The name Bosnia is thought to come from the Indo-European word bosana, meaning water - Bosnia's most plentiful resource. Sarajevska Voda, mineral water from the springs of the River Bosna just outside Sarajevo is award-winning and world-famous. Sarajevans never miss an opportunity to remind me how President Clinton drank no other brand during his time in the White House. The country has a long history of distinction in such matters.

Few remember Sarajevo as a jewel of the Ottoman Empire whose fully-functional city-wide water supply in 1461 was a cause for wonder for many an ancient writer, as the proud host of the largest Winter Olympics for its time in 1984, or as a symbol itself of religious tolerance, where for hundreds of years people of four religions lived and worshipped in harmony around one square.

We all came to the Reconciliation Camp on Bjelasnica for a multiplicity of reasons, but not for any of the above.

The Dutch contingent was variegated in itself. There are those of mixed Dutch and Balkan ancestry, eager to get in touch with their roots, among them the children of those who fled from the instability of the region. There are others who despite their youth feel culpable for their country's influence on course of the war, like Darsha, the girl speaking to the soldier in the photo below.

The EUFOR and THW sought to carry out their duty for a government similarly inclined as the Dutch, some would say this is belated. One could argue late is more constructive than never.

The Serbians and Macedonians were more than an exercise in diversity. Open, idealistic, and slightly crazy (as you can see from the photo), they demolished stereotypes of their respective peoples, and with their presence helped to defuse what could be tense situations - in adding the layer of national identity they diminished the focus on ethnic/religious alignment.

Bosnians, like Zanin, want to believe in a better tomorrow, and many volunteer in youth organisations around the country in the hope of achieving this. Even within this forward-looking group, issues of ethnicity still rankle occasionally. Most Bosnian Serbs will admit to seeing themselves as Serb first, with several expressing a desire to migrate to Belgrade.

Iliya, our landlord, is a man full of love with a beautiful heart. He treated us as his own daughters - changing our sheets ever so often, welcoming us home every day with a genuine joy, helping us with our laundry, our bags and in my last few days alone in Sarajevo made me breakfast, and insisted on packing a large bag of food for my long journey home. His apartment looks untouched circa post-WWII.

He has chosen to leave untouched reminders of the siege - broken windows, putty-filled holes in walls and cupboards, photos of those who've left. I showed him my photos of Srebrenica. He concluded our discussion by showing me, almost resolutely, photos of his grandson, wife and daughter. "I love my family", his eyes seemed to say, "that's what counts."

As I left his house for the very last time, he asked me to promise to send him a photo so he would never forget us - the two blondes, the little one and the Oriental girl - writing his address for me in a fluid, flowery script of a different era, sepia-toned. This is the photo I sent him.

Then there are the very people who brought me to Sarajevo in the first place - the inspiring staff at Wings of Hope.

There's Enisa, a genuine Serbian Serb who despite the occasional prejudice against her at the very beginning has never looked back.

Elvir, camp commandant, formerly with the Bosnian Army and has the scars the prove it - down his back runs a long deep trough of scar tissue, a grenade wound.

And Maja, who in this photo looks like my long-lost sister, director of the Centre who initiated the entire operation ten years ago. She'd sat down with a bunch of like-minded friends in Sarajevo, decided enough was enough and that it was time to convert talk into action, borrowed a car and drove for 5 hours to Banja Luka - the capital of the Republika Srpska - to look for people to share their vision of reconciliation by taking the very first step themselves. People thought they were completely insane. "You have to look past the hurt," she said. Two girls agreed, so they all drove back to Sarajevo and Wings of Hope was born.

And then there's the WASA gang, comprising the OXAB (Oxford Aid to the Balkans) girls and our American psychology PhD student friends Ben and Dan from Denver. In this photo, we're bonding over weather-worn snacks and a surgical mask.

After boarding the Czech Airlines flight to Prague following a two hour delay at Butmir Airport, I walked to my seat and promptly fell asleep, only to be roused by a voice calling for me in a thick Irish accent.

"Hello, I want to talk to you!"

I opened my eyes, fully expecting a ginger haired Irish lad, and found in front of me instead a pint sized Bosnian girl with a brilliant smile.

"Can I see your camera, please?"

Her name is Zahra. She was born after the war and doesn't seem to fully understand how her family ended up in Ireland. Does she see Sarajevo as home, I wondered out loud?

"Yes, the rest of my family's here!" she giggles, and in between whispering to her mother and sister in fluent Bosnian chatters on to me as our plane leaves the ground, about her friends, school, her sisters, Mummy and Daddy. She's very happy, she says, very very happy to be alive and ten.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, the heart-shaped country, where everyone always has time for a smoke or a pot of thick Turkish coffee, where a man is measured not by his wealth but by the friends he keeps.

Will this peace last? Will Zahra have to witness civil war in her lifetime? Will the efforts of Maja and her dedicated team go to waste?

There are those among the old who long for their lives in Tito's Yugoslavia; the young bemoan the lack of opportunity and turn to NGOs for jobs and the prospect of eventual emigration; Bosnians of all ages despair about the three-headed rotating presidency. Even among the most educated and open-minded of Bosnians one can sometimes still detect more than an undercurrent of discontent against the other ethnic groups. They deal with this in their own unique individual fashion. Some love, some hate, some try to forgive, others forget. Everybody wants to move on.

