Say Hello To My New Service Friend
PĂ„ ein uformell kaffi med skulen sin «akademiske mentor», spurte eg ho om ho kunne fĂžrslĂ„ noko litt anleis enn det eg hadde vore innom sĂ„ langt – noko Ă„ investere litt tid og fĂžlelsar i. Ho utfordra meg til Ă„ reise pĂ„ besĂžk til IDP-leiren i Tasovcici, og eg tok utfordringa.
My First Visit to The IDP Camp
FrÄ flyktningleiren
I had been wanting to drop by the UWC Mostar âRefugee Campâ CASÂ for quite some time now. The CAS pays weekly visits to a camp for Internally Displaced People in TasovÄiÄi, a town roughly half an hour south of Mostar, where they members play with the children, talk to the older refugees and bring them food and toys. In addition to the work they do in the actual camp, they also fundraise for it, currently collecting money for a new common room where the children can play together.
The first thing that surprised me when I came to the camp was how warmly welcomed we were. The children immediately came running, and we were all warmly embraced by the adults of the camp, even me, who was there for the first time. We immediately begun playing, and in spite of hardly grasping even the very basics of the so-called local language, we still managed to communicate rather well, using a combination of body language and basic English phrases. I hobbled to the fence and back with one of the boys, and he explained where he was from and told me about his family, then we threw ball for a while and afterwards we went to play a game of Twister with the others.
After the Twister game, AM, a nine year old, brown haired girl, told me to come with her to find voda, the local word for water. We couldn’t see the water; we could only weakly hear some dripping which seemed to be quite far away. AM started running, and I followed her. We would run for a while, and then she would stop, lift her hand to her ear and listen for a while, before she would shout voda yet another time with an enthusiastic smile. We would climb through bushes, walk up a hill for a while, then cross back down again before we would leap through yet another couple of bushes, before we reached the creek. We laid a plank over the creek, crossed it, and we filled up the Cola bottle that I had found lying around on the football field before we left, so that we would have some proof of our little adventure.
After AM was done with showing me her little world, she took a couple of us over to the residences, which are modelled after a more primitive trailer park, to see her father, F, a 65 year old Croat, who warmly invited us into their cabin, offered us a glass of water each, and started telling us about how they had ended up in the camp in the first place as well as about how AM’s mother had abused her and abandoned them. He also told us that AM was moving away from the camp in only a couple of days, to a monastery in Medjugorje, and that while he was sad that she would be leaving him, he believed it would be better for her. There, she would be able to continue her education, go to college and achieve her full potential.
Perhaps the strongest part of visiting the TasovÄiÄi camp was to feel the immense energy and hope the children in the camp held, and to see how they were all blossoming in spite of the less than ideal conditions which they are living under. There are still around 150 different people left in the TasovÄiÄi camp, from small pre-school kids to 70-year old grandmothers. Each of them were special in their own way, and being able to enrich their lives, even just by a tiny bit, is an immensely rewarding feeling. I cannot wait to return to the camp, which has now become my âCore CASâ, to see my TasovÄiÄi friends again.
Supermarket Action
Flyktningleiren var flott, og no har det vorte hovud-CAS-et mitt. Her har vi hatt mykje moro dei siste vekene.
Laurdag stod eg, Sarah og Slobodan opp klokka sju for Ä reise til Tasovcici og besÞke flyktningane. Alle CAS-deltakarane gjer dette ein gong mellom annankvar og kvar tredje veke, og sidan vi har vore pÄ ski og har hatt litt andre ting pÄ gong, har vi ikkje hatt tid til Ä besÞke dei pÄ ei stund. Sarah hadde fÄtt skulesaker frÄ ein fransk humanitÊr organisasjon i posten, som vi delte ut, i tillegg til at vi hjalp F, far til AM, med Ä oversetje litt pensjonspapir, som han hadde fÄtt pÄ tysk, fordi austerrikarane tykte det var ein god idÚ.
Grunnen til at vi ikkje var fleire i flyktningleiren var at Laurdag var den store Supermarket Action Day-dagen, der vi stod pĂ„ stand to timar kvar i Konzum Mepas og Merkator, to av dei stĂžrste supermarkeda her i Mostar, og samla inn mat til leiren. Dette gjer vi eit par gonger i Ă„ret. Alt klokka to, dĂ„ vi kom attende frĂ„ leiren, hadde Merkatorgjengen (som lagra maten «sin» pĂ„ Sundstad) halt inn enorme mengder mat som vi hjalp til med Ă„ stable. Vi sĂ„g alt dĂ„ at dagens aksjon kom til Ă„ bli stĂžrre enn noko vi har hatt sĂ„ langt.
DÄ vi kom til Mepas, hadde Mevludin og Arda alt samla inn ein rett sÄ respektabel haug med matvarer.
Slobodan og eg starta skiftet vÄrt klokka fire pÄ Konzum, og vi raka inn mat. PÄ to timar hadde folk gjeve oss alt frÄ melpakkar til tannkrem til eitt brett med 12 liter melk, og vi fylte definitvt handlekorger i fleirtal. DÄ vi var ferdige med skiftet vÄrt, innsÄg vi at det var sÄ mykje mat der at det siste skiftet aldri kom til Ä fÄ med seg alt saman. Det tok to timar med skytteltrafikk mellom oss og Musala for Ä fÄ all maten i hus.
I lÞpet av veka kjem vi til Ä pakke opp all maten i kassar og levere han til familiane i flyktningleiren. Dei set sjÞlvsagt enorm pris pÄ den innsatsen vi gjer for dei, og etter mi meining har det absolutt vore ein velbrukt laurdag!
