Bon Appetite!

couldn't resist: the neighbor's cow in Sanski Most

Back in 2011, when our study abroad group spent a week in Kosovo, I remember before we left Belgrade, one of the host-moms packed an obscene number of sandwiches for E. to eat on the road. and we all laughed a little--can't find Buba's cooking in Prishtine--and then this memory got packed up and stored away. Fukushima happened, we became caught up in the intricacies of Kosovar history, politics, symbolism. Taking it all in. I'm sure somewhere on the road, the sandwiches got eaten.

and then a few weeks ago there was a milk scare here--not because of crazy bacteria (or the evil eye, as the case may have it), but problems with the nutrition (and toxins) regional cows were/are exposed to, (some fungus in their feed) and traces of them in their milk. although there is no open discussion of the impact of the war on nutrition, soil fertility, I can't help but think about this latest food scare through a (the/ my?) post-conflict lens (Skopje also won't release data on air quality--so I get the sense that issues/data around health are somewhat sensitive.)
 It's a terribly uncomfortable truth (for myself included--as an avid vegetable consumer)--but I think, decades later,  we're still eating war.

still eating what happened on this land, what our landscape has endured, has internalized. living with the consequences of the violence we have inflicted on it. literally* figuratively. afterall--everything goes somewhere. (and I hear Patti's voice in 2008, laced with alarm and shock--'they're finding traces of human DNA in the Miljacka River in Sarajevo' presumably from the dead still in the hills).

On the most immediate level, it totally confounds the 'eat local' paradigm I adopted working on an organic farm (and living next to Monsanto--not exactly a beloved neighbor and shame for signing the Monsanto Protection Act),  or at least raises a strong critical magnifying glass up to it to examine all of its contours and complexities, and begs the question 'what are we eating when we eat local? and what are the limitations or implications?' it makes spring--these first spinach crops, first carrots, bevy of tractors out tilling, sowing seeds--so sweet and sad. (not to say that there aren't plenty of toxins in the soils/environment back home--just to be clear, or that there aren't plenty of other sources of poisons trickling into the soils). But, I think being so preoccupied with the social/relational/spatial implications of violence (to use/modify Basso's terms 'the way the war eats us,' the way wars/experiences/trauma works on us the way stories worked or 'hunted' individuals in the Apache community),  I hadn't stopped long enough to to approach the issue from a totally different, perhaps more 'grounded' perspective--the ways in which we eat war.

But. what is more troubling for me is that this yet another way in which wars/violence lives in/inhabits places long after the peace agreement, after the armistice, after we all agree to stop killing each other, rebuild the family house and be neighbors again (an oversimplification, indeed. yet--I'm realizing that reconstruction of community (my passion and if you really want it, more thoughts on return than you can shake a stick at, or better yet Vahido's thesis (what an inspirational person (his thesis really is worth a read!) on a total tangent--they're organizing at CIM [Centar za Izgradnju Mira] a project collecting oral histories in Sanski Most about individuals who confound these nationalist/ethno-centric metanarratives. talk about the power of place/the potential of place-based study in post-conflict settings. I'm in love)) is but one part of the process--holistically speaking. after all, communities are built on something, they stand on something--not just someones). and so how we live with the war, how the war continues to impact post-war life (let alone quality of life) is one of those issues lurking beneath the surface (trying so hard to not make some soil puns right now). one of those inconvenient truths, that sometimes feels easier not to talk about. because it is so close to home. and kind of hits you right in the gut.

it's another time when I hear Vahido's voice, "it's just war by other means."

and war at the most personal level, at that--we all need to eat.

Even those (especially those!) born after conflict--they're ingesting the war too. And granted--the war, or remnants of war, aren't the only health risks here (broadly speaking), but it's one of the ways wars endure.

*and let me just reiterate--I'm not a scientist. I don't have the data. I'm not sure the data is even out there (really--who would want to find that out? or fund that study? and then would it be possible to publish freely?)--but if it is, please let me know. Ben--I feel like you would know where to find it.