It is a feeling as scary as it is liberating: not to know where you’re going next. I bet a great deal of CEU students were in the same position – or, well, a state of mind! –before putting on their graduation caps and gowns. Sending tens of applications a day, wondering for how long my parents’ house will remain my post-academic shelter, and checking all the email accounts – even spam folders – like crazy.
The Golan Heights
Well, after a short period of being in this state, I moved to Palestine. You see, I had travelled there as a part of my thesis research at CEU, and got a chance to interview several organizations working in the development field. I liked the place too much, decided I should come back as soon as possible, and…made it happen.
After having returned here, it didn’t take me long to remember why I liked it so much the first time. The social reality in Ramallah (which is, hands down, the cultural capital of the West Bank) is one of a small town: everybody knows everyone, meeting new people is extremely easy, and running into someone you know on the street is an everyday occurrence you have to accept. Both Palestinian and foreign NGO workers, employees of international organizations, journalists: Ramallah, if explored, has a great deal to offer in terms of engaging chats and exchanging experience.
Naturally, it would be simply weird not to mention the very political reality that comes to one’s mind as soon as Palestine gets mentioned. Ramallah itself, as my friends would describe it, is like a bubble. When you have child detentions, arrests, raids and shootings in other parts of the West Bank and even very close to Ramallah itself (like the recent Israeli raid on Qalandia refugee camp, which left three people killed), the city seems calm and safe. After having said that, let me clarify one important thing: I’m not trying to state “how things are” here. Instead, all I can say is how things are for me.
“Did you move there to learn more about the conflict?”a friend asked me on facebook some weeks ago. I think learning, with the right attitude, is inevitable anywhere you go. It doesn’t have to come from books and papers only, but can be nicely wrapped into a friendly chat, an open conversation, or…simply observing what is happening around you. This sort of learning is not place-specific, yet in Palestine, without a doubt, you can observe rather unique (in a saddening way) things.
This is that paragraph where I want to thank CEU. But for its financial assistance, moral support from my professors and friends, many wonderful things would have never happened. Yet since they did, they can only lead to greater things, I believe. Greater in terms of mind expanding, eye opening, and values reassessed. “Not all those who wander are lost”, a famous quote by J.R.R. Tolkien goes. Some wandering, to my mind, is always good.
Justina Poškevičiūtė
CEU Alumna Political Science
Lithuania
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