Karadzic goes down…

… and Serbia gets a good boost to its bid for EU membership, and a shift in political momentum, I suspect. About time, we all chorus! Now hand over Mladic.

And let’s not pretend this capture couldn’t have been made years ago. The political will to make it happen has been a long time coming.

Karadzic perpetrated and incited great evil. Srebrenica. Sarajevo. Gorazde (and other ‘safe havens’). I can’t even list them all. I am only just hearing this news today, not having seen a newspaper (in Italian or in English) for the last couple of days. Sorry to interrupt my commentary on the ISME conference – but this is too significant an event to let pass without comment.

Here is an image of the cemetery at Alifakovac in Sarajevo, that I took in December last year. Of course, this cemetery filled up within weeks during the siege of Sarajevo – the sight of football field turned into a graveyard is one of the more stark images that we in Australia saw.

Ethics application (and other distractions)

If you want to do a research project that involves humans in some way (interviews, observation, and videotaping, in my case) you need to apply for project approval by the designated Human Research Ethics Committee. It is a very formal, detailed, painstaking process. I am in the middle of it right now, planning to submit my proposal next week.

So far, not so bad, I am happy to report. Here is my favourite piece of succinct description so far – the one-paragraph description of my methodology. This would have boggled me completely, less than a year ago. Now I am writing it! Hooray, how I love signs of progress!

This is a qualitative study, a case study that aims to capture the music program in a particular time and place, as it is experienced and perceived by the students. Embedded within the case study structure is a phenomenological approach to the inquiry, in that no presuppositions are being made about the subject of the inquiry. Grounded theory will serve as a procedural model in drawing conclusions from the resulting data.

Lots to do still, but after my meeting with my supervisor today I feel re-energised and ready to put the whole thing together. That will happen on Friday, mostly as the rest of this week is pretty full.

I am also preparing an application for a student bursary at the moment, and at work at the Orchestra, am entering the Outreach Program for a couple of awards. Lots of forms to fill in over these next few weeks.

Now, however, a mild but amusing distraction:

Here at WordPress, when you have a blog you can access a stats page which tells you how many people (other than yourself) are visiting your blog, and how people are finding your blog – either through referral links or through search engines. The stats page shows you the terms people are typing into the search engines that bring up your blog in the results. Some of these are quite intriguing. Some are plain odd.

• I get hits from people searching for ‘Armenian mafia’ almost every day…
• Lots of people find me after searching for Parisian street names, such as ‘Rue du Bac’ and ‘Rue Tiquetonne’…
• Someone once googled ‘impenetrable sentences’ which was a phrase I used in an early entry, complaining about some of the unfathomable academic texts I was reading… clearly someone else thinks similarly about these to me…
• Lastly, I am slightly alarmed by the search engine query ‘how do I polish my clarinet?’ Is this a euphemism, do you think?

Let’s finish today with a photo.

Sarajevo rooftops. Spires and mosque domes and pitched roofs all on top of each other, covered in a layer of powdery snow. Only the merest hint of colour warms the picture. I love this city.

Sarajevo photos

Regular readers will know I am recently returned from glorious overseas travel. I spent a white Christmas in Sarajevo, staying with friends, rejoicing in being back in Bosnia, a country with big pieces of my heart and soul invested in it. Here are some favourite pictures.

Bascarsija, the central and ancient heart of Sarajevo, Christmas Day. All the shop keepers wished me Happy Christmas. I wished them Happy Bajrom (Muslim festival held a few days earlier) in return. Smiles all round.

Traditional jugs and urns on display, getting snowed on.

From this bridge, Gavrilov Princip shot Prince Ferdinand, and started World War I.

A “Sarajevo Rose’, a scar on the road left by mortar shell explosion, that has been filled with red. The Roses act as a kind of memorial of what took place here, and perhaps are also a defiance that claims beauty back from acts of violence. There aren’t so many left of these now, but some years ago, there were many.

After getting off the tram from KB’s house in the centre of town, this is where we are. The steep road you can see on the far side of the river leads to Alifakovac, the cemetery on the hill that overlooks the city.

Ancient grave stones alongside newer memorials, Alifakovac cemetery, Sarajevo. December 2007.

Singing sevdah

Christmas in Sarajevo with K’s mother was particularly special and memorable. Firstly, she made a special cheese pie (sirnica) for our breakfast. Then, in the evening, I got my clarinet out and started playing some of the sevdah (traditional Bosnian songs) that I remembered. K’s mother and auntie were there, along with K and Kemo (his cousin) and it was an instant party. Everyone sang, and I mined my memory for different songs. K and his mother would also sing some to me, line by line, so that I could play them.

Then more relatives arrived. I assumed it was a planned gathering, but K told me later that his mother had got on the phone and called all her siblings, saying, “Come over, come over, Dzil is playing clarinet, we are singing sevdah.” Soon a crowd had gathered, and the songs and wine flowed fast.

