Nachricht Nummer : 479 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 46 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 18 April, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 02.05.1994 18:38:00 S+2 Zagreb Diary 18 April, 1994 Dobar dan, Saturday may have been a day that everything went wrong, today was a day during which I try to pick up the pieces and glue them again. The bombing raids on Gorazde haven't helped us to make things a lot easier. At the moment people don't really understand why we still are connected with "the other side", the Serbs are fighting the whole world population people say around the world (in the last days the shot on different NATO aeroplanes (some people from abroad warn us about it)), which makes things not as easy as I would like them to be. Some sponsors who had money for projects on the "other side" of Pakrac have taken back their sponsoring. The bring the bad news I went over the cease-fire line to visit most of the friends there and tell our problems. After some short but not so nice visits I just planned to go back when I saw our project van coming up the road. Marcus had the whole back full of food, which we had from the Irish band "The seven Kevin's", the played last week in Papaga on the Croatian side and therefor we thought that it was a good idea to use a part of their id on the Serbian side, to neutralise everything a bit. The food is going to be used by the Polish and Lynette to spread around families and old people, when they are visiting them, often the food they get from Red Cross and UNHCR is a bit one sided. I have been eating fish from tin can for over weeks since that was almost everything what people had (and rice of course). A quick look in the car learned me that under three empty boxes their was a full box of StaroCesko, the pivo (beer), which they produce in Daruvar and which is our most popular drink here, especially when in last summer we didn't had water on the Croatian side. I looked at Marcus with a question mark on my face and he told me that this was for the football match later this week. Some days ago we agreed that we are going to play a match against the local veteran football team from this side, who call themselves "the six fleet" (basically since the smallest one has shoe size 46 and for Americans that is very very big). So we drove a few times around the village in order to find one of the Polish guys to take over the food from us and we just were near giving up when we saw our Hendrix and Ceddo coming out of the school. They just finished their daily playing round with the children and we stood a while talking on the road, up to the moment that our favourite kid came up to our car in the hope we could give him some chocolate. The guy always is asking for it, he also always want to go with us when we are going to the "Croatian" side. When you asked him were he lives and tells that his house is in Lipik and that he is just for a long vacation on this side, but that he likes to go home now. He lives with his grandparents, since his both parents has been killed during the fighting's. From there we went to house of the Polish and dropped the food. Than we went up to the house of Dzakula to bring him the beer, but there we met Slavko and Pero, after the man was killed at his post near the Pozega road some weeks ago most of the man refuse to go back on their positions, so they are now nearly sitting the whole day at home. Being at the positions is by the way also not so hard work, they have to sit in their ditches for about 12 hours, watching what the "other side" is doing. Now the "big man", Dzakula wasn't around, they also were willing to talk openly, mostly they are sitting somewhere in the back and let the talking be done by the former forest director. When the saw our box of StaroCesko they of course couldn't resist it to open a bottle for each of us and after the first zip everybody was sure that this beer is another reason why the situation should be normalised soon, after two years they were drinking "their own" beer again, not that Bosnian or Serbian beer what they now sell in the shops and bars. They looked at the label and saw that beside a small line "Made in Croatia" nothing has changed yet. StaroCesko is one of the only beers in Croatia on which label you can't find a Checkerboard (the Croatian weapon of arms). After a while we asked them what nationality they feel the belong to now, "We are Serbs" was there answer. But did you feel Serb before this war started was my reply. No, before we were Yugoslav was there answer, we actually never really felt connected with Serbia, we lived in Slavonia, Pakrac that is our home city. So, how close do you feel with what is happening at the moment in Gorazde, was my next question. The answer came after a while, they first had to think about. Gorazde is far, far away, they reacted. Than we returned to the topic we are so often talking about, namely how Pakrac is looking since they left. They explained that Skorpija (before the war it was called La Bamba) was situated next to their forest office (last week the office is opened again, but with new people) so that is was their hang out during the day. Pero who has been for 14 years in the same school class as Jura (the owner of Skorpija) couldn't believe his ears when I told him that Jura stopped drinking in the beginning of the war and so the conversation went on for a few hours, all this stories together are slowly helping me to constructed to whole puzzle of what Pakrac used to be, but I know that I will need hundred of this conversations more before the picture will somehow be complete. Mir from somewhere in Hrvatska, 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.ztn.zer.de . 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 (postbox 33), 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. Old numbers can be found by sending a message's with as subject "FILES" to pakrac.info@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de, to order a file send a message with subject "SEND " to same address. ## CrossPoint v3.0 ##