Wounded
I'm not sure where I am in the longitude and latitude of the world, or why the sun comes up at 4:45 am here, but it does. The anticipated beginning of my long journey home kept my brain working and my eyes open at that early hour. "24 hours from now... (I'll be headed to the airport)48 hours from now... (I'll be back snuggled down in my own bed with noises of the city nights (horns, police, brakes, etc..) to remind me I am not in Kansas (or Bosnia), but I am at home, again."
It was a bright and sunny day, already warming with the spring sun. In the ten days I have been here the temperature (in my un-airconditioned) room has risen 10 degrees - from a comfortable 74 to 84 - time to get back to my modern conveniences.
We had time for a filling breakfast and prayer over the Harvest. Afterwards, I asked Ante what the sermon would be about this morning. He told me it would concern how all the young people are leaving Bosnia in search of wives, money and a future - leaving the scarred landscape behind. He said, "Now, they don't care about their country or their people. They are only caring for themselves."
The winding roads through the mountains and hills was a far cry from the death-defying drives I have experienced in Sri Lanka. Not too many chances are taken when on occasion you are stuck behind a slow-moving bus or trailer. With Spring comes a thousand shades of green - I held my breath for the beauty, no fear.
The road to Sarajevo cuts through the front line of the war zone. Villages that once dotted the landscape are now only remnants of mortar and brick, blasted by ethnic hatred hundreds of years old, that erupted in civil war in 1992. Several large cities are along this road. Apartment complexes right near the highway, all scarred by mortars and obvious rounds of repeated shelling. Even ten years after the negotiated peace, the wounds of the nation are very much in view. Many of the buildings are in the process of "face lifts". The holes filled in and the plaster and paint preparing to erase the evidence.
As I traveled down this former "front line", I had to think if the buildings, inanimate concrete edifices of society STILL are this scarred, what about the wounds of the people?
As politicians and historians take sides, draw conclusions and military personnel draw front lines and strategic strongholds, ordinary people are not only caught in the crossfire, they are left in the rubble, when armies have retreated, governments have retracted and life decides it must go on.
Ten years and still...
Halfway to Sarajevo, we stopped for a stretch, a coffee, and yes, a "break" into the proverbial roadside "pit stop". The first place we pulled the car over had a big red sign with a skull and cross bones. The warning was not for poison ivy or oak, but deadly land mines still buried in the forest.
As I contemplated my family, being contacted over my undignified, untimely demise, (she was blow to pieces peeing), I was instructed as long as I stayed on the paved road there was little danger (other than mooning passing motorists).
Comical and horrible.
There is no casual stroll through any woods - there are warnings - you know here
there was war.
It was a bright and sunny day, already warming with the spring sun. In the ten days I have been here the temperature (in my un-airconditioned) room has risen 10 degrees - from a comfortable 74 to 84 - time to get back to my modern conveniences.
We had time for a filling breakfast and prayer over the Harvest. Afterwards, I asked Ante what the sermon would be about this morning. He told me it would concern how all the young people are leaving Bosnia in search of wives, money and a future - leaving the scarred landscape behind. He said, "Now, they don't care about their country or their people. They are only caring for themselves."
The winding roads through the mountains and hills was a far cry from the death-defying drives I have experienced in Sri Lanka. Not too many chances are taken when on occasion you are stuck behind a slow-moving bus or trailer. With Spring comes a thousand shades of green - I held my breath for the beauty, no fear.
The road to Sarajevo cuts through the front line of the war zone. Villages that once dotted the landscape are now only remnants of mortar and brick, blasted by ethnic hatred hundreds of years old, that erupted in civil war in 1992. Several large cities are along this road. Apartment complexes right near the highway, all scarred by mortars and obvious rounds of repeated shelling. Even ten years after the negotiated peace, the wounds of the nation are very much in view. Many of the buildings are in the process of "face lifts". The holes filled in and the plaster and paint preparing to erase the evidence.
As I traveled down this former "front line", I had to think if the buildings, inanimate concrete edifices of society STILL are this scarred, what about the wounds of the people?As politicians and historians take sides, draw conclusions and military personnel draw front lines and strategic strongholds, ordinary people are not only caught in the crossfire, they are left in the rubble, when armies have retreated, governments have retracted and life decides it must go on.
Ten years and still...
Halfway to Sarajevo, we stopped for a stretch, a coffee, and yes, a "break" into the proverbial roadside "pit stop". The first place we pulled the car over had a big red sign with a skull and cross bones. The warning was not for poison ivy or oak, but deadly land mines still buried in the forest.
As I contemplated my family, being contacted over my undignified, untimely demise, (she was blow to pieces peeing), I was instructed as long as I stayed on the paved road there was little danger (other than mooning passing motorists).
Comical and horrible.
There is no casual stroll through any woods - there are warnings - you know here
there was war.