Some give the BiH 35 years of relative stability. It is a delicate balancing act: between two entities - the Federation (Croat and Muslim) and Republika Srpska (Serb), among several major religions - Orthodox Christianity (Serb), Catholic (Croat), Islam (Bosniak), world powers - to EU or not to EU, and most of all between expiation of the guilt of those who permitted this horror and healing the hurt and loss of those who had to experience it.

Cao is Bosnia for both hello and goodbye, an informal greeting to friends or family as one arrives or departs. How many aid workers, volunteers and generations of Bosnians must cycle through these iterations of coming and going before Bosnia and Herzegovina a workable peace is fully restored, no one can say for certain.

But until then, the work must continue - lest we forget.

*

Once upon a time a worthy caller asked:
Who is that what is that forgive
Where is that
Whence is that
Where to is
That
Bosnia
Tell

And the questioned gave then a prompt reply to him:
Bosnia forgive there is a land
Both barren And barefoot forgive
Both cold and hungry
And even more
Forgive
Defiant
By
A dream

Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar, Bosniak poet

leia gwyn at 12.42 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

There are no tourist maps of Srebrenica. It is not mentioned in most guidebooks, nor is it important enough a city or town to be shown on many maps of BiH. You won't even find the Centrotrans Srebrenica bus schedule in the information booklet distributed by the tourist information centre.

Perhaps that was why they couldn't understand why I wanted to go.

Darsha spoke of how their eyes had followed her as she'd walked down the main street - questioningly, accusingly. She was adamant that they hated foreigners because they remembered what the Dutch had done - or not done.

"Don't go," she muttered as she lit her cigarette on the campfire, "they hate us still. I don't think they want to be reminded of it." Her playful aquamarine eyes were strangely sombre.

Srecko, a Serb as happy as his name, pointed out that the Srebrenica massacre was reprisal for a Muslim attack on another Serb village. "It's not as simple as the international media have made it out to be. There's not much to see there."

Mirza, Sarajevan and goatied Bosniak, told me to go the Jajce instead. "Why make yourself depressed? Enjoy the beautiful Bosnia that tourists like. Come, I will tell you how to get to Jajce."

But Dan, clinical psychologist who had been there as part of psychosocial support group sessions for teenagers thought otherwise.

So I went just the same, rising at six to catch the tram to the bus station in time for the daily bus to Srebrenica. The man behind the counter peered down at me through his square rimmed glasses with a look of mild surprise as he issued me my ticket.

I boarded the bus, devoid of tourists. In it sat a number of babushkas, taking respite from the chilly morning wind beneath their faded kerchiefs. Two elderly men stared impassively out of the open windows. One leant a walking stick on the arm of his threadbare jacket. The other had arms that uncrossed only to finger his flat cap. I was leaving youthful, vibrant Sarajevo for the Republika Srpska.

It was a four hour ride meandering through the hills. The bus conductor, a friendly fellow with an impish smile came over periodically to make conversation - in Bosnian, but the journey soon lulled me to sleep. I awoke twice, once when he helped unravel me from the tangle of my sleep calisthenics, and again when he tapped me on the shoulder to announce that we had reached our destination.

"Sarajevo?", I asked as I stepped off the bus, my question drowned out by the engine being coaxed by to life.

"Sarajevo?", I repeated. He laughed and pointed at the sign by the door. 16.10. I had four hours. Now I had to find where to begin.

Srebrenica is essentially one street on the side of a hill, with the town hall and bus station at one end.

The tourist information office-cum-art gallery is at the other. In between are shopkeepers staring out of their provision shops as well as the occasional restaurant. Everybody watched as I made my way up the slope.

I started by asking for directions at the tourist office.

"You want to see the spas?" asked the lady at the desk.

"No, I'm looking for the memorial and the battery factory."

"Potocari? Go out and take a taxi."

"And the battery factory?"

"Sorry, what?"

"Battery factory?"

"Sorry, I don't understand. I speak little English, more German. I cannot help you. If you want to see the art gallery, it is upstairs."

As a Bosniak island deep in Serb territory, Srebrenica was viewed as a threat to Serb territorial integrity. Beginning in 1992, the Serb Army commenced manoeuvres to have area 'cleansed'. By July 1995, humanitarian aid supply convoys were no longer able to reach Srebrenica. Soon after, Serb forces infiltrated the UN Safe Area of Resolution 819. As the situation deteriorated further, more than 20,000 Bosniak refugees fled to Potocari, the base of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). They had been promised in 1993 by the Commander of UNPROFOR that they were under UN protection and would not be abandoned. Many never found safety.

The killing of more than 8000 Bosniak men and boys which followed was the largest mass murder in Europe after the Holocaust. Most of their names are etched in marble in the memorial-cemetery complex that now stands at that site.

At first glance, Potocari is a peaceful hamlet nestled among the hills. Even the memorial with its spacious aesthetic appears in harmony with the undulating expanse of the surroundings. But turn a corner and one is confronted with row upon row of overcrowded headstones all facing Mecca - the cemetery had been built for approximately 2000, but with the frequent discovery of mass graves, more than 8000 now lie buried here.

