Gračanica - Summer 1996

The town we visited was on the edge of Muslim-held territory, literally within walking distance from Bosnian Serb lines. It had been badly shelled during the war, but since the NATO-enforced Dayton peace settlement of last November, the main safety worry for us was land-mines. We had briefings on these in Oxford before we left, and stayed away from known or potentially mined areas during our stay. In addition the local police, international police and IFOR (NATO peace implementation force) were all notified of our presence, and consulted on issues of safety. In short, no unnecessary risks were taken.

The town itself lies between Doboj and Tuzla, near the River Spreca which formed the front line. Down the middle of the town runs a small stream, that is now full of rubbish - I spotted large rats on the banks once, alongside feeding chickens and household waste. A few main roads run parallel to this stream, as once did the railway (the track was removed some time ago, with the train station becoming a bus depot). The town spreads along the narrow valley formed by the stream, and up the surrounding hillsides. The topography was beautiful, and I had an amazing view of the town from my bedroom, up on one of the hills.

I could also see the mountain in the south from which shells were fired into the town. A lot of the damage had been repaired since the cease-fire began, and this left me feeling confused as I tried to form a mental picture of what the place had only recently looked like. Spash-marks on the ground distinguished pot-holes from shell-craters, and scars from shrapnel on plaster walls also provided some clues, while people told me endlessly how many shells had hit the town. However the statistics meant nothing to me, and Gračanica was trying furiously to return to normal life, so the evidence of my own eyes was no help - the town mainly looked brand-new, and a lot of it was brand-new, or at least recently replastered and repainted.

The mosques, madrasa, square clock-tower and old cemetery headstones were an indication of the Turkish influence from the early 1500s, and most of the inhabitants are Muslim - more so since the war, when the minority Serb population left. Islam in Bosnia is not, however, like that of Arabia - few attended the mosque except for on Fridays, few could read Arabic and most women did not wear any form of hejab, amongst other differences. The grandmother of the family I stayed with did pull-out a mat and pray towards Mecca every evening, but this was ignored by the rest of the household; at least on one occasion I saw her praying while the others in the same room watched old Italian sort-porn on the state television channel. Eating pork was the only strongly-held religious taboos I came across, while attitudes to alcohol varied a lot. Generally the younger generations are less interested in anything religious, just like in most of Europe, but this has been complicated by the recent political use of religious labels.

What we found startling about the town was how lively things were - I think we were half-expecting people to be scurrying about for cover amid bombed-out buildings, but the cafes in the centre of town were bright, bustling and friendly. It seemed like paradise, in the place we’d least expected to find it. We had caught the end of the first summer during the cease-fire - students would be returning to college soon, and apparently the town would be quiet in a few weeks time. After the initial amazement wore off we also started to notice the beggars, and how territorial the cafes were - “We can’t sit there. That is for village people.” Some of the prejudices were deep and unexpected, particularly this divide between the towns and the villages. There was almost no hostility towards us, but a lot of curiosity, particularly towards the non-Europeans. I was often asked if I was mujaheddin - they found it hard to place me.

The Hasan Kikić School
Most of our teaching was at the Hasan Kikić, through which our accommodation was arranged. The building had been used by the Bosnian army as a command centre during the war, and so was an important target for Serbian artillery. Much of the glass inside the building was broken, which we contributed to when one of the group accidentally walked through a pane. There was no electricity for the classroom lights, which caused a problem on overcast days.

Most of us I think had mixed feelings about teaching at the school. In part there were doubts about the value (and even the morality) of teaching English. Also many of us had not come intending to take classes; I personally found them quite daunting at first. There were also problems about teaching children from fairly well-off families in a nice friendly town like Gračanica, when previous MCAB experience was predominantly in rougher refugee camps such as Doboroviči, down the road. We were scheduled to teach children (on their summer holidays) in the mornings, and adults in the afternoons, many of whom were teachers, and this meant we had little time to do other work.

