Time to make an annoucement: very shortly this blog will no longer be about life in Bosnia. It doesn't feel like very long ago, but when I started blogging again back in October I mentioned that my contract in Sarajevo would run for six months. And how those six months have hurtled past: I finish my job here tomorrow.
I know that I've never written about my work here, and have rarely if ever mentioned The Organisation. That has been a deliberate decision on my part. Not that the work I do is so very confidential or secret, not that I can't talk about it - at least in a generalised sense - with family or friends, and I'm sure they'd tell you that I certainly don't hold back in doing so when the mood strikes me! But talking about how you spend your days and the issues you work on is different to broadcasting them in print over the airwaves. Perhaps particularly given my recent discovery that you out there in the great unknown are reading this, I am glad I made this decision. Any opinions I might have expressed here would have been entirely my own and not those of my employers or of the International Community in Bosnia per se. But it's hard to separate personal opinions and professional responsibility, and I have never felt that this was the appropriate forum.
Suffice it to say now, as I tidy up my desk and hand back my identity card, that my time here has been an amazing professional experience. I have been working on issues in which I have a great personal and academic interest and which I feel are significant indicators for the path of transition in this country - namely, war crimes trials taking place in the local courts here, conditions in prisons, protection of victims and witnesses and In particular, and perhaps closest to my heart, I have focused on gender issues: sexual violence and rape which took place during the war, as well as post-conflict domestic violence. It hasn't always made for pleasant days at the office, and at times I have found it tough going to immerse myself in the graphic details of these phenomena on a daily basis, but legally I find these issues fascinating and getting to work on them has been a privilege. I won't go into it any more than that here. I have been given some amazing professional opportunities, and my colleagues and supervisors have been wonderful - I can't thank them enough for the faith they've showed in me, willingness to help me learn and, I have no doubt, their patience. It's been a great working environment and that has made a huge difference in fitting in.
You might not have known about it reading this, but my professional experiences have impacted strongly upon the personal observations I've been writing about here. The two are very much intertwined and I'll be honest in saying that I'm pretty gutted to have to finish now. I didn't know what to expect of Bosnia before moving here and, to be honest, never expected to develop a huge affinity with this city and country. But now that the narrative has taken a sudden turn and events are moving quickly, I find that I feel a certain sadness in leaving. I still feel like I'm only getting to know Sarajevo as a city, am comfortable with a great little personal set-up. I've met a really amazing group of people: interesting, well-educated, open-minded and adventurous, together they created an environment which was always stimulating and challenging - in a way reminding me of LSE, for those of you who've heard me talk about my time there. They've made my time in Sarajevo the formative experience it has been, and although most of them don't know about this blog, I feel that I owe them a thank you: the coffees and the house parties and the political arguments would have been meaningless without them.
I feel in many ways like I was only getting started here. Having to leave just at the point at which you start to feel effective is extremely frustrating - and after almost two years of short-term work like this it doesn't get any easier living out of a suitcase, finding short-term accommodation, constantly saying goodbye to friends and worrying about what will come next.
But such is the nature of work in this line of business, and the good news is that I'm not going far and will be staying in the region. I'm transferring to The Organisation's Mission to Kosovo at the start of May, and will be based in Pristina for the summer. After that - who knows. But stay posted for some new observations and musings and random adventures from a new (to me) part of the Former Yugoslavia.
And if anyone has any buddies in Kosova or any recommendations for the best pivo in Pristina, that's what the comment box is for!
In the meantime, I'm off on a roadtrip to Belgrade this weekend, making a midweek jaunt to Croatia to (hopefully) soak up some sun on the coast, and throwing one last party of a Sarajevo weekend. At least I'm easing myself gently into making the next move.
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