The seasons are starting to shift, both here and in Melbourne and I feel a bit of a change in tone. The next month or so will be an interesting mix of the familiar and the new.
Hello to my loyal followers...and a warm welcome to those who only just clicked on. When I say warm..I mean literally! We're all currently sharing the amazing warmth of autumn/spring weather, where you wake up to that amazing crisp morning air, and take in the afternoon sunshine.
The last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. I've started to develop the green curriculum that I've been mentioning. Basically, what it consists of at the moment is a 'Contents' page full of themes around the environment and sustainability. The aim is to develop each of these themes into something tangible and something that can be presented to a room full of hormonal Bosnian teenagers. What a task it's become! In the last week I've been doing a bit of research for the first major theme (and one that appears to be the biggest mountain in the world right now): water. So, what have I found out?
The water and wastewater systems here in Sarajevo are relatively complex - as far as I was aware to this point, there was no water authority and the water management systems were lacking from all directions. But it has come to my attention that it's not quite that simple. The authority (maybe not exactly the same in the way that the system is run in Australia, but still an authoritative organisation that's funded by the government) is called 'Vodovod i Kanalizacija d.o.o Sarajevo'. They are responsible for providing clean drinking water and sanitation for Sarajevo - but I wasn't really able to get too much information out of their website. What I'm surprised by is the amount of water that's lost through leakage and other losses annually - a figure greater than what I expected, and comparable to that what is used by people annually.
I've also realised that there's a significant ratio of text that I struggle with in terms of technical language..something that is hindering my ability to gather informative data about the various green topics. Bosnian is a bit enigmatic sometimes!
The lessons or workshops that we're looking at developing once we have the basic information together is going to be a mix of theory and practice to make it more interesting. The practice will hopefully include games an activities that allow the kids to stay interested for one thing, but also imprint some of the important points for each of the themes. I had this view that each theme would be presented as a stand alone lesson, but my friend Adis (the guy that I'm working with) seems to think that it would be better to do it all as a one time thing and hit the kids with a massive weekend of green learning instead. Unfortunately I won't be here to implement the workshops and see how our ideas go in practice, but I'm going to stay in touch with Adis and hopefully keep on helping from a distance.
One over-riding feeling at the moment - I want to tell the kids everything I know...I want to do a massive brain dump and just blast them with the information overload and share with them the complexities of true sustainability and climate change. Thrill them with the concept - and blow their minds at how epically we seem to have globalised everything - almost to the point of no return. But I guess that's something I have to contain, and just keep it as stagnant potential energy that will keep my passion for the environment going. Scare them a bit at a time!
In between the bits of information gathering, I've been doing a teeny bit of translation work and a lot of hanging out with friends that are leaving Sarajevo pretty soon. I've managed to see a few hills that I haven't really seen before - but have mostly been keeping it pretty low key. It's been good!
Next on the agenda - disco fever dancing tomorrow night (ah yeah) and then going back to Gradiska early next week. My grandma Hanifa is leaving the country to go back to her winter home in Sweden and this will be the last (and I'm sure emotional) time I'll see her for this trip. It's also Bajram next week, which is the big celebration at the end of Ramadan, the fasting month of Islam. This will be the first time I spend Bajram with the grandparents in I can't even remember how long. Pretty excited.
When I come back, it's a couple of weeks of hanging in Sarajevo and then Dane arrives - I can't even begin to put my excitement and anticipation for seeing this man into words.
That's it for now!
Thank you for reading.
Sej xx
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