Kosovo

Peace Camp in Kosovo

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On our way from Pristina to Novi Sad we had the opportunity to conduct a workshop at a peace park in the Kosovo border town of Pudojevo. A British group called Manchester Aid to Kosovo has been running a peace camp there for the last two years and asked us to provide some instruction in the types of games we do that could be applicable to the peace camp participants. We spent more time planning these three hours than we’ve ever spent planning a session, and I think that’s a reflection of both our excitement to engage with this group and the large amount of games that can be used to promote themes around peace.

We ultimately decided to split the ~30 participants into three groups that would rotate among us for activities followed by discussion. Will, Libby, and I planned our station around the theme of inclusion; Scott, Danijel, and Martha planned for teamwork and cooperation; and Hannah, Dani, and Siôn planned games related to verbal and non-verbal communication.

I was particularly excited to have inclusion as our theme. Will, Libby, and I spent a long time brainstorming ideas for games – there are many different types of groups to consider within inclusion (eg, race, physical ability, religion, etc), and we had to narrow down our long list of ideas to what we could play within half an hour. We decided to make the games as close as possible to the situation in Kosovo between the Kosovars and Serbs so that it was most obviously relevant.

We ended up with groups of about 18 teenagers and MAK volunteers. For our first activity, we divided the group into three teams and gave each a different color bib. While Will and Libby briefed the blue and green teams about how much they love to toss a ball to each other, I explained to the red team that they want to play but are disgusted by the idea of touching a ball after it has touched someone else’s hands. As a result, if someone throws the ball to them using their hands, they have to swat the ball away.

Once we got everyone into a large circle, it quickly became apparent to the blue and green teams that the people on the red team were “rude” and “unfriendly”. For a while they avoided passing us the ball; then Will explained that we had to find some way to play together. When the ball rolled behind me, I picked it up between my arms and demonstrated how to pass it to someone else on the red team. It took a while for the blues and greens to work out that we have to receive the ball that way, but eventually they learned how to play with us and had fun doing so.

Next up, we stayed in our teams but switched over to a set of relays. This time the red team had it easy – we got to be normal. The blue team learned that they only had use of one foot, so they had to hop; the green team had four feet and had to crawl. The first relay was basic: get to a cone about 20 meters away and come back. The red team obviously beat the others by a considerable amount, and Will played this up by having us parade in front of them for a few seconds. The next relay involved dribbling a football to the cone and back; the reds should have retained the advantage but somehow came in second to the blue team in both sessions! Finally, we mixed up the teams so that there were equal numbers of colors on each. This equalization made it a real race, and the results were very close.

We ended up having less time than anticipated, but our final activity was supposed to be a version of Toxic Swamp, which is an initiative exercise in which teams are given a very small amount of material (a piece of rope or a small parachute) and told that they had to get everyone from point A to point B using only that. It’s impossible to do unless they realize that by combining material among teams they will have enough to make a bridge through the “swamp”. Our plan for this session was to keep the groups the same from the relay (greens on all fours, etc) and do the same thing using hula hoops as the material. We had planned a few variations in which each group would had the chance to be both the most or least advantaged. For instance, those walking on all fours take up the most space and are thus a disadvantage in a game that requires limited space, but a modification in which no one can use their hands to touch the hula hoops would place those people at the advantage as they have four “feet”, including two that happen to look like hands.

We were sorry not to get to Toxic Swamp, but it was clear from our discussions with the participants that they got a lot from the first two activities. They were able to articulate the lessons we’d hoped for and the general idea that it is possible to work together and have fun regardless of what you look like or what language you speak.

The other groups had similar success, and we left wishing we could have stayed for a few days. That type of situation is perfect for leaving the kind of lasting and self-sustaining impact that is so important to us in World at Play. Hopefully, future expeditions to Kosovo will be able to partner with MAK and the Pudojevo community again! It was a great chance for us to how how sport and games can be used as legitimate instructional tools for a host of values and life skills.

Kosovo in review

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Добар дан!

Those unintelligible characters spell out “dobar dan”, which means “good day” in Serbo-Croatian. Now that we’ve reached Serbia, we’re in the land of the Cyrillic alphabet, which makes everything infinitely more interesting. Martha and I learned the alphabet yesterday on the bus and have been amusing ourselves ever since with deciphering signs!

Before others tell you more about Serbia, I’m going to summarize the nine days we spent in Kosovo.

Neither of the previous World at Play expeditions went to Kosovo, so this leg of the trip was as much about making connections for the future as it was about playing with kids. Scott met with representatives from organizations dedicated to people with autism and Down syndrome, a school for the blind, the SOS Children’s Village, and the pediatric ward of the main Pristina hospital. We were able to run at least one session with all of these groups except the school for the blind, and we are really excited about the possibilities for future partnerships with these and other groups. They were all very anxious to work with us, and it seems like a future World at Play expedition could spend much more than nine days in Kosovo and still be quite busy.

