Notes and Reflections for the European Bildung Conference 2024
Fellow Bildungers
In Rotterdam, I will stay at my parents' friend's house. Since our conference is about migration, it brings back some memories and emotions.
My parents' friends came to the Netherlands 30 years ago as the war in Bosnia started. Like my parents, they were categorized as "mixed marriage" in the Yugoslav identity-statistical context, meaning that they had an intra-ethnic marriage and relationship. And like my parents, they developed a more individualist and tolerant approach to identification, including seeing themselves as Yugo-Bosnians.
Before the war, they were interested in finding meaning in sports, literature, music, traveling, and spending their everyday lives in more liberal-progressive lifestyles, such as by listening to Frank Zappa or watching Twin Peaks. Many people who left Bosnia and Herzegovina were individuals who, before the war, hoped that the future would be bright, dynamic, progressive, European, etc. Instead, they had to leave their homes after finding themselves under repression, violence, and horrible, inhumane situations.
Today, in Bosnia, almost the same number of people live inside as outside , including myself, statistics seen. In my birthplace of Teslic, "everyone" knows or has someone, as in Italy, Austria, Sweden, or even outside Europe, such as in the USA and Canada. When I was a child, my parents and I almost managed to emigrate to Australia. Many people who could improve the country often feel and experience, as in my case, that it is psychologically hard and faces a lot of corruption and mismanagement.
I hope to share some of my experiences during the conference with you. Here is an interesting article for reflection.
"When the Bosnian sheep farmer fled his home in a disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1992, trekking with his family for 40 days to escape the start of a war that would pit neighbor against neighbor, the village he left behind had more than 400 people, two shops and a school.
More than half the villagers were fellow Muslims, the rest Serbs, but nobody, he said, paid much attention to that until extremist politicians started screaming for blood.
After more than a decade away from his home in eastern Bosnia, the farmer, Fikret Puhalo, 61, returned to his village, Socice. By then it had 100 or so people, Serbs who had stayed throughout and a few Muslims who had decided it was safe to go back.
Today, only 15 are left. The shops have gone, the school, too.
“Everyone else died or moved away,” said Mr. Puhalo, gesturing to empty homes scattered across the rocky hills around the family land where he grazes his sheep. “Not a single child has been born here since I returned,” he said."
