Nachricht Nummer : 461 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 35 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 27 March, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 11.04.1994 23:31:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 27 March, 1994 Dobar dan, We stand up just a few minute after sun-rise, I am back on the Serbian Krajina side of Pakrac and here it is really country life. People get's up with the first cock's. Jane, who came to visit us on this side for some days, she will go back to the States next week for a three weeks holiday, after that she will be responsible for the youth development programme on both sides and I have a nice breakfast in front of the house looking at the up coming sun, who ever expected a war in an area as beautiful as this one. After breakfast we see the first children passing by, a group from 5 proud boys between let's say 4 and 8 (about the same age as my kids). The youngest one, dressed in camouflage trousers, is about 20 centimetre smaller than the rest and he has to run every 5 steps to keep up with the others. They are obvious on their way to the school, were we will arrive a hour later to play with all the kids from this village. In this village there are hardly no displaced people, therefore the children feel much more at home as in the other villages around here. When we arrive almost 40 kids (all the kids from this village) are waiting for us, they nicely bring back the toys we have given them some days ago and the party can start. The new footballs we bring with us are immediately taken by the boys who have a rough game outside. The girls are more into drawing and Jane has to draw one American cartoon hero after another. The teacher comes by to asked Jane if the drawing from animals and birds she has made look a bit like the reality. This school has hardly no books and school material, so the teacher have to produce everything herself. Anyway the school has not much, the toilet is somewhere a whole in the ground outside and for water we have to go to one of the houses nearby. After playing we hurry back to the other side of Pakrac, I have made an appointment yesterday with Jura to see his new pub. At least to go to the house he wants to open a new pub. Of course we are too late, but Buba, behind the take, tells me that they are in a village about 15 kilometer outside Pakrac on the road to Pozega. The name of the village rings a bell in my head. From some (Serbian) people on this side I have heard that that village has been destroyed a couple of time during the last world war. According the stories the Ustase army killed on one day all the women and children and burned the place down to the ground. On the "other side" (Serbian Krajina controlled) I never heard a story about it. Also in this war the village haven't survived, it is one of the many villages in this area, in the Croatian controlled part, which have been bombed and mined after the real fighting was over and the inhabitants had left. Why Jura wants to open a pub there, in the middle of no-where, is a mystery for me. I know that it is laying at the edge of the UNPA zone and that there is a huge Argentinean compound, further on lot's of trucks are passing by and who knows maybe one day the village will be rebuild. I asked some of the volunteers if they like to join me, telling them that this road wasn't safe in the last year, but that in the last months nothing really has happened. Most of them like to come along. But when we drive later through the kilometres of destroyed villages I see from their faces that they didn't feel so safe as they thought in the first place. When we arrive at the pub and I gave my present to the workers they immediately recognise the rakija, that's Serbian rakija somebody says, they don't drink less because of it. Ten minutes later Jura arrives from the other direction, he has been looking if the monument remember the destruction of this village in the second world war was still there, but it seems to be taken away when the inhabitants left. He jumps out of his car, waving with a plastic skeleton and his gun, I haven't seen him carrying it for months. He pulls a box of beer out of one of the little streams next to the road and starts to explain what he is planning. This is going to be restaurant, discotheque. My companions are a little scared in the beginning, but soon they walk around the building and some even start to look if they can see the Serbian Krajina control posts from here. The front-line lays about 50 meters away from here and last week Jura told me proud he has been talking with real "Chetniks". He tells that he wants to be the first back in the village, some of the defenders of the Croatian controlled part of Pakrac come from here. And we keep on joking a bit. After an hour we drive back. I decided to stay at this side of the line for the rest of the day and walk back tomorrow. Late in the evening I end up talking and drinking with the mayor of this part of Pakrac. He had read my articles in ARKzin and although he wasn't fully agree with me he like them a lot. He also asked me directly if the volunteers can help the town in the near future with rebuilding parts of the hospital. I smile and tell him that he knows that the flag on the building maybe can costs a problem, but that we are always there to help. 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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