Dzenita Abaza from Sarajevo fled to Korcula with her family at the beginning of the war in BiH. After a one-year stay in collective accommodation, she decided to leave Croatia and go to Sweden, where many refugees from BiH came in 1993, as reported by Radio Slobidna Evropa.
Since she knew only English, learning of the Swedish language was the primary thing to do.
“I am an economist by profession and this made my stay in Sweden much easier. Whoever had the ambition to continue the studies could do it. I am stubborn by nature and I have seen that people from Sweden allocate a lot of money for projects of return to BiH, but the return was not possible then. It was an enchanted circle and they needed someone to open their eyes and tell them to try to invest in people who could represent a resource in the future. Therefore I started with a project that quickly got the funds for organizing trips to BiH. Then I took the then politicians and a group of Bosnians to visit four municipalities: Prijedor, Banja Luka, Bosanski Gradiska and Sarajevo,” said Dzenita.
After some thinking, she realized that politics could be her future life and the key to integration into Swedish society. That is how she got a seat in the city parliament, and after that, she received an offer to run for the mayor of Kalmar.
Dzenita Abaza became the mayor of Kalmar in October 2014. The city is located on the Baltic Sea, it has 70,000 citizens and it was declared as the best summer tourist destination in Sweden for the third year in a row.
“Kalmar is a middle-sized city in Sweden, it is very beautiful and attractive for tourists. This city preserved the medieval city core and I am proud to be running a city that has such a rich and beautiful historical past. My colleague and I are sharing the position, and my responsibilities are the issue of education, social affairs, integration and partly healthcare,” said Dzenita Abaza.
Since she is a communicative type of person, Dzenita Abaza says that she has a great circle of friends of all nationalities, and the city where she is the mayor has about a thousand other people from the area of former Yugoslavia.
“I am not planning to return to BiH. I am here because of my children and grandchildren. I chose to leave Sarajevo because of them. I am visiting this city very often, I have my parents, relatives, and friends there. Sarajevo will be always in my heart and it will be the goal of all of my trips. I suppose that I will spend some summer time in Sarajevo when I go to retirement,” concluded Mayor of Kalmar, Dzenita Abaza.
(Source: fokus.ba)
