Sarajevo pt2

The market near Pigeon Square is full of life and little shops selling anything you thought you might find there and little places where you can eat local food selections. We begin by just walking through the little streets and just being tourists, sometimes it is just nice to let the "I'm not just a tourist" act go and to just experience it.

We being from there to just walk around the city. Sarajevo's many mosques, temples, churches take your breath away with the horrors they've seen. I don't even remember how we moved through the city just the experiences. At St.Anthony's Church you see a statue of Mary with hundreds of candles still being lit daily to those who perished during those years.

Walking on farther we pass the New Jewish temple, which still bears some of its scars. Though the bigger scar on the Jewish population is that during the siege the Serbian siege forces decided to put trenches in the old Jewish cemetery. The lack of respect for the Jewish dead, anyone's dead, respect revoked again upon the Jewish population in Europe.

Then comes up the "First Martyrs Bridge" where the first two casualties fell from sniper fire during a unity march in 1992. This was the beginning of the horrors that were to follow. You see the river pass below you, the hills that surround the city all around, it should be beautiful, but it just can't be.

From here we head through a part of the city that some have called "The Sarajevo Hiroshima" many of the building have yet to be repaired or taken down. As you walk you see the scars upon all of the building. The tank shell marks where they hit the tower blocks. I've seen footage or the shelling and bombardments and the randomness of the targets, it was as if the pointed it in a general direction and fired not really caring about where it would hit, knowing that it would hit something, and terrorize continually.

Tunnel Museum

We decide to go to the Tunnel Museum, which is easily accessible via tour but quite a walk if you go it alone. Taking the #3 tram to its eastward end stop you get to see a large breadth of the city, this is the city that the simple walking tours just don’t go to for whatever reasons.

Once there we just start walking, following the road we've been told is the right direction but that we won't find it anyway because it is to hard to find. The road heads out and within 20 minutes is almost in the middle of nowhere and you are just walking through little small villages if you can call them that.

These were the people who lived outside of Sarajevo between the airport and the rest of the little piece of free Bosnia/Herzegovina in the 90's. On their northern side was the UN controlled airport and north of that the under-siege Sarajevo. It was through these villages and one in particular that the only lifeline to the city existed, it was where the tunnel existed.

The tunnel museum is nothing but a small house with the most important ground works in Bosnia/Herzegovina. During the siege of Sarajevo this was the first solid reliable source of supplies to the besieged defenders. All forms of supplies traveled through this tunnel. At this museum you see remnants of the tunnel and an assortment of the things that were used during the usage of the tunnel.

Once we get back into the city I just find it hard to imagine everything having to at the beginning to come through that tunnel…

Special Note: Sarajevo:Part 3 will be up within a week and maybe a Sarajevo:Part 4 a while after that, also see the photos from my trip here Bosnia/Herzgovenia

Dear Friends, Family, Supporters, & Congregation members,

Looking back at the last past 11 months I know and see how important your support has been in getting me here and helping me thought this year. Your many letters, postcards, emails and messages have been very important to me and I am very grateful for those things.

Over the last couple of months I have seen Munkacs and Ukraine go from a cold foreboding place to one where spring and summer are into full swing. At times I have even come close to the warm temperatures I am used to back home. In the past few letters I have expressed how I had been in the lower parts of my self-conscience. I've reached a level where I have come to accept things as they are and with that I have been able to look at what I have been able to do and accomplish and focus on those as opposed to my self felt shortcomings. Munkacs has become my home and it scares me again to know just as in Belfast, soon enough, I will have to leave me home behind and return to a previous home again. I've had mixed emotions with this. I've grown attached to the children I work with and to the work Robi and I are doing. When looking forward to my departure I see it for a return to my roots but I'll leave a part of myself here as well as take much of the experience with me too.

This month's program focus will be the church school in the afternoons at the Munkacs Roma Reformed Church. This was the original intention for our work in Munkacs, though we expanded into other things, this has still been our main focus. At the Roma Reformed Church we have a classroom off of the sanctuary where we hold class. We have two groups that come. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the younger children, 5 - 12 year olds, come to the school. On Thursday and Friday we have the older children, 12 - 18 year olds, come to the school. Robi and I have made our main focus in trying to make up for the lack of the quality education the children have received so far by teaching and tutoring the children in many subjects that they should already know. We teach reading, writing, mathematics, art (drawing and coloring), geography and we also play games.

