Doviđenja, Hrvatska

So... this is my last week in Zagreb (except for the five days before our Independent Study Projects begin). How did this happen? I feel like I arrived here yesterday. My days are filled with a lot of class (for my friends who are studying abroad... you have it easy) and a lot of reading. I just finished my first paper, which was to write a reflective journal in less than five pages on the breakup of Yugoslavia. I'm not quite sure what came out of that request because at least in my opinion, five pages to describe the breakup of Yugoslavia doesn't seem like a lot of space with which to explain yourself. I even managed to utilize an extended metaphor- Stereotypes can now be represented as old trees. I'm serious. I didn't play around.

Well, let's start from last Monday. This past week was a shorter week due to our field visit to Vukovar. You will hear tons about it in a few paragraphs but just for starters, this is the border city (Serbian border) where the Yugoslav Army invaded Croatia in an attempt to take the town (or in their words, "liberate") from the Croats who were reportedly putting local Serbs from the city in danger with threats and ethnic tension. In three months, ending with the fall of the city on November 18, 1991, the city was shelled, bombed, ripped apart, and finally flattened to the point where 85% of the buildings were completely destroyed. Don't even get me started on the amount of human rights violations that occurred there. We will get back to this later.

So, back to Monday :-). Let's just do Monday through Wednesday. Monday through Wednesday were a mix of language classes, guest lectures, and movies. We listened to an economics lecture (my first one, to tell you the truth) by an American economist who works in Zagreb and lives there with his wife. He actually gave me a side of the story of the fall of Yugoslavia that I had hardly thought about before. He explained how Yugoslavia, like the USSR but not as extreme, was a planned economy. The government had the ultimate control over what money and what businesses went where. While Tito was alive, this economy worked pretty well. In fact, according to our lecturer, many European countries were envious of Yugoslavia's economic success, all the while having hardly any unemployment. It wasn't until Tito died that the federal government realized- "Dangit. We can't do this by ourselves." They tried privatizing a bit, but didn't like giving up the power. They tried having multiple managers for each business, but conflict always arose. Workers began getting more and more ambitious with their strikes, knowing that Yugoslavia would fall flat on its face unless the feds gave them what they wanted (which was usually higher pay). Finally, more economically prosperous Republics like Slovenia and Croatia said "Screw it. We make a ton more money than Macedonia or Montenegro. Why do we have to support them to make sure they don't fail big time?" If you didn't know, in most Communist/Socialist societies, the federal government tried to play the role of "Robin Hood" by taking from richer Republics and giving to the poorer ones, therefore successfully suppressing Republics that were becoming too strong on their own and making sure that no Republic economically failed. This plan is quite brilliant until one Republic gets jealous. In the case of Yugoslavia, the first was Slovenia, then Croatia. And... that's that. Well, not really, but I wanted to prove that I did indeed pay attention in the econ lecture, even though I'm quite terrified of it.

Our second guest lecturer, Professor Puhovski, is a human rights activist and a professor of Political Philosophy (A couple of my friends from Rwanda would have really loved this guy. Seriously.). He spoke to us about his view on why he thought Yugoslavia broke apart so violently. He touched on many things that we have been discussing in great detail over the past few weeks, some of which include history and the use of "ancient hatred" as a tool for violence, national identities and how they often led to extremely scary forms of nationalism, and politics and how Serbia (mostly because of Milosevic) became the ringleader in maintaining Yugoslavia, or at the very least, expanding a greater Serbia. He was brilliant in a very composed, quiet, honest kind of way. You didn't want to move a muscle because he was so intense. He said what he thought without hesitation and that is what made him so interesting. I'm starting to really enjoy our guest lectures.

Okay... Vukovar. Vukovar was actually just as I expected it to be... paused. After the fall of the city in 1991, the city has slowly attempted to reintegrate with both Croats and Serbs and try to rebuild as best as possible but there is only so much paint you can put on a wall, if you know what I mean. There are still many destroyed buildings (I'd say about 1/3 of the buildings look that exact same as 1991 and most buildings that have not received a new face still have bullet holes smashed into them. Luckily, I had the experience of Srebrenica on my side so I knew that this is to be expected. Between property ownership and a general fear of returning to such a historically haunted city has left many of these buildings abandoned. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to be able to return to your home when it has either been destroyed or is surrounded by neighbors that abandoned you and/or never talked to you again because you were a different ethnicity. It is hard to put yourself in their shoes because you try to see a similar situation happening in your hometown. I look at my neighbors, all of whom are the kindest people and have always looked out for me as I grew up since age 11, and I would never EVER be able to see them turn against my family in the ways that neighbors turned against each other in these conflicts. I truly have no idea what I would do if something similar happened to my family, or my town, let alone my entire country.

We visited the memorial cemetery where the bodies of over 1,000 Croatian citizens lie. It never ceases to pain me to see so many tombstones and these ones were especially hard because on every tombstone was written "Croatian defender". This frustrated me. Some of these civilians were not out to be protectors of the homeland. Many (I would argue most) of these people were non-combatants, trying to survive through a bloody siege that they wanted to be as far away from as possible. We also visited the Ovcara memorial and mass grave site where 261 medical staff, wounded civilians, and prisoners of war from the hospital in Vukovar were taken, shot, killed, and deposited together outside of the city. Wounded civilians. These two words tore at my heart. They were in pain already and had to hide in the cellar of the hospital because JNA (Yugoslav National Army) forces were shelling the hospital where they sought refuge. One hour prior, I had visited the hospital, where a museum has been created to commemorate the 261 people who stayed in the basement of the hospital while it was bombed. They have kept the basement of the hospital identical to the way it looked during the siege of Vukovar, which is quite haunting in person. I left Vukovar feeling quite similar to the genocide memorials in Srebrenica and Kigali- helpless. Helpless to change history, helpless to fix the fact that my own government stood by and let this happen, and helpless to protect myself from the poisonous cocktail of pain, anger, and remorse that was pulsating through my veins.

Please say a prayer for Vukovar, or if you don't pray, keep Vukovar and its war-torn people in your hearts. Pray/hope for peace in its multiple healing and reconciliatory forms.

Most importantly: pray/hope for love... multi-identity, multi-colored, multi-national, multi-religious love. Love doesn't discriminate. Neither should we. <3