I reached Potocari just as the French ambassador and his family were about to arrive. The tiny museum on the compound had been unlocked in anticipation of their visit and I slipped in undetected by the curator. On the walls were photographs, close to life size, of the exhumation of mass graves, the torture implements used on Bosniak prisoners, and the little things they brought to their deaths - a prayer book, photos of family, the Koran, a decapitated doll.

I stepped out of the air-conditioned room and into the blistering heat. The ambassador's car was pulling up in the driveway and I crossed the road to a little stall that sold religious items for prayer and dedication. The fragile young woman did not understand my English, gesticulating in exasperation in the direction of her flowers wilting in the summer shade. She ran out of the stall, leaving me to worry that I had startled her excessively with my insistent questioning in a foreign language. A few minutes later, she returned with a well-groomed man who looked like he'd just arrived from the city. She muttered something in Bosnian and I caught the word Ingleski - English. She was asking him if he spoke English.

"Hello! What is it you're looking for?", he asked.

"Oh, you speak English!"

"I have to in my line of work. I work for the diplomatic service. Just drove the French ambassador and his family here from Sarajevo."

So he had just come from the city.

"I'm looking for the battery factory."

"It's right over there. You can't miss it. Just walk straight down this road and turn left."

"Is there some kind of procedure I must know about to enter?"

"No no, it's pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago. You'll be able to get in, no problem. Where are you from by the way? China? Korea? Japan?"

"Singapore. Thank you very much for your help."

As you pass the battery factory on the road from Potocari to Srebrenica, you will notice no visible indication of its former use. Returning the way I had come, I turned left as instructed and walked slowly towards the building with walls that had collapsed and their frames rusted. 20 metres from one of those walls, I felt something wet and slimy sliding along my calf. A dog had taken an alarming interest in my ankles and snarled menacingly with every step I tried to take whether towards or away from my intended destination. I deeply regretted not paying the 150 pounds for rabies shots at the John Radcliffe Hospital back in Oxford and continued to attempt to inch away from my canine adversary.

A shrill whistle resonated across the open field. The dog froze and began whimpering softly before slinking away in the direction of the sound. In the distance, a tall man in overalls was beckoning me towards him. I waved back. He waved some more.

Hesitantly, I picked my way across the field, keeping a lookout for the dog. It stayed by the man's side, never moving, tail firmly between its hindlimbs. As I neared him, the man turned around and started walking, then stopped and motioned for me to follow him. Wordlessly, I did, and the dog followed us both at a safe distance.

We climbed through a broken window into a small room.

"Srpski.", he said, almost serenely, pointing at the graffiti on the wall.

In July 1995, Serb soldiers had infiltrated the compound to rape and to kill while the Dutchbat watched. This must be what they did in their spare time.

We climbed back out of the room and went up a flight of stairs into another series of rooms.

"Holland.", he said, his voice again dispassionate.

These rooms would have been the soldiers' quarters of the Dutchbat, 600 soldiers whose supplies dwindled over the course of 1995 as the Serbs tightened the noose around Srebrenica, launching attacks from nearby hills, destroying supply convoys. Eventually, soldiers who left the area on leave were forbidden from returning. By July that year, only 400 remained.

Perhaps this is how the Dutchbat kept their morale up.

The VRS Drina Corps later took several Dutch soldiers hostage, threatening to kill them and to shell the entire compound packed with tens of thousands of panicked civilians unless NATO ceased air-strikes on Serb bases.

NATO complied.

My guide's face was as he traced a path from one Serb outpost to another on the map painted on the far wall.

Several hundred soldiers with severely depleted supplies of food, medicine and ammunition had been surrounded by thousands of Serb soldiers. Reinforcements from the UN and NATO were not forthcoming. The Dutch hadn't had much of a chance.

The dog began to whimper and paw at the ground. As if roused from a dream, he brought us down a different flight of stairs and into a meeting room. On those walls were colour photographs of the Tuzla column - the several thousand young men who chose to make a run for freedom in Tuzla, 55 kilometres away. Starvation, exhaustion and Serb forces ensured that the vast majority did not survive.

He gently pressed something into my hand. It was a booklet of facsimiles of official correspondence and contemporary press reports from between 1993 to 1995 published to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide.

I thanked him in my best Bosnian, and I saw the slightest hint of smile cross his lips before he turned away. It was time to leave the building.

He invited me to sit down outside his office and offered me a cigarette. I declined, and attempted to ask him several questions in English. He didn't speak Ingleski he replied, only German and Bosnian. He had worked in the memorial-cemetery complex for several years now, and he was a Bosniak.

"You're a Christian, aren't you?" he asked, staring at my cross. I nodded and waited for his reaction. There was none.

I paused and enquired about his family in broken Bosnian. He told me how his father had been shot with the old men and young boys right here by the battery factory, and how his brother had died in the Tuzla column, about how they took young men away in buses before killing them with the Dutch soldiers standing by, about the hills and the ambushes there. His sister had refused to stay and had moved to Holland. Only he and his mother remained in Srebrenica. He turned my attention towards a nearby sculpture, of the stylised figures of two women - one cradling a babe in her arms and looking sadly at her other child, the other with a finger pointing despairingly at the heavens. Engraved at its base in Bosnian: "The Mothers, Women & Children of Srebrenica"

I pointed in the direction of the cemetery, then the battery factory and with my very rudimentary German asked, "Warum? (Why?)" He shrugged and stared into the hills, before turning the tables on me.

"Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing in Bosnia?"

I told him, sketching words what words I could and miming the rest. He nodded as if he understood. He took the pen from my hand, wrote a series of numbers on the sheet of paper - his birthday - and passed me the pen, expectantly. I did the same. He picked up the sheet and smiled. "Your birthday is coming, you're young," he said pointing my numbers on the sheet. He was only 31.

At the mention of my birthday, I became fully aware, for the first time in several hours, of the present.

"Today, fighting between Serbs and Bosniaks?" I asked. "Samo mallo," he replied, "mallo mallo (little little).". I smiled and thanked him, and as I shook his hand I asked if he would let me take a photo of him. He agreed. I showed it to him. "Not bad," he joked, and on that note we parted.

It was just past 2.30 pm and I was still in Potocari. I ran to the main road. Still shaken and unable to afford another taxi back to Srebrenica town, I stuck my thumb out gingerly. Surely somebody would give me a ride.

Several minutes later, I broke just about every rule possible regarding solitary travel for women: I climbed into the back seat of a two-doored car with two beefy young man blasting music from their speakers. They spoke no English and the only word which seemed to link us was 'Srebrenica'.

The ride was uneventful and they dropped me off outside the bus station. There were still 80 minutes to my bus. In need of some quiet, I climbed the hill to sit in the garden of the Serb Orthodox Church overlooking the town.

I closed my eyes and tried to pray as images of the hours before this flashed before me. It was unreal, and so unfair. The hills around me, previously expanses of undulating beauty now seemed full of hidden secrets - mass graves, painful last moments, witnesses to the very human capacity for perversion. I fingered my cross questioningly.

But it wasn't about religion. Serbs and Croats fought each other - both believe in the same God. Allies fought among themselves - the Croats and Muslims battled each other, too. The lust for power knows no theistic conventions. I buried my face in my hands and prayed fervently.

I am not sure how much time had passed before I looked up again. From where I sat, I could see the mosque and the Catholic church. It is easy to forget that for centuries religious harmony was a way of life - even in Srebrenica.

I turned on my camera and panning the scene, observed the landscape through my viewfinder, as if placing the machine between myself and what I saw would somehow distance me from my physical setting. I fiddled with my zoom and peered sadly at my screen.

Then something caught my eye: on the hill behind the Catholic church, was a small Muslim cemetery. I pictured the hymns of the faithful comforting the living and the dead - there was a resilient beauty to how both faiths saw fit to place in such close proximity a sanctuary on earth and a resting place for all eternity.

I was ready to go.

*

Dan's thoughts on his visit to Srebrenica are here

leia gwyn at 10.29 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

The Latinski Most (Latin Bridge) is where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot by a Serb assassin, Gavrilo Princip, on 28 June 1914. This is the event which, we are told, catalysed World War I and the chain of events that finally tore the Austro-Hungarian Empire asunder.

But apart from buildings and bilingualism (Bosnian and German), Austria-Hungary left her mark in another way - by choosing Sarajevo to be the first city to have a tram line operational from dawn to dusk. There was sufficient distance between Bosnia and Vienna for comfortable experimentation.

The tram system is still in existence - it criss-crosses the length and breadth of the city. No longer a symbol of Austro-Hungarian technical superiority, its constituent parts remain the de facto billboards of European power, their paintwork covering everything from promising cheap flights to Rome to commemorating the reconstructive efforts of the United Kingdom during Britain's Presidency of the European Union with a Union Jack or two thrown in for good measure.

Once inside a tram however, there's be no mistaking which part of the world you're in. You're surrounded by Bosnians, yes, Bosnians - there's never enough time in tram conversation for someone to get to telling me whether they're Serb, Croat or Muslim. The teenage boys awkwardly hit on you, older folk stare, and people in between just sort of glance over you before hurrying onward. It's a bit like riding the waves of people in the Tube in London, or clutching on for dear life to the seat of an overcrowded - and overheating - matatu in East Africa. People-watching on the Sarejevo tram is one of my favourite ways of seeing the city.

*

My Czech Airlines fiasco meant that I had one night in Sarajevo before we had to journey to Bjelasnica for the youth camp we were to help organise, so it was not long before I found myself bundled up with all my things on a tram to the zeljeznicka stanica (train station). Out of habit, I wandered to the back of the tram and was soon lost in thought, leaving Sarah, Linda, Monica and Vildane seated nearer the front.

Outside Bascarsija, near the Sebilj, a pair of tram inspectors board the tram and ask for our tickets. I hold mine out as instructed. "Penalty!" shouts the tram inspector in front of me, pointing to a ticket that read 26 KM (S$26/9 pounds/US$18).

Apparently, I hadn't realised I'd neglected to validate my ticket. Confused, I step forward to the machine, which I hadn't seen while boarding the tram, decipher the instructions and validate my ticket on the spot. They snatch it away from me.

