You've gotta FIGHT.... For your RIGHT.....
To Paaaaaaaaaartyyyyyy!!!!
There's no question that these guys have earned their party credentials...
We finally found it - in a flat in Dobrinja... Imagine the most derelict
block of flats you know, remove all the street lights, fill it with smashed
up cars and broken glass, and then go down there with the only person you
know that has any idea where they are and have them leave you around the
back with a case of beer while they go looking for the action... I wouldn't
do it in London, but somehow it didn't seem to be a problem here. We attracted
a little bit of attention, people being understandably nervous of strangers,
but never felt particularly threatened. I get out my IFOR phrase leaflet
that we got issued on arrival, just in case we need to try and explain
ourselves... It contains such useful items as: "Good Evening"
("Dobre Ovece"), "How are you?" ("Kako ste?"),
"Yes" ("Da"), "No" ("Ne"), "Please"
("Molim"), "Is this place booby-trapped?" ("Da
li je mesto sa zamkama?"), "Take me to your leader" (Yes!!!
I've always wanted to say this... "Mozete li me odvesti do
vaseg lidera")...
After about 20 minutes hanging about, Howard reappears with a cheery "Oh,
you haven't been robbed or murdered then..." and leads us up a staircase
so profoundly black that you have to feel your way up. We enter the flat,
which is thick with the usual evidence of heavy combustion, and is doing
a passable impersonation of the world's busiest tannery. I grope my way
through the fug to the enourmous chest freezer in the middle of the room
and offload the crate of beer.
Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long as our ride back home had to leave
early, but we meet some interesting people, including a guy who single
handedly destroyed five tanks in the space of an hour. He won a medal,
and was almost certainly responsible for halting the immediate overrun
of the city.
We also meet Mark Brandon, from St. Lawrence University, New York. He is
over here with William Hunt, and is working with the British Army, clearing
schools of all the hazards of war that have been left behind. He invites
us along on the next trip (this later turns out to be extremely fortuitous...
the day before we are supposed to leave for Split, we run up against two
problems - first, the land rover is so knackered that Simon thinks we will
be lucky to make it. He reckons it will be a one-way journey at best, but,
like the good soldier he is, offers to give it a go anyway. Second, we
hear that the borders have gone completely unnecessary, and are stopping
people for up to eighteen hours at a time, filling in forms with such details
as: "How much did your mother weigh?" and "How tall was
your father?"... We have an RAF flight booked for 16:00 the following
day, and something tells me that they ain't gonna wait for little old us.
But wait! [fanfare] [drum roll]... Her Majesty's finest to the rescue!!!
14th Transport, in the form of Lt. Steve Jermy, steps in and offers us
a lift on a convoy leaving at... yes, you guessed it, oh five hundred hours.
As I remarked to Simon via email after we got back: "IFOR is the ONLY
way to travel"... there's nothing quite like storming through the
border at 50 MPH with a bunch of guys packing automatic weapons and a mandate
to "get the job done".
The following morning we get up with dawn's pink bits, and head over to
the IFOR base in the Zetra stadium. This was the olympic ice-skating rink
and football pitch, but until recently was used as an overflow graveyard,
with over 1,000 graves under the pitch. We're quickly loaded into the back
of a couple of land rovers, and head off to the school.
It is really nice to spend a day with people who are so completely committed
to doing something good, and we are greatly impressed by their compassion.
We spend the day giving out mountains of toys to children who's environment
(and, in a lot of cases, family) has been completely shattered... but kids
are kids everywhere, and the immediacy of suddenly having a plastic flute
or a basketball overtakes them and they are lost in their little play world...
Nothing is too much trouble, and as we leave each school, Lt. Jermy asks
if there is anything else they need... medical kits, notebooks, pencils...
anything.
On the way back we come across a film crew camped in the Holiday Inn car
park. We ask them if we can take some pictures... They are called Dragon
Films, and the duty-dragon leaves the comfort and safety of her camper
van for long enough to tell us that we "can't possibly go to the set,
it's a very dangerous part of the city"... yeah, right. Scary! Off
we go in search of these brave filmmakers who dare to tread where hundreds
of Sarajevans have gone before...
They're very easy to find - you just follow the trail of blown up tanks,
buses, traffic lights etc. that have magically migrated from all over the
city and plonked down in the debris-strewn streets that were nice and tidy
a couple of days ago. It turns out they are making "Sarajevo",
a film based on journalist Michael Nicholson's book "Natasha's Story",
which chronicals his adoption of a nine year old Bosnian girl. They're
all sitting around waiting for the only cloud in the entire sky to stop
being such a spoilsport and blocking the sun. It doesn't look like it's
going to move, and we leave just as a bunch of guys with walkie-talkies
start bearing down on us.
Just down the road is the Mine Action Centre, where
some real people are really risking their actual lives. The scale of the
problem here is unbelievable... If the two guys we met there were left
to clear all the mines and booby-traps themselves, it would take them sixteen
thousand years!!! And that's just the ones in former Yugoslavia.
There are actually more mines than people in the whole world. They show
us some of these nasty little toys (sorry - as their stickers say: "Mines
are NOT toys!"), and we marvel at the fact that someone, somewhere,
makes a good living designing and building them. Actually, lots of people
make a living like this - they give us a CD database of all known mines,
and there are over seven hundred different models, worldwide.
Ayaaaah! Adisia
Lucky Mark...?
Amina, Sugar, Adisia
Airey (DIA) & French friend
Who stole my drink?
Do NOT take my picture...
Have you met my door?
Another hard day at the office
Haven't I seen that bus somewhere before?
No right turn...
Look, I've told you!....
