Cape Town to Sarajevo: Frying Pan into the Fire!
I found myself in Bosnia in August 1997, after the evaluation of the land programme and after I had facilitated a workshop in Switzerland for Swiss development officials en route. As fate would have it, one of the participants was Veronique, who was based in Sarajevo with UNDP. During the workshop, she began to define a process and strategy for gender integration in post-war reconstruction in Bosnia. I learnt that her husband had travelled over with Ronald at the start of the OECD mission over a year before; both sent by the Political Department of the Swiss government in Berne. And here Veronique and I were in the early stages of thinking through how to ensure that women were not excluded from peace-building and political processes in post-war Bosnia.
Indeed, compelling tasks awaited me before I even arrived in Sarajevo. Almost immediately, I facilitated a workshop for women in politics and leadership from both Bosnia and the Serb Republic of Herzegovina. This was the first time they were meeting officially in an OECD-sponsored initiative after the unimaginable conflict had ripped their communities apart.
The two-year bracket I had just completed began to feel like a training ground for experiences in a totally new and unknown setting. It was soon clear that my tried and tested tools and methodologies needed to be put away. Bosnia was an entirely different story, and I needed to work increasingly with my intuition. The analogy became clear to me as I likened working in the Balkans to being in a chess game, in which, of course, these people are masters. However, what was extraordinary was that this was a three-dimensional chess game, and one could easily lose the Queen in the opening move!
One experience soon after my arrival stands out starkly. Going back in my memoirs, I am surprised at the intensity of feelings this memory evokes in me.
Ronald leads me into a large dining room. There are several white-clothed tables but no other people. A menu, in Cyrillic script, is thrust into my face by a man appearing from nowhere, out of the kitchen behind me. I need guidance. Ronald has been in Bosnia for two years, and I have arrived to join him in this desolate and broken place. Not much is available from the list, and the choice comes down to two items: Shopska salad (cucumber, tomato with grated sheep cheese) and grilled trout with spinach and boiled potatoes. Plus a carafe of white wine from the vineyards on the Dalmatian coast.
I am finding my way. This is unknown, unfamiliar territory, and I have yet to feel much resonance with the place and its people – those people who are still here; the younger members of families are spread throughout the Western world as refugees.
And then, again out of nowhere, a group of short men appear and approach our table. Five of them, each wearing a black, embroidered waistcoat over a white shirt, and a small black hat (or is it that they all have thick black hair?). They all wear moustaches, have shining, glistening black eyes, and each carries an instrument. I quickly make out a double bass, a viola, two violins, and an accordion. They approach. Encroach. Seated at the table in the centre of this menacing circle of masculinity, I feel that I am the prey. They are too close. Much too close. I look at Ronald, pleadingly. My expression says: “Please get them to move away from us.” He gestures weakly; it’s futile. I realise that he too is intimidated. And then the music begins. I have lost my appetite.
The violins are loud, dissonant, and close to my ear, violating my personal, protective space. The second fiddler leans forward, down towards me, singing/shouting into my face. It is provocative, taunting, sadistic, and cruel. He is tormenting me. I know this. He and the others sense my discomfort, and they increase the pressure, getting louder, closer, more discordant. I feel my rising panic. It’s building up in a crescendo. I feel angry, resentful, and desperate. I feel the volcano inside me well up, molten, unleashed.
I jump up from the table, striking out, my arms flailing the air wildly and screaming at them. The music stops, the men move their circle outwards a little and keep looking at me with their shining, glistening eyes. I feel these eyes devouring me. I hate them.
And I hate the fact that Ronald has taken a wad of notes out of his pocket and handed them to the ‘band leader’ – coerced into paying them a small fortune to leave us in peace.
Welcome to Bosnia!
I believe Ronald was surprised at how quickly I became involved in this compelling place, able to discuss details of various emerging political currents and some of the implications. The UN was placing a great deal of emphasis on ‘democratic’ elections and the development of political parties. I admit to a certain degree of scepticism as I watched funds being liberally dispersed with each formal registration of a new political ‘party’. One particular registration really took my fancy: the party calling itself the ‘Post-Pessimists’! Bosnian and Serbian humour, in fact, Balkan humour in general, is of a very special genre.
So, the months of 1998 unfolded, and I became fairly well integrated in B&H as it was called, and both Ronald and I were increasingly busy. We had one visit to Geneva at Easter and, as part of our long-term project to acquire property in France, had set up a couple of appointments with agents to view apartments in Thonon-les-Bains on Lac Léman. Our first visit, which included a marvellous meal, resulted in our finding the perfect place. We returned to Bosnia, driving our Renault 4 ‘modèle de base’, now 15 years old, for three days with our belongings, knowing that six months later we were due to become the owners of a unique and beautiful apartment overlooking the lake from the French side, where it is called Lac Léman.
In the interim, I travelled to Turkey in July to join friends from Cape Town and Switzerland on a yacht, cruising gently in those unbelievably blue waters. Then, well-resourced and rested after much swimming, Turkish music, dancing, and delicious food prepared in a small oven-like galley by a cook with a constant headache from the intense heat, I went back to Sarajevo and the gender initiative. This was gaining momentum and also attracting interest from the UN Higher Representative and potential funders.
And then October arrived, with autumn apparent in the most beautiful colours imaginable. But as the fog of winter months settled in, Sarajevo became extremely cold, damp, and unhealthy. Everything was polluted and toxic. The water, the air, the food, the emotions, the thoughts. The feelings of everyone – toxic. I suffered my third bout of bronchitis in a year, each progressively more severe as my lungs struggled with the indoor air pollution from non-stop exhaling of cheap cigarettes smoked incessantly throughout meetings, workshops, in restaurants, on trams, everywhere. My eyes stung and my chest rattled like those of the children so many years ago in the Sri Lankan plantations. A Swiss doctor advised me to leave and live elsewhere rather than Bosnia.
As we had collected the keys to our new home in October, I went in early 1999 to Thonon-les-Bains to settle in, to connect with my soul looking out over the lake.