 K also whispered to me that this is not something that they normally do, and it is very special for them to sing these old songs together, very positive. He said that it needed a catalyst, like me being there with my clarinet, to make it possible for everyone to relax together in this way. He also said they were very impressed by the way I could pick the songs up while they sang them! Good to know those years of solfege training prepare you so well for something like this!

Everyone sang, even Kemo who was only 11 years old when he left Bosnia for Norway. I asked him where he had learned the songs, wondering if his parents had sung them, if he remembered them from his childhood years in Bosnia, or if he had learned them later. (It is an ongoing curiousity for me, what happens to the musical culture of people who are displaced from their homelands). He said that he learned them mostly with his friends, other Bosnians living in Norway, during and after the war. When they got together at parties they would often sing the sevdah songs, so this is how he knows them.

There were frequent tears this night, as many of the songs are sad and very emotional. The first song that I played, right at the start  of the evening, was one that I had been told was partiuclarly special for people. However, later in the evening, K translated the words for me, and I was alarmed at how stark and unflinching the song is about the horrors of war and the possibility of young soldiers not returning. I had offered this as a song to play?? Such a responsibility I had assumed, so blithely!

Getting to Sarajevo

I am writing this on Christmas Day, it is snowing big, fat snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, and it is gorgeous, just gorgeous to be here.

But what a journey it was, from Paris to Sarajevo with Croatian Airlines. Firstly the plane took off late from Paris – a little anxious-making as I had a fast connection to make in Zagreb. But the surly air hostess onboard told me I wouldm’t miss my flight, because it was also with Croatian, so it would wait for me. Then, on arrival in Zagreb, all the Sarajevo passengers were taken aside and told our flight had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions in Sarajevo. No planes had been able to land for the last two days, we were told. We would take a bus to Sarajevo instead (5 to 6 hours apparently, as opposed to 55 minutes in a plane), it would leave in 45 minutes, so we should collect our luggage, go through Customs, and get the bus from out the front of the airport.

Then my luggage didn’t turn up. There were about 9 of us still waiting for our bags when a flight from Frankfurt landed. Their bags came out, but we were still waiting. Meanwhile, the time to go and get the bus was fast approaching. Oh, to cut this part of the story short, the bags eventually arrived, after all the Frankfurt bags. Maybe someone had gone off on a coffee break or something, and taken the trolley with our Paris bags on it with them. So I grabbed the darn thing, now twice the weight it was when I left Melbourne, due to souvenirs and Armenian cognac, and headed outside to find this bus.

I didn’t mind the idea of the bus- it sounded like it could be fun. We were just a small group coming in off the Paris flight…. I imagined us all chatting, sitting in a cosy minbus, being chauffured to Sarajevo. But it wasn’t quite like that. The bus was packed. At first there seemed doubt that they could even get me on it. I stood there in the frosty air, kind of exhilirated by the cold, I must say, and hopped from foot to foot while I waited for their heated debating to abate, and someone to tell me what was going on. Apparently, all the Sarajevo passengers from all the cancelled flights were on this plane.

So, they squeezed me and another guy on, I took a seat beside a sulky looking woman who had the physical energy of a VERY hungover teenager (and two teenage boys sitting in the seat behind her). A young Serbian woman from the Paris flight who spoke French translated bits of the driver’s comments for me. It took the bus a further 40 minutes to depart.

Within 15 minutes we had pulled over. First because of a child needing to vomit, then because a rowdy, lively crowd down the front of the bus wanted to buy more beer. This pattern of stopping for beer continued hourly throughout the trip, and, as another passenger wryly pointed out to me, “That only means MORE stops!” It really slowed us down, I thought.

We pulled into Sarajevo bus station at 11.45pm – 8 hours later! All that time I had been surrounded by people on mobile phones, calling their loved ones and friends to make plans to meet. But I had no number for Kenet, and worried about how he would know where I was, what I would do if he wasn’t there when I arrived…. so imagine my relief when I stepped off the bus and heard this Bosnian-Australian accent saying, ” Welcome to minus 10 degrees!”, then saw a guy in a peaked corduruy cap emerging from the crowd to lift me into a big bear hug! All was well… a big relief.

But the plot thickens too, about the cancelled flights. Apparently Croatian Airlines was the ONLY airline to cancel their flights into Sarajevo on Devember 22nd (and again on the 23rd). Every other airline flew in and out without any trouble. It looked a bit suspicious… as if it waved them money to not fly in at all, to stick us all in a bus. I have started to compose a sternly worded letter. Of course, if it is an issue of safety, and the right flying conditions, then the bus was the right solution. But if the flying conditions were fine…. it looks a bit dodgy from my point of view.

It feels amazing to be back here. The moment we crossed the border I realised my energy levels were right up. I was sitting up straight, staring out the window, all my nerves were primed. The ten months I spent here were a pivotal point in my life and I invested a lot of myself – my values and energy and spirit – here. I’m feeling incredibly alive and …. connected… somehow. Can’t wait to get to Mostar – we go there tomorrow.

Merry Christmas, all. I hope it is a joyous and peaceful time. Love and kisses.