Nachricht Nummer : 457 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 45 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 24 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 20:21:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 24 March, 1994 Dobar dan, It is dark in the house, although it is still in the beginning of the evening and all the children are still awake. On the table are standing two candles which are just giving enough light to light the kitchen a bit and you can read a book if you are close enough to the text, my mother would say that it is bad for my eyes if I would have done that, but here it is normal. They have been living with candle light for over 1 1/2 years until the electricity came in beginning of the winter. And still people are reacting normal to it when suddenly the power supply went of. In the last months this wasn't often the case, but since a few weeks it is happening often again. Simo from Okucani told me in the beginning of the break this evening that probably the oil had to be changed in the generator in his town, but if that is the case they are really taking their time since the electricity is already out for over 2 hours now (the cuts in the days before were only 15 or 20 minutes). My landladies and her children first reaction was something like "Shit, no "Santa Barbara" today." The energy break just started at the first seconds of that programme what is here as popular as on "the other side". Nearly automatic see took the candles out of the cupboard and continued with her work. Now she is busy teaching her youngest son (10 years) some basic grammatical rules. The boy missed more than a year of school during the war and at the moment only goes 3 hours per day to school, since there is a lack of rooms and teachers (and money of course) in this part of Pakrac. On the table are laying almost the same teaching books as on the "other side" but the big difference is that everything is in Cyrillic. He is lucky that his mother takes the time to help him, I am sure that that is not the case in most of the families around here. Most of the women have thousand and one things to do to keep the family running and the lack of modern kitchen equipment makes their job not much easier. The role of women in this war and in the other parts is often not described enough. This woman stands up before the son even raises to back bread, prepare the breakfast for the whole house, pump the water, when the electric pump is not working, walks many kilometres and stands hours in line to collect the humanitarian aid, etc. etc. And like her their are thousands, some times even under much harder conditions. I remember that I wrote nearly two years back that the world would be a different place when women would take over the power. Through the last two years I often have been thinking why the women not simply go in strike and refuse to play the game along. They are the real heroes of this war. Later in the evening I went out to one of the pubs, 4 kilometres walking through the dark, to see the volunteers from Beograd, who live in one of the other villages, which together form Pakrac on "this side". In the pub they also were prepared for energy cuts, somebody told me that the government in Knin had announced some weeks ago that they would start again with electricity saving measures. The radio in the pub, which is normally playing the music from the local radio station (which obvious also had no energy to broadcast) was now receiving english music, mostly you hear here the new Serbian music produced in Beograd. After a while it was clear to me that we were listening to radio Herceg-Bosna from Citluk down in HVO (Croat) controlled part of Hercegovina. I looked around and saw a lot of soldiers on leave from the fighting in Bosna (often the "enemy" on the other side on the "fist line" is are soldiers from HVO for whom this station is broadcasting). One of the Beograd volunteers said that music makes him remember some of his friends who went to fight in Bosnia as volunteer. His body was brought back to Beograd, shot in the back, were he was killed they didn't want to say, according to him, since official there are no soldiers from Serbia fighting in Bosnia. Before the war they use to listening together to this music. They both use to go to all the football matches of Red Star Beograd against teams in Croatia, since there weren't that many police agents at the matches as in Serbia, but those days are over. He don't like that music anymore, since it reminds him on the days which are over now. In the pub we met Simo again, is hitch to Okucani has decided to stay a little longer and wait for some people since he has some business to do. Simo asked us if it isn't possible that in the near future we could start some kind of rebuilding programme in the Okucani region, south of the small town the JNA seems to have destroyed some small villages and the rumours go in Okucani that the governments in the Serbian controlled part of Bosnia and in the Federal republic of Yugoslavia has decided to send back all the refugees from sector west in the coming months. Nobody really knows when that will happen and how many people it will be, but according to the rumours soon about 2000 especially elder people will start to arrive and like a lot of the people in this part of the world they will find only ruins back when the come home. When I return back walking to my house it is around mid night and the electricity is still not working. Let's hope for the people in this region that we are not going to have another period of months without electricity. 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. 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