All of these problems were compounded when we discovered that many of the children were actually paying for the classes, something like £15 for the three week period. This was initially denied by the headmaster, which didn’t help things - not only were we angry about the charges, and worried about poorer children being excluded, but it seemed entirely possible that our presence was being used to line his pockets. In addition, charging for English classes implied different obligations from holding classes for free. In the end there was little we could do about the situation, but we made sure it was known in town that we were unhappy about the charges, and the headmaster clearly felt that his reputation was under threat.

All of this unfortunately marred classes which I found really enjoyable. We moved around a little, but on the whole I was teaching the youngest kids, aged 6-10, together with Jon, one of the Stanford Americans. We taught a lot of basic vocab, adjectives, verbs etc. with copious use of coloured chalk on the board, but also on the way got them to teach us Bosnian. This was not only fun, but a very practical concern for Jon and I. We also did some acting, sang songs (accompanied by Zoë on the guitar as she moved from classroom to classroom raising merry hell), and we played games during the break - ‘Red light, green light’ and ‘Duck, duck, goose’ being the chief favourites. One day we took our class and another of similar ages to the local park and made displays using leaves, glue and card, but eventually one of us had to stand guard over the municipal flower beds to stop little raiding parties from decimating them. Those teaching older age groups did a few more serious things than us, and I saw some very impressive material. I, however, was happy with my lot, as you might expect.

Sometimes it was interesting to see the tables turned as well. After weeks of them struggling not to roll their ‘r’s, and wrestling with the wonderful vagaries of English pronunciation, Nerma heard me mispronounce the Bosnian word ‘kralj’ - crown. The effects were immediate and hilarious. I still have no idea how to make the required ‘lj’ sound, but that’s not for lack of trying. Poor Nerma pursed her lips and explained time and time again, patiently at first but hopping mad after five minutes (literally: she’d shout ‘kraLJ’ at me, and then jump up and down when I got it wrong). Apart from shouting the word at me louder, another good technique seemed to be writing the offending letters on the board - surely only an idiot would then fail to see his mistake. When that didn’t work, coloured chalk and bigger letters were obviously what was needed - eventually the whole class were writing ‘KRALJ’ on the board and dragging me across to read it, furiously trying to help me understand. Finally I thought I was saved when Almir arrived to see how his cousin was getting on, but no - he immediately got some chalk and walked over to the board, oblivious to my sobs -

“But I know how to spell it; I just don’t know how to say it!”

The Refugee Camp in Doboroviči
Doboroviči is a village about half-an-hour’s tortuous drive from Gračanica. A camp for refugees from western Bosnia (officially ‘displaced people’ in politician-speak, since they have not fled abroad) was built there three years ago by Norwegian Peoples Aid, and with the help of local people. Many of those housed there came in May 1994, followed by a second wave last summer from Srebrenica, Zepa and Zvornik, with the fall of the UN ’safe areas’.

The camp is well planned, with 48 homes spread over a wooded hillside, and there has been good integration with the local community. As such it could have offered a far better life than all the other camps I’ve seen (over ten in all), which were often converted barracks, blocks of flats and even abandoned shell-damaged hotels. Privacy was always a major problem, particularly when people had nowhere else to go during the day, such as to work, and with children running around. Clearly the design of the camp could have alleviated such problems were it not for the chronic overcrowding. According to the camp director there are currently 660 people living there, down from over a thousand people last summer. That means that there are sometimes as many as three or four families sharing houses designed for only one.

We had intended to do more work at this camp and others, but found it difficult to arrange this with all the teaching commitments we had set up for us in Gračanica. Teaching had not been something that a lot of the group felt comfortable with, particularly teaching English, but when we talked to the camp director at Doboroviči this was one of the first things he asked us to do. In the end, some of us were freed up to take classes there in the afternoon, and we organised a sports day (that didn’t go quite as planned) before we left. Because it was such a difficult place to be, I am glad we were based in Gracanica, and had a chance to get some experience teaching there first. Last year we found it hard both living and working at similar camps in Slovenia because the children were so demanding. The following is from the group journal, and I wrote it on our last teaching day there.

