A girl's gotta eat

This evening I was told I would be joining several of the activists in attending an important dinner. I was told I needed to put on something more "elegant". It was not mentioned when exactly we would be leaving for this dinner, so I chose to immediately rifle through my bags in an attempt to find something that was both elegant and clean. It was a good thing I chose to immediately begin the search since by it took me about ten minutes to produce enough elegant, fresh-smelling items to create an outfit; this left me ten minutes to get dressed (Although I was unaware that we would be leaving so quickly after I reemerged since I was unaware of a departure time.).

So at this point you may be asking yourself, what was this important dinner? Believe me, I was wondering as well. When I arrived I was finally informed it was actually a 15th anniversary celebration for Humanitarian Law Center, a NGO in Belgrade. Not a dinner. It was more like a cocktail party (but not quite so dressy) in that there were drinks (a variety of unknown alcoholic beverages, water, wine, and orange juice), various finger foods (pickles wrapped in beef, cheeses, nuts, olives, beef and cheese spread cubes, bread, miniature fruit tarts, and various small candies). The servers walked around with the trays held high in the air and people would grab things off of the trays as they pleased. Unfortunately, I was seated at a u-shaped table deeply hindering my ability to grab things as I pleased. Every once in a while a server would stop at our table and let the tray briefly linger so we could quickly grab what we wished. However, mainly I just watched as the servers whisked by with various trays of unknown, appetizing delicacies.

As we sat in at our u-shaped booth, several speeches were made by founding members of the organization as well as by more current workers. They spoke about the early days of the organization and the obstacles they encountered as they tried to fulfill their mission. The organization was started by a woman (who recruited others to join her in her efforts) to document the war crimes. She (and the other members of the organization) spoke to refugees, victims, and witnesses in an effort to record their stories. According to my sources (aka the English speaking activists at WiB), she is a very publicly hated by the majority of Serbia. Her calls for the war criminals to be delivered to the Hague and for persons to be punished for the war crimes is very unpopular among the common Serbian (since the war criminals are still viewed by many here as national heroes). Of course, all of the speeches made throughout the evening were made in Serbian. My sources told me I was not missing much since they were basically anecdotes of the beginning years, depressing tales of their work, and speeches praising the founder and other workers. About twenty minutes into the speeches, I was given a headset (to listen to the English translation of the speeches). After listening for the first ten minutes, I agreed with the earlier assessment of the speeches (although there were a few speeches that were interesting -- mainly those who chose to actually talk about their experiences and the work rather than praising other members of the organization or saying how tired they were when they actively working to document the crimes). Any desire to listen to the speeches (particularly the interesting ones) was blocked by the nuisance of having the headset consistently malfunction. The headset would be working for a minute and I would be able to hear the translation perfectly and then all of a sudden it would break to start again ten seconds later (meaning I missed important elements of the speech making it much harder to follow the narrative of the story). This continued for about fifteen minutes until the headset quit working altogether.

It was interesting to note that for all of my good intentions of listening to the speeches (via the headset) there were many others present who did not even pretend to make an effort at listening. Instead almost everyone was carrying on conversations; many people were standing (There weren't enough seats for everyone and like most cocktail parties a huge part of the party is the mingling.) and walking around and stopping to talk to whomever they wished for however long they desired.

So instead of listening to the speeches, a few of my WiB colleagues would point out various people and the crowd and explain who they were: a famous journalist who has had several assassination attempts on his life; the owners and founders of B92 (a famous radio station that was openly critical of Milosevic and now is also a television station); a famous activist who's activist husband was assassinated while she was sitting right next to him; someone very involved in the war crime tribunals; an American ambassador (who had his own security escort, which was really odd since nobody else had one); directors of various NGOs in Belgrade; etc.

The best part of this celebration was that when I left the event I received free gifts (as a poor volunteer I love free stuff). Each person was given a handbag, a mug, and a notebook (all with the organization's 15th anniversary logo plastered on the front). I was keenly disappointed to be given a bright orange handbag when dark green and red were also being handed out. However, since it was free and I am such a great person, I decided not to complain. It had nothing to do with the fact that I can't even speak enough Serbian to order a simple sandwich making communicating that I want a different color handbag a hopeless matter.

So, I walked away from the event with a bright orange handbag and an empty stomach. As I walked out of the building (which unfortunately I must admit took me two elevator rides, and one walk down the stairs, to figure out where the exit was located), I realized that I did not know the exact way back to the office. I knew that I was somewhere between the WiB office and my language school since we had mainly taken the same route I take to class (with only one turn off-course). After quickly figuring how to get back, I decided the best course of action was to find myself a croissant for dinner. After all, a girl's gotta eat.