Nachricht Nummer : 249 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 6 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ZER.sub.org Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 24 August, 1993 Erstellungsdatum : 03.09.1993 06:45:00 S+2 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 24 August, 1993 Dobar dan, Today and maybe tomorrow I will not write the diary myself but I will copy parts of the Pakrac diary, which the volunteers has been writing in the last two months. Or how hot it was (Benjamin) It is late in the evening now and it still is incredibly hot here. Today I've spend my second day working at - what I call - the "Italian family", that is a Croatian house where two grenades not only destroyed the top floor and roof but also the father of two cute children. I call it Italian family because their mother is Italian (she fled (went) to Italy) and I speak Italian with the children who live with the Croatian grand-parents. Yesterday the little (5 year-old) girl told me with a big smile that her father had died and made - also with a big smile - gestures to make clear that the condition in which father had been found after the attack, a very good one. I didn't know how to react. Still war isn't part of daily life for me here. Despite the ruin's (or even with them) life seems to be peaceful and quiet here and the war seems already to have evolved into this abstract story-telling thing. It was. I know I'm boring too hot today. Sweat, sweat and sweat and a pair of socks that needed badly a change before it would be hard to distinguish from Ivan's (=things you only can tell by smell). Today I worked on the roof, cleaning bricks between the pauzes, beer pauzes, lunch pauzes, talk pauzes, it is to hot to work-pauzes, raki/schnapps/slibovitch pauzes and then the pauzes to link the other ones. Life isn't too bad here, if you are willing to adapt your life-style a little bit. Still I am astonished how quickly the Croatian workmen progress, if they work they can do a lot more than I can. One of them, who everybody calls "doctor" astonishes me by the large quantities of beer, schnapps and sardines in oil and white bread, he is able to, literally, push during breakfast into his mouth. And he always keeps on smiling, despite all the other men teasing him. From where I'm sitting on the new-built roof, I can see a women in black in the garden next-door. She is talking care of her roses, where as of her behind the roses nothing is left except for two walls on each side of a big heap of stones. Holidays or what (Christiane and Carsten) When we were coming to Croatia it was one motivation for us to diminish the distance to the conflicts here in ex-Yugoslavia. Our way of life here did not help us. To be in Pakrac means to be on a vulcano. The last big eruption was in February 1992, so it is written in our papers. We are living here together with the after effects, destroyed buildings, displaced people, etc. But above the surface the life looks very normal. Our feeling with our group is this that we forget very often these things under surface. We made holidays here - or what else ? Sometimes we had the feeling, it was forbidden, in our group to look sad. One meaning was, when you have no distance to these things under the surface, you can not make any actions. But we think, we were cowardly. Yesterday on the funeral our group looks a little bit as a tourist group, it was not the first time. We have no concepts how to change this situation, perhaps we need more talks about it. At last we have one big request for the next groups be careful with jokes about Serbs. You can not know or see, who has a Serbian or a Croatian passport. Tino Hello ! I'm Tino from Germany and I 'm here just about two days and until now I've made the experience that a lot of things are going on in another way as I had thought before. I think I'll have to learn that same situations are not to change at this moment and that we can do only quite less that makes me little bit sad and I started thinking about a lot of things, for example, the meaning of peace in my mind. But anyway, I hope for a good time and that I can do something for the people here and although manage the conflicts in my inner world ? Hendrik I'm leaving today, it's the hardest job to do around here. I could only stay for three weeks what is too short. I'm not gonna say much about the things we've being doing here. Since the others have been writing a lot about it in this diary. I will be gone in 5 minutes from now, greetings to everybody here and on the other side, hope to come back soon, but it will not be in the next three months. We can only stop the war, if we can stop the hate....... Bok I Mir from Zagreb, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3, 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. ## CrossPoint v2.1 ##