Corey and I aft. Cliff Jumping
Dubrovnik, Croatia
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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Triumphant
Croatia
by Preston Price
Croatia is a nation containing much
recent
turmoil. It has only been a nation for just over a decade and has
had a gruesome past filled with war. Supposedly there are
thousands of land mines left over throughout the country’s beautiful
national parks. One would assume that this would have an effect
on the new nation’s ability to rebuild, but this did not seem so to me
when I recently visited. In the article subtitled “War lunch”,
from the book Fear, Death, and
Resistance: An Ethnography of War:
Croatia 1991-1992, Nives Ritig-Beljak uses future Croatian
citizens in a war
town in 1991 to explain the unique ability for Croatians to be able to
overcome such hardships. This is apparent in the last paragraph
of the article when Ritig-Beljak refers to the Croatians by saying,
“The atrocities of war, the destruction, the hunger, the traumatic
experiences, did not however destroy the hope of going back and
starting a new life in Vukovar...”
I focused my collection of data on the topic of
soccer, using it as a tool for better understanding the people of
Croatia’s miraculous ability to bounce back from their violent
past. First of all I would like to state that Croatia came in 3rd
place in the 1998 World Cup. This must have been a surprise to a
world wide audience who had never even seen Croatia participate in a
World Cup, particularly because the country was less than a decade old
at the time and a national soccer team had failed to previously exist.
In the 1998 World Cup, they had upset world renowned teams with vast
histories of being great soccer powers. I see this as a
realization that the peoples living in the area that currently makes up
Croatia, must have had a historical reverence for the game of
soccer. This does not disregard the fact that becoming a new
nation could have also brought inspiration and determination for the
desire to win, to the new citizens of Croatia.
My observations in Croatia led me to believe that
this is true. I took notice of numerous children playing in
streets and many alleys had small goals spray painted on the brick
walls. There were more stores and stands selling soccer jerseys
than any other country that I had previously visited. Perhaps the
greatest evidence that I found was from a brief conversation I had with
a waiter at a local restaurant in Dubrovnik. He told me that he
had been in the recent war for independence, and his love for the game
of soccer had at times been a primary motivation to live and
fight. I had no idea that such past times could hold so much
value for an individual in such desperate times. Whether it be
soccer as a motivating factor or not, I did come to realize that the
Croatian people truly are unique in their capability to triumph over
such hardships.
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