As an American living in Belgrade, Serbia for the past two years, my daily life is a paradox of passing anti-American graffiti and placards mourning those killed in the 1999 NATO bombings as I walk to the homes of Serbian friends who welcome me warmly. To friends in Serbia, I am an American, but not America. To those who don't know me, I am merely a representative of the United States an American conflated with America for better or worse.
In Belgrade, taxi drivers speak openly about their fear of Hillary Clinton's candidacy for US president. After all, they say, Bill Clinton authorized the bombings, so isn't it possible that it is in the Clinton family's nature to inflict violence on Serbia? (But, by the way, have I been to Chicago? It's a wonderful place and the driver's cousin who lives there tells him Americans are so friendly.) Yet, only a few hours away from the capital city of Belgrade across a border that is not recognized according to Google Maps or Serbia Americans are heralded as heroes to Kosovars. In Kosova, I am both an American and America. In Kosova, the most recently constructed highway is named Beau Biden.
Clearly, the people of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosova, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia the Balkan countries where American Councils has offices have mixed feelings about the West. The United States is either a hero or a villain: it just depends on whom you ask.
Southeast Europe Today
Closer to home, the European Union and the possibility of EU membership are hot topics of debate. In the Balkan Barometer 2015 Public Opinion Survey, 27 percent of Serbian respondents indicated that EU membership would be a bad thing, while just 2 percent of Kosovars felt the same. Joining the EU would be a bad thing, according to 26 percent of respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 23 percent from Montenegro, 15 percent from Macedonia, and 4 percent from Albania.
Yet, regardless of conflicting public opinion, youth of the region avidly look to the EU for educational opportunities. And why shouldn't they? Costs are much lower and opportunities are greater at European university hubs just a short flight or a day's drive away in another country.
Leisure travel opportunities across and near the Balkan Peninsula are also numerous and relatively affordable for average families. Having started recruiting for American Councils high school exchange programs in 2008 as the Country Director for Armenia, I had conducted well over 1,000 interviews by the time I arrived in Belgrade in 2014. I thought I had mastered a model for efficient but thorough conversations I could move things along by simply expecting a "no" regarding travel outside of the home country. After the first few interviews with applicants from the Balkans, however, I realized I would need to adjust my pacing to accommodate the long list of international destinations youth from the Balkans reel off when prompted.
Common Ground Starts with International Exchange
So why, then, would high school students subject themselves to three rounds of increasingly complex application requirements that are the hallmark of the open, merit-based competition for the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX) and the Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES) both scholarship programs funded by the US Department of State?
Initially, the appeal might lie in a chance to skip school during the first round of testing, or in the straightforward desire to try something new and live somewhere else. But ultimately, students come to the same realization that has inspired my work with American Councils: an exchange year in the United States allows students to become more fully who they already are unique individuals. They are not Macedonia or Bulgaria they are Ljupce and Delyan.
The American families that host these students during their time in the US may initially be more familiar with the verb "to balkanize," meaning to divide a region or body into smaller groups than the actual geographic area of the Balkans. Indeed, the Balkans are so unfamiliar to Americans that a student from Albania might just as well be from Armenia.
When the students arrive in the US at the beginning of their exchange year, their nervous and excited host families often greet them at the airport waving American flags. And while some of these students wear sneakers or t-shirts featuring the stars and stripes, it's not so much out of enthusiasm for the US as it is the American flag is such a commonplace staple of global graphic design. Our alumni return home with magnets in the shape of the contiguous United States (even if they were placed in Hawaii or Alaska, as a handful are each year). These flags and maps are simple, cheerful souvenirs to an American. But what might be a straightforward representation to an American can be a symbol of bitter division or of a centuries-long simmering conflict in the Balkans. In the Balkans, as in so many areas with a long history of conflict, flags are fraught with meaning. A map with political borders makes a loud statement.