Our primary partner in Pristina was the Ideas Partnership, which coordinated the afternoon sessions we ran with the Ashkali and Roma children in the community of Fushë Kosova.  Those sessions will stick in our memories for a long time to come. We worked on a field in the middle of what is at best a very poor neighborhood and at worst almost a slum. We dedicated the first ten minutes of our second session to picking up all the trash on the field; thanks to the enthusiasm of the children, we were able to fill several large trash bags with all sorts of debris that would have made playing safely a real challenge.

Over the course of our six sessions, we worked with approximately 80 kids ranging in age from two to 18. I think we all enjoyed the additional thought that planning these sessions required. For example, Siôn and I worked with the littlest children, and we found that a bit of creativity and modification of usual games can go a long way in helping two people manage a group of 15-20 kids under the age of five. We decided on several long-term goals for our sessions and broke these down into objectives for each day. For instance, we learned quickly that equipment had to be used in small amounts and in extremely structured ways, so we progressed from a session with no equipment to one involving a blanket and two beanbags to one involving a blanket, four beanbags, and two balls. We played the same general set of games each day but introduced new elements in each session to make things mire interesting and challenging, and I think this scaffolding really helped us to control the kids and lead them to higher-level games. Other instructors had particular success with Chuck the Chicken, What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?, and rugby (which the older boys quite enjoyed).

We started each session in Fushë Kosova with some songs in a large group. “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” seems to be a hit wherever we go, and Hannah did a fantastic job of leading us in her Tarzan song each day. The kids got really excited and repeated the lyrics with all sorts of hilarious interpretations of the actual English words.

Perhaps most memorable are our departures from the field. We quickly learned that we had to have Will or Siôn standing on the back of the van in order to prevent kids from grabbing on; this led to Will or Siôn eventually sprinting alongside the van and jumping in once we’d reached the main road and could finally go fast enough to escape the crowd of children following us. On our last day, kids were banging on the sides of the bus and doing everything in their power to prevent us leaving; I am still amazed that Scott managed to maneuver us through the tight alleys each time without hitting anyone or anything amidst that chaos!

Other than our sessions with Fushë Kosova, we ran two with the SOS Children’s Village (the counterpart of our hosts here in Serbia),  one with the Down syndrome group in the town of Prizren, one with the center for children with Autism, and one with patients in the hospital pediatric ward. Each was a good experience, and I think there’s great promise for future work in Kosovo.

We were also deeply impressed by the hospitality and generosity of the people we met in Kosovo. Fadili, our contact with the Pristina Rotary Club, put us up in his own house for the entire duration of our stay, and his nephew Patrick made sure we experienced some of the best food and nightlife Pristina has to offer. Even the parents of the children we worked with in Fushë Kosova offered us water and sunflower seeds despite having so little to give to their families. It’s clear that Kosovo is a country with much to offer, and I know we’ll all be anxious to see not only how World at Play can become more involved there but also how it will continue to develop as an independent country in years to come.

the journey from Bosnia to Kosovo

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Greetings from Kosovo! This is the first time I’ve ever been to a country that no one else in my acquaintance has been to, so I’ll do my best to write frequently and lengthily about our experiences here.

Our journey from Livno to Prištine was long and adventurous. Part of the length comes from political rather than geographic reasons – since Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo, and because Serbia is our next destination, we had to drive into Serbia first in order to get our passports stamped. If you try to enter Serbia from Kosovo and don’t already have a Serbian stamp, the Serbs consider you to have entered the country illegally. So, in order to avoid that hassle, we drove east through Bosnia into Serbia and then down into Kosovo rather than just south through Bosnia.

We were up at 5 a.m. for a scheduled departure of 5:30. A few last-minute errands and forgotten items delayed us until 5:55, but soon enough we were coasting through the ever-beautiful Bosnian countryside en route to Sarajevo.

I would estimate that approximately four hours of our trip yesterday were spent on winding roads through mountains/large hills. I had no idea that this part of the world was so hilly, but that seems to be most of Bosnia and the part of Serbia that I’ve seen! This made for some more demanding driving on Scott’s part and some lovely scenery for those of us who were awake and keen to take pictures. It was also misty and rainy all day, so we saw lots of mountaintops covered in fog that lent an even more ethereal feel to the area.

We spent about five minutes within the limits of Sarajevo; I didn’t see enough to make any judgments about the city. I can say that the area around Sarajevo looked pretty war-torn; it seemed like there was one gutted, abandoned, or half-finished house for every two that were inhabited. It’s very strange to see so many buildings like that. Many of them, and also a good number of the ones in which people do actually live, seem to be made of cinderblock with no outer layer. It must get very cold living in those in the winter.