Within the last few months nothing has been more energizing than the events at the Munkacs State School #14 (The Roma School). I've seen my year there teaching come full circle. I started out in September seeing the school as it has looked for the past few years to mid November when they started beginning renovations on the building. With that we had radiators installed in the classrooms and work began on fixing up the building and premises. Then by February the teaching became harder and the winter raged on around us to the final few months at the school. In these last few months I saw and participated in two things, which signify for the school a culmination of a year of work. One of those being the first of a yearly event centered upon a Roma Culture day and the other the graduation of my 9th form class from the school.

Roma Culture Day was held on April 15th in celebration of Roma culture and of the school. The event was based around performances by the children, some doing Roma cultural things and others doing things they wanted to, I myself even got up and played a song, though not a Roma song, still nonetheless enjoyable for everyone, I flatter myself. Many people from the school system, the government, the Roma leadership in Munkacs attended the celebration. There was a Roma band with all the instruments played by students, which played most of the music, dancers doing traditional and modern dances. Also there were poetry readings, by Hungarian, Ukrainian and Roma poets. I helped one student, Gueran, recite a poem translated into English written by Papusza, a famous female Roma poet from Poland. The important part of this event was that they were having it; it was amazing to see the children get so involved with something that was theirs, their own culture, Roma Culture.

The other event was the graduation of the students in the 9th form. Few things were more gratifying for me than seeing these students graduate. For these students this hopefully is a step into a new area for Roma in Munkacs. From here many will not pursue further education because it isn't possible for them nor outside of the school will society encourage such ideas or desires. A few will hopefully have the opportunity to attend the equivalent of a trade school and go on to learn a skill such as auto mechanizing, plumbing or carpentry. As more kids come up through this school I hope and feel that the teaching will improve and with time that they will be able to attend higher education at different schools after this one. Also with one more class graduating there are more and more people in the camp attaining at least some foundry level of education, and with education comes more education which is the beginning of the road for equality.

If you came across this letter by chance or were sent this letter by someone else and would like to be part of the group I send it to just send me an email at Brenton_NI@Yahoo.com If you also have any questions or comments please send me a message at my email mentioned above. As with tradition I have included new pictures on my website http://brenton-ni.blogspot.com/ When looking this month you will see photos from both the Roma Culture Day and the Graduation. Also on my website I have included stories and photos from my recent trip to Sarajevo and Srebrenica in Bosnia/Herzegovina.

Once again I want to share my feelings of appreciation for the prayers and continued support through this year. If you could include in your prayers the people effected by the massacre in Srebrenica because the 10th anniversary is coming up on July 11th.


Peace,
Brenton Thompson
Roma Project YAV

Srebrenica

I felt antsy for a few days like I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't seeing anything new anymore or I was just not going to where I needed to go and not seeing the things I am suppose to see. I decide to take a day trip, I could have gone to many cities and stayed a night but I only had one real choice, Srebrenica.

July 2nd 1995, a day that will never be forgotten by the people who experienced it and survived. Forces under the control Ratko Mladic having surrounded Srebrenica, A UN Safe-Area, move in and remove over 7,000 mainly Muslim men and boys. They would never been seen again alive.

I asked around in the hostel the day before I left to go to Srebrenica and no one would come. I will be honest; when I got up in the morning I was nervous, and scared to a degree, that I was going to a place that I once again knew nothing about. It is quite remote by Bosnia standards. There is only one bus every day leaving Sarajevo going to Srebrenica and one bus coming back to Sarajevo, I was to ride both of them.

Leaving the station at 7:10am on a half filled bus I leave for this destination. Along the way I was blessed with seeing some of the more rural parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I found the hills, mountains, valleys and rivers to be gorgeous.

What was't so beautiful was the many destroyed and abandoned houses everywhere. You could still see the damage as if it was done last week, the charred remains of the walls, the caved in roofs, and the empty windows. It was en-route when I realized that no one around me spoke English, which was an odd but comforting thought.

All I did while I was there was just walk around and see. A funny thing happened when I stopped at a small café and had lunch. The people just assumed I was Dutch and working for the UN but we all had a laugh when I explained where I was really from, Texas and especially from Dallas. One of the greatest exports from the US that everyone knows about are TV shows and yes, they had seen the TV show Dallas with JR and the whole group and they also wanted to know if I was a cowboy. I did say yes because for them what was more interesting some guy from Texas or a cowboy from Texas.

