Nachricht Nummer : 256 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 34 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ZER.sub.org Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 31 August, 1993 Erstellungsdatum : 10.09.1993 13:02:00 S+2 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 31 August, 1993 Dobar dan, The next morning we say emotionally good-bye to our Italian volunteers, we will miss them a lot, they brought a lot of life into Pakrac, but we hope we will see them soon again. It is again the last day of a month, time flies and since I haven't got a working computer all the time around me I get slowly again behind with my diary. But following the International news ones and a while not much seems to change out there, the peace talks continue and life in Sarajevo seems to get a little better in the last weeks. Also the food convoy to Mostar has come through at last. I spend my day walking through Lipik to visit the working sides of our volunteers. In Lipik I find 4 of them on a site were one of the man brigades just took down a building, now the women brigade came to clean up the place and make the stones ready for using again. The American volunteer which just arrived ask me if it wouldn't be cheaper to throw all those all stones away and buy new ones, but after I explain the prices of stones, which is much higher now since a lot of factories have been destroyed and the market is much more demanding now than ever before, so stones and other building material have to be imported, plus the fact that the wages have went down a lot, he understands. He and his new friend from Germany are now cleaning at least 1 stone a minute. On the house next door I found a graffiti from the war, 104th brigade from Varazdin, I enter the house, something I should not do, since you are never sure if they are not mined, as long as the mine clearing service hasn't cleared a house you better stay out. But I am luckily as always. I the house I found a signature from a Joe from England (his name written with a CND sign in the O). I know a Joe from England who fought in a Brigade from Varazdin, he was one of the first volunteers in Croatian army and became later the first English and Childrengarden leader of Suncokret in the refugee camp in Savudrija. I wonder if this sign is made by the same Joe, it is very good possible. I walk a few hundred meter further, over a new bridge over the Pakra made by a technical battalion of UNPROFOR, the bridge is white. Five meter further we are stopped by the Croatian checkpoint, I see the UNPROFOR checkpoint just a few meters further, but decided to walk back. Back in Lipik I have a look at a new building which just to be a supermarket, next to the destroyed medical centre. During the war this supermarket, at least the basement seems to be used as war hospital, behind it I find a few destroyed army ambulances and the basement left overs from a time that at least hundred wounded soldiers (as far as you can call civilians who are defending their houses soldiers) and civilians must have been in here for their first treatment it look like, how many of them died. On the floor and on a few of the army camping beds which stayed behind after the hospital left you can see the dark brown spots and places of what must have been fresh blood. I think on all the stories which Joe and his friends told me about this place, now it looks just like any destroyed basement, by a storm, a fire or a war, the heating and other pipes, neon lights tubes and electric wires are hanging from the ceiling, it could have been any place around, every basement in every big building. I sat down and try to imagine the pictures on the news I have saw and the movies I have been watching in the time here, even my mind wonders off to MASH. But it never will be like the memories I have collected at place near the front-line, still it is hard to imagine what this place was look-a-like during the hard days of the war. Outside the building you feel that war is not over yet, however. We look through the broken windows of the supermarket at the first floor, the letters Budocnosc ("future") are shoot apart and hanging at their least glue in the wind. The cupboards and storage shelves are half fallen down and lying against eachother, they are empty, but on the floors you see the left overs of the destroyed products and those who were useless laying in the water what drips through the ceiling. And this is not the only building in Lipik, or in these area for that matter, which is looking this way. But the real war is not to be seen in the buildings, it is in the hearts of the people which are living between it. I am not talking about the hate, which is maybe in more than one way explainable if you life here a bit longer, but I am talking about the "FUTURE" in the minds of the people and rather the "NO-FUTURE", we are helping with the re-building of this area, but houses are easy to be build, maybe the easiest thing to do in this area and it will give work for the next 4 or 5 year, but than, what will happen to this area. When I think on that way, what will happen will all those area, this part of Western Slavonia is only one, there are thousands of this area's in this part of Europe, worst and less worst, here the people are back climbing out of the hole again, but it will take a lot of climbing and falling down. And certain not something which is down before the war in this area is long gone from the front-pages, to make place for another one in another place of the world. 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 ##