Clues in the Labyrinth

Original uploaded to Flickr by: hannanik

Mustafa was 12 when I met him in 2001. In Kosovo in those days, there was not much to do for a lad like him. So he decided to organize a group of youngsters to work on small social activities in the neighbourhood. It grew to a group of around 10 boys and girls from his school class. They were helping out in people’s homes and gardens, shopping for the elderly, providing basic first aid at festivals and larger meetings. That sort of thing.

When Mustafa visited my office, he wanted to do more. He told me his wish to play football with his old neighbourhood friends now living in the Serbian enclave nearby. In his words: ‘we want to work on our own future, we young people have do nothing with the old history that divides us from our friends. And I am sure that’s the same for the Serb kids.’

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Just as I finally received a reaction on a previous post, I didn’t find the time to continue or react. Darn. Lots of things going on: made a new design for my website (not online as yet), was on a visit in the Netherlands, explored the possibilities of Twitter and Facebook, gave some training and conducted the seminar I organize with my colleague. I did write, but not here.

In the third week of March this year, I guestblogged on the Dutch Amnesty International website. I wrote four stories about some peacebuilders I met on my travels. It gave me the idea for a series of posts: next to the theoretical ramblings I had so far on this site, I’ll introduce some real life stories. The first four posts in this series will be based on posts I wrote for Amnesty International. Let’s see what comes afterwards.