Nachricht Nummer : 454 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 44 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 21 March, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 23.03.1994 09:53:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 21 March, 1994 Dobar dan, My youngest son became 4 years today, so I decided to phone him as early as possible, that became directly after sunrise, so around 6 o'clock in the morning, I anyway went to bed early yesterday. After having a nice conversation with both my son's and there mother, high up in Denmark the rest of the long term volunteers waked up. Beside from the 18 short trem-ers in the Volunteers house, there are now 9 sleeping in the office house. I must say it is a bit overcrowded. And it would be nice if the spring, which started today really breaks through and besides the blossoms on the fruit-trees also the sun itself shows their burning colours. The Polish who stayed over the weekend at "this side" decided to go back to "the other side" as early as possible, so around 8 o'clock we walked over with the four of us and for the first time in weeks I am back at what some people start to call "Beverley Hills" and I must say walking up the road and looking at the beautiful fruit trees around the houses and seeing the chickens, little pigs and lamb's running around I must say it is maybe not as glamorous as the famous hills in L.A. but for me this looks like paradise (at least a bit). For the people who are living here, who are mostly "refugees" or rather "displaced people" as the official term is, from the city parts of Pakrac or Lipik and only some out of the villages around them (those people from the villages (almost 50.000) mostly moved on to Bosnia and Baranja, North of Osijek), probably have another feeling. It was nice before the war to have your summerhouse here, or to live here, but still were able to be in the "city" within a few minutes. They had gas, running water and electricity, the children went to school in a brand new building, the parents worked on the wood factory or in the hospital and in the afternoon doing some farming. Anyway when we arrived at the house where the two guys (volunteers) from Beograd are sleeping Lynette came out greeting me with the saying that there were big problems on "this side". Basic problem is that still nobody really knows what is going to happen, but everybody wants to have a say in it. The red tape on this side of the front-line seems to be even longer than on the other side. The other problem is the "fight", the power struggle between to "government" from Knin and most of the people who use to live in Pakrac and their relatives. There seems to be an unstable balance between the army authorities (who seems to have the real power in Knin, at least they seems to be the ones in charges of paying the Militia, the teachers, the medical post and probably all others in "governmental service), here represented by the head of the local militia and the local, elected, authorities, who are lead basically by displaced people, at least that is how it looks. We as volunteers have mostly to do with the local authorities and they have recieved complains about the fact that our project on this side is not really getting started. Besides the english lessons on all the schools and activities with children and elderly people no real "building" or "rebuilding" activities has been started. We have been talking a lot about the need of school and children garden, but our volunteers have to wait and wait until something starts to move. But the soap is not as eaten as hot as it has been served, as we say in Dutch, when I meet Dzakula some hours later he is in a good mood, I wish him the best with his birthday (two days ago) and am surprised that his health is a lot better than what was told to me a week ago. He looked good, although he had spend another 3 weeks in jail. I couldn't refuse to ask him how it was possible that he came back to the sector some weeks ago, when the bridge was still occupied and nobody was able to pass it. He laughed and looked at me with he famous secret smile and answered that indeed he was the only one man that day who was allowed to pass, how I never will find out. After that we had a meeting with the whole group of volunteers and him and we agreed that it is time to move a little quicker in the coming weeks, he asked me again if it wasn't possible to bring in more volunteers. But I had to disappoint him, saying that when there is no real work starting it is not so good to have 15 or more people running around his village doing nothing else than playing war tourists. Also the problem that we don't have the funding yet to act like to big organisations, like UNHCR and the others. We are depending on the gifts from Grassroot groups from abroad and can't juggle around with pockets full of money. During the meeting in the kitchen on the television the meeting from the parliament meeting in Knin was broadcasted live. We looked at it with a half eye and saw around 25 men (and one woman at the table on the stage, between 4 men) sitting in a huge meeting room, from which more than 75% was empty, preparing the meeting they will have tomorrow with the officials of the Croatian government in Zagreb. For an outsider like me the meeting looked rather chaotic. Anyway the fact that things are moving on that level, talks between the two parties, is giving me hope for the future. Even before the meeting in Knin was over the television was changed to the channel it mostly is on, and what everybody here seems to consider as their television, the Croatian one. 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 v2.93 ##