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Dear friends of the Peace Academy,

We have come to the time for a new phase here at the Peace Academy. Our plans are to focus in the next period on establishing a study of peacebuilding practice in divided societies building on our experience and work in BiH. Within this framework, we are exploring a summer academy for 2020.

We are also saying goodbye to Slobodanka Dekić, Nebojša Šavija-Valha, Tamara Šmidling, and Emina Trumić who have been dedicated colleagues for many years. The energy of this existing group to move the Peace Academy forward has been reduced by professional, activist, and personal engagements. A new board has been formed which is made up of Nejra Čengić, Amela Puljek-Shank, and Azra Smailkadić-Brkić, all of whom have been closely involved with the Peace Academy’s programs. Together we hope to give the Peace Academy renewed energy and focus but which remains true to the values and mission on which we were established.

We are always happy to hear from those of you who were participants and collaborators in our programs until now. Please let us know if you would like to be involved in this new phase in any way.

Randall Puljek-Shank

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Ubleha for idiots

  • Poselami amidžu

    Give my regards to your uncle. Originally: Poselami amidžu. Very colloquial greeting, intentionally formulated from two Turkish words, to emphasize the familiarity of the speakers and their strong connection notwithstanding their jobs and the public. In purely semantical terms, a phrase Pozdravi strica (which would translate the same into English) might be used, but it would not have the same conspiratorial weight. By using colloquial discourse, the speakers distance themselves pointedly from the language of ubleha and thereby quite conciously confirm the essence of ubleha as an autoreferential non-identity. It is also worth mentioning whether an „amidža“ exists in the family in a sense of one's father's brother is irrelevant and that actually, in most cases, he does not exist at all; however, the greeting performs its function which a greeting Pozdravi strica could not perform at all and would perplex the speaker.

from Ubleha for Idiots – An Absolutely non useful Guide for Civil Society Building and Project management for Locals and Internationals in BiH and Beyond by Nebojša Šavija-Valha and Ranko Milanovic-Blank, ALBUM No. 20, 2004, Sarajevo, translated by Marina Vasilj.