Doboroviči classes are for children at the refugee village, aged 6-16, in three grotty classrooms. Getting in and out of the minibus is a struggle. Keeping children in the classroom goes hand-in-hand with keeping other children out. Keeping the chalk is difficult. Handing out books and pens is fraught with problems. The children I ‘teach’ seem boisterous, engaging, completely uninterested, aggressive and tremendously fun, usually varying with the kind of mood I’m in. The threatening, violent, bullying ones, the kind of kids who need the most time, patience and ingenuity in dealing with, have to be labelled and excluded. The withdrawn children stay at home, I expect.

Some of the dilemmas are familiar from T.T.T.S. and other camps, as those involved in previous MCAB trips may realise. How to deal with a boy with a stick, who beats the smaller children, without making him even more aggressive? How to distribute pens books sports equipment without creating a howling mob? How to get the kids off the back bumper of the minibus as you finally pull out of the village, exhausted? Yet there are moments which are so rewarding that I go back the next day, and the one after that, despite the inevitable frustration. It is a place of extremes. The children thank us as we leave with choruses of ‘Gimme pen!’

My Host Family
Once in Gračanica, each member of the group stayed with a Bosnian family. This had been arranged through one of the local schools, with most of the families including an English-speaking teenager. I was particularly fortunate with my host family, who made me feel very much at home. I got on well with Almir (my ‘teenage host’, although he was actually twenty) who studied “electrodynamics” at Tuzla, and was avoiding doing his vacation homework. With his terrible sense of humour, and incredible ability to talk endlessly, we soon found that we had a lot in common. In fact, it was quite spooky how much we did have in common. After losing his parents when he was young, Almir was brought up by his extended family - mainly his grandparents, and a workaholic uncle, who is now very worried about Almir’s lack of direction. He’d been very close to his grandfather, who had been a pillar of the local community, and who passed away at about the same time that mine did. At the same time, there was a lot we did not have in common; he, for instance, knew how to man an anti-aircraft gun.

I stayed at Almir’s uncle’s house, with his uncle (who rarely emerged from the basement office, from where he sold electrical goods and services, and who didn’t speak to me once), aunt (who was deeply upset by the whole idea of vegetarianism, and proceeded to try to make amends for what was obviously a case of severe undernourishment. She also loved to learn English), grandmother (who said little and heard less, as a result of a shell that exploded near her during the war. She was quietly bemused by my presence, and our complete inability to communicate with each other), cousin Damir (about my age, he had just finished his stint of national service during my stay, and was working with his father. Damir always gave me a huge friendly smile whenever I saw him) and finally his cousin Damira (sixteen, who also worked with her father, and who could put away an enormous amount of cake with no damage to her figure). Semir, another of Almir’s cousins, lived further up on the hill, and once he began coming to our classes at the school in town, he stayed with us during the week, and walked down with me in the mornings.

In practical terms, Almir was invaluable in helping me to find out a lot about the town, the war, but also aspects of everyday life. Language ceased to be a barrier since he was a keen and interested interpreter, unlike some of the other teenage hosts. When we had time, usually at weekends, Almir took me to visit his friends or family, or up on the hill where his family had a small farm. As well as being interesting in themselves, such trips gave me a useful chance to recharge after a hectic week of teaching. Together we also talked to people at the local radio station, the head imam (religious leader) and an author who had written about the war around Gračanica. Even a chance meeting with a troop of US soldiers, where there was no problem of translation, was coloured a great deal by Almir’s presence - he become enraged by the things one soldier said about a Serb attack on the town, during which Almir had lost two friends.

On the previous two trips I’ve taken part in, we moved around a lot more, and our ability to find out about the places we were in was limited. In addition, I’d previously only been to refugee camps outside Bosnia - Gračanica was my first glimpse of the life that many such refugees had lost, and Almir was an essential part of that. During the journey back home, we made a short detour so that some of us could spend a night at Velenje, a refugee camp in Slovenia, which I had visited last year. Apart from changes at the camp (a lot of people had moved to the West, or returned to Bosnia) another important difference with the experience a year ago was that I now understood a little about some of the everyday things they missed - cevapcic; kifla; simply drinking kava in the morning on a balcony overlooking the town. I spent most of the short visit with Selma, a student who I had met last year, but who now seemed like a different person. In truth, of course, it was me who had changed.

Anand Madhvani

Last updated: February 25th, 2008