Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 2 • Annie Lafontaine
From refugee to local staff
This last experience, made possible in the environment of post-war
Kosovo, occurred for Suzana and also for Liljana, a 19-year-old Albanian
woman from Pristina. The change both added to their strength in the wake
of the conflict, and left them in an ambiguous social position. Their intermediary
status prevented them from incorporating the entirety of their
wartime experience into the normative discourse of suffering, as this collective
recollection had formed quickly around the fighting and displacements
of 1998 and 1999. They were thus able to express the deeply solitary
experience of being a refugee only as part of a different collective
narrative.
For both Suzana and Liljana, the experience of being a refugee defied
description:
“Well, the same word [refugee] is a bad word”, said Suzana, “just thinking
of that word is like … I didn’t believe that before… I didn’t believe
to my brothers who are living in England and Sweden… I didn’t believe
that, it is very hard to describe it… being like occupied but not… the only
thing that is good on this is that you are not afraid, you don’t hear
helicopters, you don’t hear bombardments but everything is still there,
because you could have been a refugee also inside Kosova… as soon as
you leave your home, you are a refugee, you were not able to go in town
but it is not good when you feel that you are out of your country, and if
you have fun it’s not like fun, when you buy something it’s not like you
are happy when you buy something, even the coffee is not the same.”
Like Suzana, Liljana began describing her experience as a refugee, without
being able to do so:
Well, you cannot describe it. It is awful, very hard to be like that. The
name can show you, you know, R.E.F.U.G.E is like the worst thing in the
world, so it is something that you cannot describe… you don’t have any
power and you don’t have anything but your soul, your body and nothing
else. This is very difficult and very hard for everybody. Even for the
people who accepted refugees it was very hard … every time you feel
like you are not you … So, every day you feel empty, you feel … I mean
it’s just very hard; without any power, without nothing.
Like hundreds of young Kosovar Albanians, Suzana and Liljana began
working as local staff within the international organizations which served
the refugee camps of Albania and Macedonia, and which escorted the
returnees to Kosovo in the summer of 1999. With this job, their status
dramatically changed. They acquired a role and a daily activity that was
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