This summer break, like all the previous ones, Dzenana spends with her father and mother in the mountains. While many teenagers dream of a vacation without obligations, summer trips, night outs, and socializing, she helps her parents in the glades of Visocica, about 60 kilometers south of Sarajevo, tending livestock, but also doing chores in an improvised house without electricity, water or internet.
16-year-old Dzenana spends her summer break on the mountain. This is not a vacation, but life in a nomadic family.
“Only for the first year of my life I was not on the mountain, and then I immediately started going with my mom and dad. This is part of my life and I help my mom and dad, and I was never ashamed of this, because I know how we earn money and it will never be difficult for me to help my parents. Once when I was younger, when we returned from the summer break to school, the teachers would ask – where were you during the summer. And I always keep silent on that question, everyone was on vacation, and sometimes I feel bad because of that, but when I think about it, maybe I missed some things that I should have missed. Others come on a trip to places like this, and I’m here all the time,” Dzenana Kozlic stated.
Cut off from civilization, she spends three months at the Stecci necropolis on Visocica.
“I only have a signal all the way up there, and I call my sisters and friends there. I talk to them on camera. I don’t go up there very often, I go once every two days. It wasn’t hard for me to wean myself off my cell phone. Somehow I’m no longer addicted,” she adds.
During the school period, Dzenana lives in Travnik, where she finished the first grade of the madrasa.
“Travnik is a city in my heart. I am always happy there because I have many friends in the madrasa, something is always happening and we always have something to talk about. Even in the madrasa, everyone accepted me, and everyone in the madrasa knows what my parents and I do. No one has ever judged me for that,” she says.
Her father has been nomadic for 30 years.
“I have been to Kupres, Glamoc, and the slopes of Vlasic. We are currently here on the Visocica mountain, Konjic municipality. This mountain has suited me very well, because it has good road communication, and there is good grazing for livestock. There is also a lot of water, which is very important for livestock,” says Samir Kozlic, nomad.
“The other night, a man came to visit us, and he said one sentence that has remained in my memory. He said – you will never become an arrogant person if you do this job. My parents taught me to be honest and fair, and I really should thank them for that. This is the path we have taken now, while I am with my parents, I will help them, God willing, I will be with them even when I leave them,” Dzenana concluded, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