"That's my ticket!" I cry.
They ignore me and shout at me periodically in Bosnian.
"I have a ticket, so why do I have to buy a new one? Look, I've even validated it!" I continue.

A Bosnian man standing next to me attempts to defend me. They promptly usher him off the tram at the next stop - he spits in disgust as he leaves - while pushing me towards the very rear of the tram, blocking me from view from the rest of the passengers.

As the tram continues along its route, tram inspectors board the tram one after another. It seems they have requested for reinforcements, and it is not long before they have assembled a posse of portly, disgruntled conductors.

Surrounded by five large Bosnian men screaming at me in their language, I am somewhat bewildered, but after a week of battling with the ineptitude of Czech Airlines, I am certainly not in the mood to entertain a bunch of underpaid civil servants, much less allow them to wrest my hard-earned cash off me, what with a mere 100 KM for my three weeks in Bosnia after paying for my 'penalty' air ticket to Sarajevo. I snatch my ticket back from the first conductor, fold my arms and look him right in the eye. The girls, by this time, have noticed the commotion, and are trying to get the attention of the inspectors.

"Passport!" the inspectors bellow, "Papers!".
"I haven't got them on me! I'm only going around town." I reply indignantly, clutching my bag even more tightly against my chest, praying hard that they wouldn't search me down the front of my polo shirt and cargo trousers in the middle of a public tram. After the hassle at the Bosnian Embassy in London, the last thing I needed was to lose my visa or to be group-groped publicly in the name of civil service efficiency.

"Stop it!" Vildane said, finally, in Bosnian. They'd initially assumed we were all foreign and were surprised by the revelation that among us was one of them.
"So you understand," they snarl at Vildane, in Bosnian.
"Don't hurt my friend," she continues, in English.

"Read, English," they bark at me, pointing at the sign, half-hidden behind the validation machine.
Monica, in a flash of inspiration, cries, "Just because she speaks English doesn't mean she reads it, don't be silly, look at her, she's not English..."

They shove her aside, before forcing the rest of the girls off the tram as well at the train station. Several people complain about the absurdity of this petty corruption. In response, the conductors ask all remaining passengers to leave the tram. To our collective horror they lock all the tram doors. leaving me alone, encircled, still at the back of the tram, refusing to back down.

Linda runs to get Elvir, camp commandant and former captain in the Bosnian Army as the rest of the girls bang on the tram doors. The girls start to lose sight of me.

Worried, Monica hands over 25 KM through the window. They lose interest in me, count the cash, and quickly disperse.

It's all over.

Vildane told me after the event that one of the conductors had pulled her aside and sworn at her, viciously. She had stared impassively at him in return.

"What did he say?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter," she smiled, "It's just not done in this culture, to swear at a woman."
"I don't think it's the done thing in any culture."
"Never mind, we're all safe, that's what matters. You've had a really bad week, haven't you, Xin Hui?"
I laughed.

There's just not much to be said in such situations. I'm just glad Sarah, Linda, Monica and Vildane were there to watch my back. Vildane, she's a strong one.

*

After Mostar, it was time to go home to Iliya's. His grandfatherly care was always a comfort, no matter what happened - or didn't. I felt safe in his time capsule apartment, holes and all. Then of course, there's Murphy's Law.

At the tram stop outside the bus station, a young man, very Scottish and slightly lost, came up to me.

"Do you speak English?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Do you know what tram to take to get to the city centre?"
"Yes, Line 1, but I think it's been delayed, I've been here for almost half an hour."

Alec was from Scotland and studied in Edinburgh. He hated planes and had just taken a train that weekend from Ljubljana to Sarajevo. The tram police had got him that morning, and he was visibly nervous as we boarded the No. 1 tram. All seemed hunky-dory until two stops from the station, without explanation the tram driver changed the sign on the front of the tram from '1' to '2'. Alec and I worriedly wondered out loud how we were going to get back to our respective rooms.

"What are you doing in this fucking shithole? Go home!" a man across from us cried, for no apparent reason. Startled, Alec backed away.
"I'm a student working for a charity on Mjedenica," I replied, stepping in front of Alec.
"Oh," he said, quietly smoothing his unruly grey-flecked hair.
"My friend," pointing at Alec "is a student, too. They've suddenly changed the tram route in the middle of our journey and we don't know how to get back."
"Where are you going?"
"Skenderija and Bascarsija."
"I'm going to Skenderija, too, I'll show you the way, follow me."
I looked apprehensive.
"You, both. We have to change trams at the next stop."
"But we don't have tram tickets for the next tram," I said. Alec nodded in agreement.
"I don't want to go through all that with the tram inspectors again," Alec ventured.
"Do you want to go home? They don't work so late. If they do, just ignore them."

"Well, it's either him or we end up in Ilidza for the night," I whispered to Alec. He sighed, resigned, and we stepped out of the tram with our erstwhile heckler. I walked on ahead as Alec followed on reluctantly.

The three of us boarded tram 3 together. I recognised the place names on the sign as we climbed on. Heaving a sigh of relief, I struck up conversation with our guide. Alec was content to stand at the other end of the carriage.

