Anne Bonitz EVS volunteer
Welcome to Bosnia
It is around half past three on a nice and still warm afternoon in October. I am walking home from the youth centre. As I am about to cross the street an old man, carrying a plastic bowl filled with grapes, is catching my eye. Looking into his face of experience and satisfaction such as old people have, he smiles at me and offers me a hand full of grapes. He is talking to me in a language that I am not able to understand and as he is realising that I am not speaking his language. He simply puts a bunch of grapes into my hands, smiles and makes his way to the other site of the street. Still unsure how I deserved this, the only thing I can do is to turn around with a far to late “Hvala!” coming over my lips.
Roughly two months later I meet him again in a restaurant where I am enjoying food and drinks with a typical Bosnian Band of experienced musicians who I have been joining with my clarinet. He is coming over to me and asks if I already forgot my neighbour. Everything started roughly one year earlier when the biggest thing bothering me was not if I would succeed in my A-levels, but what to actually do with my life when it is time to leave the comfortable zone of school and parent’s house. Some social work and trying NGO work finally brought me to Bosnia-Herzegovina, its story and its people.
As I visited Bosnia the first time in April 2015, it was already clear that I was going to spend one year in Brčko working with Svitac. And as I had to leave it again after ten days of intense cultural exchange with young people from all over Bosnia this certainty was the only thing keeping me smiling.
Five months afterwards a warm welcoming was waiting for me in Brčko. Firstly, it was a pleasure to get the full support of the team and the local community to form my motivation into ideas and my ideas into concrete projects such as a drama project for kids from 8-15 years that made them proudly perform on stage, or teaching children and adults my own language while they helped me the other way around to learn their language.
Svitac gave me the opportunity to establish a life in a completely new environment and trusted me to take the responsibility to realise my ideas that might give young people in Bosnia the chance to learn about themselves, their strengths and how to build faith in them as well as to get to know about other cultures and languages.
I am very thankful for having this opportunity to get to know about my strengths and weaknesses as I am working and living in a team of international volunteers in a beautiful town near the river Sava.
Currently, there is a lot to do for all of us. After saying Good-bye to two wonderfully energised British girls that realised a big amount of creative workshops with all age groups of children, the three German volunteers Jonas, Johanna and me — as well as our English gentleman Isambard — will be running the daily activities such as educative and creative workshops for children in two age groups as well as afternoon language, arts, music and drama workshops.
With this great variety of offers we welcome you in the youth center! – Vidimo se!
Anne Bonitz