Yet when they arrive in the United States, FLEX and YES participants from the Balkans are momentarily freed of the burden of their history. The weight of cultural, national, and political identity is lightened by a combination of American obliviousness to world geography and history paired with the American spirit of individualism. Students in the US develop their own identities as unique, multifaceted individuals global citizens, rather than representatives of a given nation whose interests and ties to friends near and far can cross borders that may or may not exist, depending on whom you ask.
FLEX and YES students also begin to reexamine their identities through the lens of their peers from the region before, during, and after their exchange year. I see this change firsthand from the moment students disembark from their return flights.
Students who were hosted in Texas get off the plane with cowboy hats on their heads. The Balkans are now a completely different place to students when they return home as program alumni: the region becomes a compact, diverse invitation to see and try something new and a network of new friends.
Alumni Changing the Status Quo
American Councils' youth exchange program alumni have formed the backdrop for inclusive identity building. The evidence is found in the small moments: a guitar produced in the evening that catalyzes a circle of song; a shared Ottoman past that reveals itself through common loan words across languages of the region; or a review of the various ways in which alumni's names were mangled in the mouths of well-meaning Americans.
In recent years, alumni like Nemanja (FLEX Serbia '13) and Davor (YES Bosnia and Herzegovina '13) have been inspired to collaborate on projects across borders. Their goal is not to build peace or resolve regional conflicts even if both may be part of the cumulative outcome as our programs pass over a decade of operation in Southeast Europe. Nemanja and Davor are more focused on exploring time-tested communication and storytelling techniques and creating accessible messages for both local and international audiences. (And it doesn't hurt to have a good excuse to spend more time with YES and FLEX friends.)
Friendships are the connections truly at the heart of the alumni community.
One's cultural identity in Kosova is still a tense political issue that divides the Albanian and Serbian communities in the country. At the YES orientation in 2015, the group included Ena (YES Kosova '16), the first participant from Kosova who identifies as being from Serbia. At the end of the orientation, neither she or her peers from Kosova were shy about saying how unexpected it was for them that they grew so close. But they had grown close, and with hugs and tears they talked about how much that meant to them, and how much this program already meant to them, more than a month before any of them stepped on a plane for the US The bond has not diminished since the group returned home: Ena and her YES peers from Kosova are planning projects to bring the Albanian and Serbian communities in Kosova closer together.
Introducing Americans to the Balkans
People-to-people connections are just as central to exchange and research programs that bring Americans to this region such as the Balkan Language Initiative, Title VIII Research Fellowships, and the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Abroad program that brings US high school students to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. Host families in Banja Luka in Bosnia, for example, learn that American teenagers are not much different from Bosnian teenagers teenagers worldwide are tempted to bend curfews, and navigating meals can be a minefield.
At the Balkan dinner table, hospitality is a form of enthusiastic caloric assault and the foundation for true exchange. But at these very same tables, alumni recounted their own feelings of being overwhelmed by the sea of fast food that washed over them in the United States. It is during these conversations and in these small moments that relationships are built forming bonds through commonalities, differences, and shared meals.
I sometimes think that I have been offered access to a secret 360-degree window into the world around me. I am honored to learn from and about the Balkan countries where American Councils works and to gain a more nuanced understanding of what burek, gibanica, pita, or banitsa could possibly taste like in the region of the world that prepares them best. At the same time, I have learned more than I ever knew about my own home country through the eyes of our FLEX and YES alumni. As an American and as a representative of America in Serbia where I live and work, I find pleasure and satisfaction in the paradox of being both revered and reviled for the country that defines me to those who don't know me and is just a red, white, and blue backdrop to those who do.
About American Councils Southeast Europe
American Councils opened its offices in Southeast Europe in 2002 to direct international exchange programs for students and professionals in this critical world region. In addition to exchange opportunities for residents of Southeast Europe, American Councils provides language programs for American citizens wishing to travel to Eastern and Southeast Europe, with up to 100 percent funding available through Title VIII funding from the United States government. American Councils also provides educational consulting services and promotes community outreach via an extensive network of alumni and partnering institutions, public and private.