"I still don't understand why you're here," he said, "there's nothing to see here, nothing to do."
"I teach young children and orphans as well as work with youth to promote ethnic reconciliation. That's a thing or two to do."
He smiled. "I was bored and couldn't sleep, so I'm going to town to have a drink. Do you like this shithole?"
"Not when tram conductors get me." I scanned the tram for Alec to give him a conspiratorial wink, but he had already left. We hadn't noticed him alight.
"Oh those bastards. They're not paid very well. They let Bosnians on for free all the time. The money has to come from somewhere."

We alighted together at Skenderija, outside the post office.

"It'll get better," I said.
He laughed. "All the best."
I offered my hand. He shakes it, firmly.
"Thank you so much for your help. Do take care."
"No problem, good bye."

And I hadn't thought to ask him his name.

leia gwyn at 9.18 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

This is the famed Mostar

gem on the emerald Neretva River

on whose Stari Most (Old Bridge) young men used to prove their machismo.

I ask Zanin, friend, guide and epitome of happy-go-lucky youthfulness, when he will demonstrate his coming of age. He laughs and declines the offer to plunge into the icy water and buys me an ice-cream instead to combat the scorching summer sun.

"Where shall we go next? Across the bridge to make more faces at summer bathers?" I enquire. We'd been idly tossing pebbles into the river and watching people cringe as they lowered themselves into the water. Zanin, spotting the opportunity for general levity had danced a little jig on a stone in the middle of the river with expressions alternating between exquisite pain and extreme confusion. You can always count on Zanin to find some way of making everybody laugh or causing all us girls to sigh as he speaks softly about his sweet Semina - he's waited for her for five years now, and will continue his quiet courtship until her parents relent.

"No," he mutters, his face darkening, "that's the Croat area, if we go there will be trouble."

"Ah, but you're a hero, aren't you, Zanin?" I tease, oblivious to the insensitivity of my statement as he swiftly replies, eyes flashing, "Yes, that's why if they hurt anyone in my family, I will pick up a gun and kill the bastards. I saw them shoot my best friend right in front of me. I was too young to do anything then, I will not let them go the next time, no, not I."

Stunned and realising no hole was going to open up to swallow up the faux pas which was me, I find my voice a whisper, "but what about Semina? What will happen to her when you go fight the war?"

"She will be fine. She will forget me. I will tell her to."

I'd always thought of Zanin as the party jester, eager to please, easy-going almost to the point of being a doormat at times, dutifully offering a joke or two with a frequency akin to the way people in this nicotine-addicted country seem to whip out lighters - all the time. I'd forgotten that like everyone else, he has his own story of pain and loss in that terrible war.

We finish our ice-creams in silence, staring out at the cross in the distance on the Croat (Catholic) side of the bridge. In rebuilding Stari Most, they might have reconstructed the bridge between the Croat and Muslim quarters of Mostar, but reconciliation, that's a separate matter.

As we stroll down the Boulevard, the former front-line during the war, a sprinkling of colour on the earth-coloured rubble catches my eye. I stop and fish out my camera.

"What is there to photograph?" Zanin asks, bewildered, "There are only broken buildings and bad memories here. Why don't we turn down this..."

"Flowers on the window sill, a satellite dish amidst the rubble - life among the destruction," I interrupt, waving my hands as if to embellish the frame.

He pauses to contemplate the thought. "You are an artist," he says, smiling.

I return the smile, put my camera away, and we walk on.

You see, Zanin, I want to believe. I hope one day you will, too.

leia gwyn at 6.09 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

It's been a week on Bjelasnica, the second highest peak in Bosnia and where the 1984 Winter Olympics were held. Sunburnt, scalded, bruised and sleep-deprived. More soon.

leia gwyn at 5.09 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

After the madness that was Czech Airlines, I was prepared to be grateful for whatever accommodation the charity had seen fit to put us up in. I took comfort in the knowledge that at the very least it wasn't going to be a mud hut infested with mosquitoes and the stench of freshly deposited bovine excrement. I toyed with images of a Soviet-style concrete monolith and wondered if Tito's independence from Stalin extended to architecture.

Peering through the drizzle, Sarajevo wore a hard, heavy calm. She seemed to stare back, wide-eyed and tired through the gloom. It was not until the street lamps started to increase in number that I started to notice the state of her face - shrapnel holes pockmarked the facades of most buildings we passed. And as we neared the city centre, framed by rubble was a gaping hole perforated by pinpricks of light from a neighbouring apartment block, the exterior of which was still patterned brogue-like with holes. So the hardness was steel - she was unyielding. People continued to live in their bombed out buildings, ten years on. Perhaps the Sarajevo of the siege was no myth after all. They say that women strolled down the promenades immaculately dressed in the sharpest of European fashions, their heels clicking on the pavement in counterpoint to the bullets that rained nearby.

As the very last of my thought balloons was shot down by insistent raindrops, we pulled up at a grim grey building on Skenderija. A few metres ahead of where we'd stopped, the road, like much of the city, was under reconstruction. Enis mumbled that it'd been going on for some time - a pothole of more than average depth required more attention. Vildane rang the doorbell to my apartment as I marvelled at the state of the buildings around me. Most had obviously been through the war, including number 26, which housed my room. But as with that apartment block, no one seemed to mind.

leia gwyn at 4.23 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

Seems like Bono got here before I did.

