Kristina Keenan ’08

In December 2003, I climbed out of an up-armored Humvee and trudged through the snow wearing heavy Army boots, a Gore-Tex field jacket, a thick metal flak vest, Kevlar, and carrying an M16 rifle. I was 22-years-old and people called me “Sergeant Keenan”. I followed my team leader to a rickety shack where we were greeted by two Bosnian officers. We were in the mountains outside of Sarajevo, surrounded by bombed-out houses where people were still living- burning garbage for heat, the source of the thick morning smog. We sat in the Bosnian military shack, an unheated room with a table, some chairs, and a coffeemaker. My team leader asked one of the officers how things were going, while the other poured us shots of Rakia. The men spoke together for about 10 minutes with the help of an interpreter, drinking plum brandy, while I simply soaked in the moment, a girl from small-town Minnesota, trying to figure out where she was. 

On the drive back to base, we passed a family roasting a wild pig in the front yard. They waved for us to join them, so we sat on plastic chairs as they served us bitter Turkish coffee and told us of their troubles. The father said, “Things are not going well for us. There is a lot of tension among the ethnic groups as one has become more powerful politically. People from the other ethnic groups can’t get jobs, can’t support their families because of it.”  A soldier from my team exclaimed, “Well, in America, we have many different kinds of people, from all religions, and we find a way to all get along. You just need to find a way to get along!” I was mortified by his comment but six months later, I was the team leader, and my understanding of local sensitivities helped me successfully conduct over 100 interviews. People opened up to me about the horrors of war, genocide, and the aftermath. I had been sent to Bosnia as a Peacekeeper and I considered this crucial to the learning experience.