From San Domenico to Sarajevo

Led by two teachers at , a group of local students are taking more than a casual summer vacation to Europe.

The group, including Cailin Dornbush, of Kentfield, and Alessandra Jurick and Kristina Meyers, of San Rafael, recently returned from a trip to Bosnia, where they learned about the history of conflict there, worked on international justice programs, and helped run a summer school program that brings together Croat and Muslin students, who are typically taught separately in the divided country.

"And, at the end of it, our American student volunteers—all girls around seventeen or eighteen—have to be all but forcibly removed because they have forged relationships, done something meaningful with their last summer vacation in high school, and gone way outside of their Marin comfort zone," said Ian Sethre, a teacher who oversaw the program this year with his wife and another teacher at the school Jill Hoefgen.

Since the first students from San Domenico traveled to the country in 2004 (previously Sethre and Hoefgen had been working with university students), 40 students have taken the trip. Additionally, this year, two San Domenico alums at Cal including Negeen Nawim from Mill Valley, joined as mentors for the trip. And current San Domenico student and Mill Valley resident, Edna Silijdedich, a Sarajevo native, was able to join up with the trip and offer her unique perspective.

The students prepare throughout the year by learning about international justice issues and the history of the area. But, the most meaningful part for many of the students is running the summer school program in the city of Vares outside Sarajevo. Student instruction is segregated in Vares (as in many Bosnian towns) by ethnicity and the summer school offers a chance for students who have never had a chance to interact to get to know one another.

The San Domenico students chronicled there experiences. Read more on their blog here. This is the trip in their own words:

While walking through neighbors in west Mostar, I noticed many things that were different compared to Sarajevo, most noticeably the obvious separation of the city, with Croats in west Mostar and Bosniak Muslims in the east. 

There are many symbols to illustrate this division. For example, many buildings near the former frontline in west Mostar are labeled with the Sahovnica, a red-and-white checkerboard, that is the national symbol of Croats. Meanwhile, some in the east are labeled with gold fluers-de-lis on a blue shield, representing territory controlled by the Bosnian army. 

While walking through the city park on the west side, we saw the remains—just a white pedestal—of a statue of Bruce Lee. It had been vandalized and damaged just a week after it was erected, and many see this is a sign that the community cannot even agree upon a monument for their city. In a way, it seemed hopeless to me. Bruce Lee is such a a neutral figure, and this society was not able to agree upon even that.

After the walk, we had a quick breakfast and then walked around Mostar’s old town—on the east side—on our own.  A few of us wandered the cobblestones, while others went souvenir shopping.

When our time in Mostar came to a close, we boarded the bus to return from sweltering-hot Mostar to not-quite-as-hot Sarajevo. The bus was completely full. And to make things worse, more passengers got on as we moved on. At one point, six special police piled in, even after the conductor claimed the bus was full. The driver disagreed, they argued, and this sort of thing led to more than 65 passengers—in a bus with 48 seats.

-- Cailin

In July 1995, Ratko Mladic’s Bosnian Serb forces mowed over weak local defenses, and the Dutch UN peacekeepers, who initially let a few refugees into the battery factory that was their base, eventually locked their gates and refused to take anymore in. More than 20,000 people ended up in the cornfield across the highway.

During that time, the UN and NATO had a “dual key” system in which both parties would have to agree to military intervention. NATO was ready, with American fighter jets in the air 30 minutes away, but the UN wanted to negotiate with Mladic and Karadzic.

That afternoon, Mladic and his forces came to the cornfield, tousled some children’s hair, gave out chocolates, and assured the Muslim civilians that all would be alright. That night, a few thousand men fled over the hills and into the woods. Most of them would be killed—shot and shelled by Mladic’s forces. The next day, Mladic’s forces began separating families, taking men and boys away from their families and on to buses to several predetermined locations for execution. By the time the week was over, 8,000 were killed.

In 2001, the memorial stone, inscribed simply with Srebrenica, July 1995, was placed in the field. Two years later, in 2003, the first exhumed and identified victims were buried in the memorial cemetery. Now every year, on July 11, there is a massive gathering of families and burial of victims.

Many of us were in tears walking through the adjoining photo gallery. Helen noticed a woman reading a Koran and praying while her grandchildren—born long after the massacre—ran and played. This made it real for me, and it effects, even now, 15 years later, are evident.

-- Kristina

We were greeted at the high school by young local students, eager to get started. We had planned to have three separate classrooms—one for games, another for arts and crafts, and a third for dance. The gym would be used for sports. However, we quickly realized that we only had access to two classrooms, and we had no electricity, so we weren’t able to play any music for dancing.

We were able to work it out, though, combining art and games and postponing dance, and most of the older boys went down to the gym to play soccer with Kristina and a couple of students from Cal Berkeley. The rest of us organized stations for face-painting, puppet-making, water colors, friendship bracelets, UNO and other card games, and other English vocabulary games. A couple of the Cal students organized an origami project, which was exciting for the Bosnian students. The children had a lot of energy and were eager to play UNO and work on crafts.

The purpose of the summer school program is to bring together the local Croat and Bosniak Muslim students who are separated by ethnicity during the academic year. Aside from names and gender, I didn’t notice these divisions, and in many ways, the students reflected their small town. They seemed to be a relatively tight-knit group who helped one another with translation and activities. And although the students were enjoying themselves, it is possible that we—the volunteers at the summer school—were having the most fun just getting to know the kids.

When it was time to wrap up for the day, I was surprised at how many students thanked us and helped clean up. Several the girls told me that they were looking forward to tomorrow’s activities and asked about music and dance (which we will hopefully be able to pull off tomorrow). In all, our first day of running the summer school went smoothly—we were able to bond with the kids through games, sports, and crafts.

After leaving the high school, we sat in the main square and ate lunch of fruit, Schwepps Bitter Lemon, pizza, and hot dogs from the bakery. Sethre and Jill seemed to recognize a lot of the people in the town, which reinforced how small it was. We visited the sites of Vares, include the town’s own small stone Ottoman-era bridge across the Stavnija river. Then we visited the statue of the Rudnik—the Miner—for a photo of Jacqueline on her last day as a minor.

Sethre and Jill led us down the road and up a hill to what seemed at first to be a beautiful turquoise lake. This was Lake Nula, which had been an iron mine until it flooded during the war. Its beauty and tranquility were misleading, because the lake is highly contaminated and therefore deserted. Before the war, approximately 20,000 people lived in Vares, and 4,000 of them worked in mining and processing. Now, none do.

-- Alessandra

At times we forgot we were in this war-torn country, for at the summer school, the children aren’t labeled as “Bosnians” or “Croats”; they are simply “children”. The prejudices imposed upon them—by parents, schools, society—melt away, and soon there isn’t concern about who is Muslim and who is Catholic; instead, the biggest worry is whether there will be enough string to make another friendship bracelet. Compared to last week, when we focused on Bosnia’s past, we have spent these days at the summer school living in its present.

There is obvious potential in the youth here, but the country itself is hindered by the hatred of older generations, and the politicians’ unwillingness to move away from the war. Because they see no progress or opportunity here, many young people choose to leave, and Bosnia is abandoned with its scars of the past. To change this fate, the youth must find a voice and choose a path of reconciliation—the path that their ancestors could not forge.

Freeing them from judgments means exposing them to new ideas, such as tolerance, integration, and equality in both the classroom and society. These are concepts many Americans—and many Bosnians with a fondness for the Yugoslav period—perceive to be “common knowledge,” but it was only recently that Americans finished fighting for them in the Civil Rights movement.

-- Jacqueline