Is there a time for keeping your distance
A time to turn your eyes away
Is there a time for keeping your head down
For getting on with your day

Is there a time for kohl and lipstick
A time for cutting hair
Is there a time for high street shopping
To find the right dress to wear

Here she comes
Heads turn around
Here she comes
To take her crown

Is there a time to run for cover
A time for kiss and tell
Is there a time for different colours
Different names you find it hard to spell

Is there a time for first communion
A time for East 17
Is there a time to turn to Mecca
Is there time to be a beauty queen

Here she comes
Beauty plays the clown
Here she comes
Surreal in her crown

You say that the river
finds the way to the sea
and like the river
you will come to me
beyond the borders
and the dry lands
You say that like a river
like a river...
the love will come
the love...
And i don't know how to pray anymore
and in love i don't know how to hope anymore
and for that love i don't know how to wait anymore

Is there a time for tying ribbons
A time for Christmas trees
Is there a time for laying tables
And the night is set to freeze

leia gwyn at 7.15 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

or

The Road to Sarajevo

8 July, Saturday

After a sleepless night of whirlwind packing, waving goodbye to PJ, I hop on the coach to Heathrow Airport. The sky is clear and my kitchen is sparkling. It looks like it's going to be a good trip.

Half an hour later, on the M40, the coach grinds to a halt. It's not long before frustrated commuters jump out of their cars and march up and down the motorway. Our coach driver mutters something about a motorway closure. It seems that no one knows what's going on. Fearing the worst, I ring up the Czech Airlines ticketing office in London to rebook my flight while Vildane waits for me at the boarding lounge.

Two hours later and 105 pounds poorer (having had to upgrade my ticket to fly tomorrow), I arrive at Heathrow. My flight leaves that very minute. Still in a state of disbelief, I slowly meander my way to the Central Bus Station and sleep the whole way back to Oxford.

PJ picks me up at Gloucester Green with his friend Jeff, who's just driven in from London and had driven past the tailback (which lasted all of 5 minutes at his driving speed of at least 60 miles an hour and included the coach I was in). A National Express Coach had caught fire.

Thankful it wasn't my coach and still wondering why no news agency had reported this, I stumble home and collapse in bed after the World Cup 3rd place play-off. I guess I'll have to miss the Final tomorrow. Oh well.

9 July, Sunday

PJ, having noticed I need the sleep, very sweetly decides to drive me to the airport so I won't have to wake up at midnight for the Stansted coach. At 5 am, we set off in Humphrey for the airport.

It's now half-seven, a wrong turn, a cup of tea and a Lucozade later, we arrive at Stansted. I rush to the ticketing desk to pick up my ticket. Chatting with the chap on duty reveals he is a fellow Zidane fan - he is from Algeria and does not support France, only Zizou. He bids me bon voyage as I tell him to enjoy the Final for me because Zizou is going to carry les bleus to their second World Cup in eight years.

Fast-forward through check-in, security and the gate. The pilot suddenly throws my bag off the plane and refuses to alter his loading sheet. No explanation is given. Due to this 'security issue' I have to miss my flight - again.

The stewardess who brings me to pick up my bag supports Italy. Not a good sign. I ring PJ, who is so sleep-deprived he's still looking for the car. He asks me to wait for a second and to hold the phone away from my ear. I comply. A second later, there's a loud male-equivalent of a scream. It ends and he says he'll meet me at the ticketing desk.

My fellow Zizou fan is shocked to see me, and in sympathy files a report about the security issue to ensure I won't have to pay another penalty fee for another flight change. Unfortunately, there are no flights till Thursday unless I want to pay another 300 pounds for Business Class. I laugh, and he books me in for the Thursday flight.

France lose the World Cup. Zizou is sent off for head-butting the Animal. Looks like Miss Italy was a bad omen.

13 July, Thursday

By now, I think must have exhausted all my bad luck. I forbid PJ to drive me to the airport again. He waves at my bus in the dark as it pulls out of Gloucester Green. I am so going to get to Sarajevo tonight.

At Stansted, despite it being four hours to my flight, my paranoia renders me incapable of sleeping at 4.30 in the morning. I sit on the floor in the airport reading.

At 6.30 am, I'm the first at the check-in desk. The woman at the counter stares at my ticket and says I'm not on the system. My friends at the ticketing desk back me up (I forget to mention the nice lady with the tongue piercing) with nods and waves. She checks me in, but neglects to print out my Prague-Sarajevo boarding pass. Smelling a rat, I ask her for it and she tells me she can't do anything about it and that I should check in again in Prague. "Didn't happen on Sunday," think I, but shuffle straight through security and camp out at the gate...two hours early.

All's fine and I arrive in Prague to make my way to the transit desk. Staring at my ticket, I'm informed by counter staff that all my flights have been cancelled. "Would you like to stay in Prague?", she asks. An exchange involving the supervisor on duty results in my being booked on an Austrian Airlines flight. However, I must transit at Vienna. I ask about my luggage, they assure me it will arrive in Sarajevo with me.

Boarding the propellor plane to Vienna, as the other passengers load their bags onto the aircraft on boarding, I note the absence of my bag in the hold but board the plane anyway.

