Professor Judith Bachay’s Experience in Teaching in
Slovenia and Bosnia

Director of St. Thomas University Counseling Program and Professor Judith Bachay, Ph.D., L.M.H.C. was one of two scholars who were awarded a Europe Follow on Fulbright for Slovenia and Bosnia this summer. Dr. Bachay traveled to the countries where she provided lectures and workshops for faculty, students and human service providers in an effort to strengthen sustainable social capital in Slovenia. Click here to see her photo essay on the trip and read about her experience below

Tuzla is the third largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina and home of the University of Tuzla. The collaboration between the University of Primorska in Slovenia and the Social Work School at the University of Tuzla through the Fulbright program, afforded me the opportunity to travel there from Slovenia and teach the students and faculty new counseling methodology and skills. I left feeling tremendously inspired by the students and faculty who are living in a city with an unemployment rate of over 70% and visible markers of war. The Balkan wars have ended, but the effects of war are visible in the miles and miles of land mined fields right next to the road. At least 3 or 4 children die every year, which is less than the 70 people a year who were killed in the late 90’s. The fields are lush and green, with beautiful flowers and fruit trees. It is difficult to imagine that these are virtual arsenals. I was told that after Princess Diana’s advocacy for removal, there has not been too much progress.

The social work students are passionate about helping people cope with suffering and find meaning and purpose in their lives. Many highly educated young people succumb to drug dealing and prostitution out of desperation. Many of them go to Afghanistan for work. Unfortunately, they are sometimes killed. One of my guides is hopeful that her boyfriend that works there for an American company, will be able to find a career within that company in the United States. There are hundreds of lawyers, doctors, teachers and nurses who speak 5 languages and are unemployed.
Most of the people are Muslim. New mosques paid for by “Arabic” countries are being built at a rapid rate. For the first time, young women are beginning to wear burkas and head covering. My colleague asked one of her students why she was wearing the head covering and she said that she needed the money. She was paid 400 euros by a religious fundamentalist group. Someone else told me that the payment comes from a “cell” in Vienna. I was taken to the site of the massacre, a warm spring evening in the center, and the young people were gathering for a typical weekend in town, when a Serbian grenade killed 71 people, 240 wounded, all civilians, most between the ages of 18-25. The bodies were buried in this beautiful park, and the burial ground is replete with pictures of each young person. “ It is difficult to walk through town and see the man who killed your mother, shopping in the market’. Many children do not have parents.

I learned so much from these courageous Bosnians. The students demonstrate resilience born of suffering. They laugh, love, and search for places and spaces where they can contribute to a future of peace- for everyone. Behija Casic has worked with trauma since the genocide of Srebrenica. She leads the program and advocates for her students, her country, with passion. I hope that we can establish a relationship between our institutions. I know that my relationships will endure and enrich my life forever, and I wish the same and more, for my STU family.

- Judith Bachay, Ph.D., Fulbright 2010