Srebrenica still holds and shows visibly its scars from the past. Many buildings in the center are being fixed or have been, like in Sarajevo, but the many that haven’t been are what moves you. After wandering the small town I start my journey for why I came, to head to the Potocari/Srebrenica Memorial and Cemetery.

When I arrived after my hour or more walk I come upon the memorial just as a pair of old women are leaving. I am then at that moment alone in this place. I just walk though its paths and take a seat upon on a bench near the field of green wooden grave markers. Each one holds a name on a black metal plate with the year of the birth and 1995, the year of their death. The mounds of dirt now properly cover these bodies who were denied a proper Muslim or even a simple dignified burial originally. In many of them silk flowers have been placed and around the wooded grave makers are necklaces of beads.

As I sit upon that bench a car pulls up and a family gets out; a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, and an uncle. That day they made a journey, how many times they have made it I know not but I did experience them on this one. They walk through the grave makers looking for a name they know and then they find one. The two older men stop at one and hold their hands palms upward in front of them and then cover their face with them. The woman beings to try but is unable because she breaks into tears. The two children just stand there; I don’t think they understand exactly why they are there or whom these people are that they have come to see. The men continue on to five or six more grave markers but the woman couldn’t get past the first one.

I was caught in something that I never expected, I am sitting there not watching but hearing and glancing and trying to experience what I have been fortunate to be allowed into. I know I invaded their space by just being there but I couldn1t move nor get up, I couldn’t even breathe it seemed. The men then go wash their hands in the water fountains provided around park and then they return to where they came from and I am still sitting there….

Even if I would have had someone to talk to on the four-hour bus ride back to Sarajevo I don’t think I would have been able to. All I could think about was Srebrenica and how I was leaving it behind but those there will never be able to leave it behind…..

Sarajevo pt1….

It is a city unlike any I have ever been too, the things it has suffered, have seen, experienced, all within my lifetime, her lifetime. I came for no reason other than I had too. Many I mentioned it to could only ask "Why?", all I could answer was "I have to go".

The twelve-hour train ride from Budapest was odd. I found it strange that a round trip ticket was actually cheaper than a one-way ticket but maybe that is because they want you to defiantly return, a holdover from the past or just a random pricing policy of the Hungarian train system.

On the way I was accompanied by a, Prague studying, Finnish woman and a fellow volunteer worker stationed in Hungary. We left at 5:40pm from Deli Palyaudvar on our way. The train began moving and we headed towards Pecs and onwards. At Pecs, we jettison all but two cars and moved across towards Croatia.

Once we crossed into Croatia we stop at the first station for the boarder guards. In that instant I remember and am faced with the double standards of American foreign policy in the world. One of the passports in the group had a few marks from where a dog had bitten it and routinely it hasn't ever been a problem but we are quickly and angrily reminded that if Croatia citizens come to America, that is if they first can afford the expensive visa and then get the accompanying documents that the slightest problem can and usually gets them a refusal of entry. I am crossing a boarder where I need no visa and no need of notification ahead of time of my entry and they have hurdle after hurdle to just get and enter my homeland.

Then comes the Bosnia-Herzegovina boarder where they just glance upon our passports and give them back no stamp or anything. It is then I realize that I am here and soon enough I will be there in my destination that I know nothing about and I know not what to expect.

We pull into the station and there we are, in Sarajevo. Just as we step off the train, I notice that there is no one around, they have all just disappeared so quickly as the came. It is 6am and we approached by this woman wanting people to go to a hostel she woks for and fortunately it turns out to be the one I read about so against all premonitions we follow.

She leads us not to the hostel but the bus station where we wait 20 minutes for some mythical British guys who are suppose to come with us. They never appear but we are joined by a middle-aged Polish man. We get to the tram station, and have no Bosnia Convertible Marks, only Hungarian Forint and we are unable to by the ticket to get us to somewhere close to familiar, the hostel. Though by grace the Polish man buys us a simple ticket.

As you begin to walk through the city, you see it, you feel it and you know it, her past. It is like trying to get over a significant others romantic past or even better trying not to think about how the person who broke up with you is probably with someone like you two were right now, and it isn’t you.

With each step the beauty that has made this city legendary in the past comes out at you. The old mosques and churches stand before you in their age and beauty.….