At Vienna, the flight is delayed for an hour. Sarajevo fortunately was as cool as the customs line was long. They are surprised to see a Singapore passport, but are very nice with the questions. I silently count my blessings, but by the time I reach baggage retrieval, they've unloaded everything from my flight and my bag isn't there. Undaunted, I stand and watch the Munich and Belgrade bags go by. It appears to be a lost cause.

I report my bag lost and go outside to meet Vildane.

I am exhausted from not having slept since two nights ago but I'm here at last, thank God.

leia gwyn at 11.02 PM - Permalink - Comments (0)

Next stop: Sarajevo, Bosnia

where I'll be working at Wings of Hope

leia gwyn at 5.40 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)

Fun all around, especially with the friends we made:

German MTV reporter Michael who interviewed us before joining us for the Germany-Argentina match...no prizes for guessing which side I was rooting for

Sunday Times reporter Steve and his very sporting wife Jacqui

Queen Julia of Ireland

and of course the fantastic Finns Anna, Ani and Hannale

leia gwyn at 11.27 PM - Permalink - Comments (0)

Excerpts from my article for the St. Edmund Hall Magazine 2006

On 1 July 2006, Xin-Hui Chan, a 2nd year medical student at the Hall, and her partner PJ Thum of Hertford College became the first Singaporeans and Oxford students to participate in the Wife-Carrying World Championships in Sonkajarvi, Finland. The pair completed the course in a time of 1 minute and 37.7 seconds, beating teams from Australia, Estonia, Finland, Britain, France and Germany to emerge Australian/Asian Champions and 29th overall.

The Sport of Wife-Carrying

Wife-carrying as a sport is unique to Sonkajarvi - its origins date to the 1800s, where there was said to be a local brigand called Rosvo-Ronkainen who accepted as troops only men who had proven their worth on the wife-carrying track. In those days, it was common practice to steal women from neighbouring villages for such manly purposes.

The 'wife' to be carried can be the male partner's very own, the neighbour's or one found farther afield; she must, however, be over 17 years of age. Apart from age restrictions, she has to weigh a minimum of 49 kg. Should she weigh any less, she is burdened with a heavy rucksack such that the total weight of her and the rucksack is 49 kg.

The winners receive the equivalent of the wife's weight in beer.

The Finnish see this sport as the embodiment of an attitude towards life. Wife-carrying, according to them, calls for physical and mental endurance in equal measure. Other essential ingredients are a good sense of rhythm, sure-footedness - and a robust sense of humour. Even the rules of the competition support this, stating that all competitors should have fun. The Finns describe their philosophy best:

"Wives and wife-carriers are not afraid of challenges or burdens, pushing their way persistently forward, holding tightly with a twinkle in their eyes"

Seeking a 'Wife'

PJ first came across the sport of wife-carrying in a 2005 article by ESPN journalist Jim Caple. Interest piqued, further reading about the philosophy of the sport strengthened his desire to participate in the 2006 World Championships. What he needed next, was to find a woman with the gumption and endurance to withstand the demands of training and competition.

Several months later, he chanced upon a fellow Singaporean in Oxford - Xin-Hui, a medic who had spent her summer volunteering in a village rural Kenya, and despite illness, had managed to go on to climb the highest mountain on the African continent, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Not only did she appear to possess the tenacity for such an endeavour, she was small enough to be carried with relative ease.

They recognised a mutual spirit of adventure and excitement in each other, and partnered for a hitchhike from Oxford to Morocco for charity in April 2006. Shortly after that, preparations began for the Wife-Carrying Championships.

Training

Things looked promising as the competition edged closer - they had refined their position to achieve synchronised motion and creative sartorial additions were beginning to reduce the number of bruises they sustained at the end of each combined training session. Two days before they were due to leave for Finland, on their final round around the Iffley track, PJ felt a sudden shearing pain across his knee. It was a worried pair that departed for Helsinki on 28 June.

The Competition

After resting injuries for a day after arrival, it was back to training for both of them. The day before the competition, they attempted the water hazard for the first time. The ambient temperature that day was 17 degrees, the water far colder. PJ lost his footing in the water, falling backwards with Xin-Hui on his back. Xin-Hui plunged headfirst into the water, and unable to bear the cold, passed out. Her distraught partner fished her out. To make matters worse, his cruciate ligament injury began to flare up again. They ended their training session, uncertain whether they would be able to compete the following day.

The day arrived with PJ's knee showing few signs of improvement. As they nervously warmed up by the starting line, the results of the draw for their heats were announced: they were to be pitted against the North American Champions, Ehrin and April Armstrong - it was going to be tough, but they were definitely not going to go down without a fight. They fell behind in the initial stretch, but their practice on the water hazard paid off as PJ passed through it with ease and caught up on the Americans. It was close down the middle straight with the crowd roaring in excitement. However, Ehrin's height and longer legs proved an advantage as he passed over the obstacles with greater ease to pull away and win decisively. PJ and Xin-Hui went on to finish in their best time ever of 1 minute and 37.7 seconds.

Xin-Hui is proud to have been granted the opportunity to carry on the Hall traditions of sporting endeavour and a subtle appreciation of good old-fashioned fun.

Floreat Aula!

leia gwyn at 2.35 AM - Permalink - Comments (0)