Once we were past Sarajevo, we started to see more and more signs in Cyrillic as well as some Serbian flags. We had seen a few signs in Roman and Cyrillic around Mostar, but as we got closer to the Serbian border, we encountered whole villages where the signs were only in Cyrillic. I plan to dedicate some time today to learning that alphabet – it’s SO hard to remember it and to rewire my brain to think of a different sound for the letters that look the same.

Around 11:30 we experienced what I have now dubbed, and what has been collectively adopted, as The Sheep Incident.

We were driving through a small village just past Foča when we came around a bend and saw some sheep about 40 meters away standing right on the edge of the road. Now, it’s useful to understand that we are driving in a British van, so the driver’s seat is on the right side of the van. I was sitting right behind Scott, also on the right side and on the same side as the sheep.

A series of things happened very quickly, as is often the case with these things. A couple of seconds after the sheep came into view, Hannah (sitting up front next to Scott) said “watch out for the sheep.” At almost that exact moment, the sheep chose, for whatever reason, to come into the road. There was absolutely no time to do anything. We weren’t going TOO fast, but we were going fast enough that slamming on the brakes or swerving wasn’t an option. There were maybe two seconds in between when the sheep moved and when we got to that part of the road. There was a sickening, loud series of bumps, Martha and I screamed, and moments later Scott had pulled over. He hopped out immediately with Danijel; the rest of us sat stunned for a bit. Dani and Lib had been sleeping and didn’t know what had happened; those of us who had seen it were trying to figure out whether we could stand to look or not.

To make a long story short, we stayed on the side of the road for about an hour. Two sheep died, and a third was injured enough that the owners included it in the casualties. After some debate, we decided not to call the police and instead to negotiate an amount to pay and move on. We had to backtrack to Foča because the radiator had been punctured in the impact and was leaking fluid. “Betty” the van suffered a few other cosmetic injuries but in general came out relatively unscathed. We were all fine too, which is impressive. Scott did a tremendous job of leading and staying cool in a very challenging situation.

Fortunately, the men at the repair shop were able to drop what they were doing to help us. We got underway again in about two hours. I think Saint Christopher helped us out!

The remaining drive through Bosnia grew increasingly rural and Serb-populated. At one point we passed a giant memorial to Tito, complete with a statue and 10-meter long letters spelling out his name. We finally arrived at the tiny border with Serbia around 5.

Every border experience is interesting, and this was no exception. First we laughed at one of the guardrails, which was wrapped in duct tape – clearly someone had driven through it at one point. Next, since we were in the middle of nowhere with no idea where there might next be a place to stop, a few of us ladies got out to find a toilet. Squatters exist in this rural part of the Balkans, and the one at the border officially qualifies as the worst I’ve used… I’ll leave it at that.

Passports freshly stamped, we continued into Serbia and went through another set of winding roads through mountains and extremely small, impoverished towns. There seemed to be no one around for miles, but we saw lots of livestock (including sheep) roaming the hills and fields. We eventually stopped at a gas station for some dinner (salami, bread, and cheese – the official World at Play sandwich) and another squat toilet experience, then we continued on to a larger, crazy town called Novo Pizaro, which we renamed Novo Bizarro. The main road through town was very narrow, filled with people, and went in the most crooked path imaginable. Some in the van commented that it reminded them of Southeast Asia.

Night fell while we were unscrambling our way through Novo Bizzaro. We passed some lakes that I’m sure are quite beautiful in the daytime. Houses started to dwindle as we approached the border with Kosovo, so it was very dark, and we encountered two trucks that had just stopped in our lane, so it was once again not the most relaxing of drives for Scott. (At this point we’d been on the road for about 14 hours.)

There is a curious bit of no-man’s land between where Serbia ends and Kosovo begins. The border out of Serbia is m favorite so far; the guard was a hot young guy around all of our ages who was hilarious and teased us about running a stop sign (true) and then made us open the back, at which point he jokingly asked if we had any drugs (no). Anyway, we got through with no problems and with another round of squats, this time in a field (I did not participate). Ten minutes later we reached the border into Kosovo. They took the time to enter our passports into a computer, so we had time to look around at a gas tank left by the UN and a truck full of cows that pulled up next to us.

Upon entering Kosovo, we passed a large sign reminding UN and NATO workers that this was the border and not to cross. This is also my first time being in a place with an active international peacekeeping presence; I am curious to see what else we’ll encounter.

We continued driving through sparse countryside for about half an hour, then suddenly there were stores, giant wedding receptions (that looked SO FUN), and huge produce stands lining the road. One of our partners met us about 40 minutes outside Prištine, so we had an escort the rest of the way.

Prištine is MUCH larger than we had imagined, and it’s also more posh – we haven’t driven through much, but the area where we’re staying has lots of upscale shops that I never expected in a place that so immediately evokes an image of war. I am looking forward to driving through more of the city today.

That’s all for now – time for our first session!