Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
This complicated context creates a tangle of contradictions that often
emerged in womens’ accounts. While some depicted themselves as
guardians of these “traditional” values, 16 others placed themselves at the
centre of a whirlwind of new life experiences created by the war, and by
other rapid transformations of Kosovar reality that took place after the war.
Leonora and Nazife, for instance, recognize it as a woman’s duty to welcome
and entertain any guests (usually relatives) who come to visit her
family. This is considered an exhausting process: guests arrive quite often
“especially in big families composed of a lot of people, parents-in-law,
sister-in-law, etc.”, are usually unexpected, and entertaining them means
taking time away from other (necessary) domestic work. “But this is life”,
it is said, and women cannot avoid their obligations.
Nevertheless, because of the changes in their daily lives, the cycles of
entertaining and visiting have become more complicated for women who
struggle to reconcile old habits with their new activities. This sentiment
was echoed by the two friends: “Now we work much more than before the
war and we don’t have time to visit each other”. Nazife worked full-time
for a German NGO, while Leonora continued to work as a hairdresser, but
also attended several courses (English, Computer Skills). Her aim was to
widen her abilities and increase her chances of finding a better job.
These conflicts created by the difficult combination of old and new
lifestyles seemed most common amongst the younger generation. Young
women, especially, had found in the tragedy of war and of forced migration,
the opportunity to experience greater autonomy and new forms of
responsibility. Sadete, for example, a 29-year-old student of law, was
involved in the management of a refugee camp in which she had sought
shelter with her family: 17
A few days [after] I arrived there, a meeting [was organized] in order to
create a group with all the intellectuals, like teachers, students and people
who knew languages, so they could [more easily] communicate with
organizations that wanted to come and help Albanians from Kosova… I
heard about this initiative and somebody suggested [that I] take part in
the meeting. I went with my father and my uncle. They asked each of us
what our profession was, so I told them that I was a student of law and
they said that I might be useful to them… Then I told them that I knew a
little bit of English and since then I was involved in all the activities of
the council… so we were like the managers of that camp. We were 11
people, two women and nine men… we were working all the time…
This was Sadete’s first work experience, one that not only helped fill the
empty days of a refugee’s life, but made her popular in the camp, allowed
her to connect with many international organizations, helped her improve
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