hierarchy here. and privilege is hard to see, hard to pin down--especially being here, it's something I try to be constantly mindful of. But it reminds me of my conversations with Colman McCarthy--and how he asks his students to write about the first time they were catcalled at--and all the women immediately start writing, and all the men look at each other. and in that moment, there's a glimmer of the/an imbalance within society. and how it's in those moments where privilege become externalized--rather than this thing within us which shapes the way we see/interpret/understand the world. (We can start talking about male privilege here, but that's a whole other topic. I will only add that there are not (and hasn't really been a history of) waitresses in Tetovo. I've heard of one in the last decade--at least.) I imagine those few silent moments in the classroom can be uncomfortable--but maybe that discomfort is necessary?
but, if you're already here, reading this--you might be interested in my only other foray into the blogosphere: in the spring of 2011, I kept a blog while participating in a peace and conflict studies program based in Belgrade/Bosnia/Kosovo and run by the School for International Training. re-reading it, I can totally see how I ended up here--back in the Balkans, rehashing questions of identity, place, space, power. if you're interested, it's here, and I don't think it's going anywhere fast anytime soon.
and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts/ideas/feelings/reflections. and reactions. I'm not much for the monologue.
I've had some interesting conversations in the last few days about the Albanian perspective on things--especially the view from Tetovo looking outward. And I do want to just acknowledge that discrimination/prejudice exists--not like that is unique to Macedonia--and there is some justification to a lot of the victimization narratives which have been shared with me (for example people being denied service in restaurants for speaking the "wrong" language.) But I also hear a lot of "us"-"them"-ing in these narratives (for example, we're not the ones who have a problem with them...) and I'm not sure how to move beyond this--but I listen to these framings of the conflict/tension, and I don't know how sustainable, how long-term these narratives are--when there tipping point is, when things will snap.
One of the most important things I learned from Vahidin was that victim narratives are, of course, compelling. But it's also easy to get lost in them, to get consumed by them, to get stuck behind that frame, those lenses, and how damning that gaze can be--and it takes a lot of cottonballs not to hear the song of those sirens. When really, victim narratives (perhaps more accurately suffering-narratives)--especially in a post-conflict/war community--can actually bridge, rather than reify, exclusive ethnic/linguistic/identity boundaries. For example, Vahido talked about wanting to do an oral history project with the families of Serbs in his village in north-west Bosnia who had been killed during the initial invasion/occupation of his village for harboring/sheltering/helping Bosniaks and Croats from the village--in essence for defending an identity rooted in place, in their community, rather than ethnicity. politics. Or another woman who arrived at one of their dialogue/trauma workshops for women impacted by the war (the war in Bosnia). Like many of the other woman there, she also lost a son and husband during the war--also killed by the Serb forces--but she was a Serb, not a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim). These narratives aren't popular purely because they confound those neat, clean victim/aggressor narratives. and that's exactly why we need to also make space for them in remembering/recovering/reviving communities devastated by war/violence.
But there's also a huge imbalance of power here in Macedonia--and that shapes so much of the inter-ethnic/inter-linguistic relationships here. and it's difficult to see how the situation will change without some fundamental shift in the distribution of power in society.
However, speaking to a Macedonian Turkish colleague, she mentioned how even within the minority communities, there is still a hierarchy, a pecking order--so questions of power extend not only to the level of Macedonian-Albanian, but all the way through the diversity chain. And like Peggy MacIntosh's essay "White Privilege--Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" says about American society (or more accurately being of a certain race, a certain class... in American society), I presume there is some privilege-blindness all the way through the power hierarchy here. and privilege is hard to see, hard to pin down--especially being here, it's something I try to be constantly mindful of. But it reminds me of my conversations with Colman McCarthy--and how he asks his students to write about the first time they were catcalled at--and all the women immediately start writing, and all the men look at each other. and in that moment, there's a glimmer of the/an imbalance within society. and how it's in those moments where privilege become externalized--rather than this thing within us which shapes the way we see/interpret/understand the world. (We can start talking about male privilege here, but that's a whole other topic. I will only add that there are not (and hasn't really been a history of) waitresses in Tetovo. I've heard of one in the last decade--at least.) I imagine those few silent moments in the classroom can be uncomfortable--but maybe that discomfort is necessary?
Monday, December 3, 2012
variations on the theme of grey/place matters!
pre-snowfall Tetovo
but I guess that's what winter's all about everywhere. and considering I was walking in a tanktop on saturday, I can't complain too much. oddly, the greens in the grass and hardy vines, looked like spring greens. but today's snow proved that we have not gotten so globally hot that we can skip winter altogether.
Today a woman from the US embassy in Latvia came and spoke at the University about education and diversity in Latvia. one of the points she made was that non-native speakers of Latvian have to take a test in Latvian in order to become full citizens, to receive the right to vote. and that this policy virtually excludes upwards of 15% of society from voting. I'm not sure this is totally sustainable--but she continued that thusfar this hasn't created a lot of tension--or at least anger (as perceived by an American/outsider. perhaps Anger isn't quite as cross-culturally readable as I/we assume). and that many people have accepted being, in essence, outside the system altogether.
which is interesting because here, I get the sense that many citizens also feel completely isolated from the system because politics are so corrupt (does having the right to vote matter all that much when politics are influenced/impacted by outside variables? yes, this is probably a little bit of a pessimistic reading of the situation. just for fairness' sake, you could also say the same kind of thing about the American electoral system--either just about the Electoral College, or about politics in general. I'm not sure I want to go down this road much further, but we can if it's interesting). but I wonder how having a fake, or at least not totally realized, right (such as the right to vote in a not totally transparent political system (how's that for diplomatic speak?)) impacts political engagement--as opposed to those who have accepted that they don't have a place within the system. because I think it's fair to say that apathy is a problem--here and back home, and especially among young people. and I wonder what kind of apathy is manifested in Latvia (other than the apathy bred by economic woes, high unemployment and the likes)--and if we should actually be speaking about apathies--not just a singular apathy. are all apathies equal?
I don't want to paint the picture that everyone is apathetic--because I know otherwise. One of my on-line students a few weeks ago posted about how on-line learning has made her into an independent learner (music to my ears!). there's the Loja family--and oh so many others like them actually out there. doing things. there are colleagues here at the university, our students. but what is interesting to me is what appears to be outside the realm of change (to me, the source of apathy, in this case namely politics)--and what do people feel they have some agency over/with. Education (not surprisingly) seems to be one area where people feel they an actually have an impact, where change can actually happen. and it's been really inspirational to work (again) with my on-line, part-time students, all of whom (or many of whom) intend to become teachers. for each of them, there was someone or someones who left a large enough impression on them that they were inspired to become teachers--even within a system which still clings to old methods of teaching, and is mired with other problems (pay of teachers, or infrastructure, for example. let alone some of the honking-huge issues of schools as places where broader societal tensions get played out (or at least that's how I see, or can see, it)). it's really heartening to then also feel a part of their process of growth and development. like one of my students wanted to know more about Nel Noddings' 'an ethic of care' and another (and this just makes me delighted) used his educational biography for our class to make a case for place-based education--although I'm not sure he know's theres a word for it, let alone a whole branch of pedagogy. little does he know what can of worms, what Pandora's box, he's getting into.
especially with this lady.
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