21st of December, 2019, until 10th of February, 2020.
(I was not feeling like writing about my trips anymore. Obviously, I would also not update the blog. Mainly because soon I will not have more space available to post pictures for free in my blog so I was kind of disappointed. Lately I am feeling stimulated again so here we go. Unfortunately, during that period of time, I was not taking notes of any names of the people who were giving me lifts).
My first lift out of Bilje is a nice guy going to Slavonski Broad. He drive me a bit out of the town and I have not to walk too much to get in a good place to hitchhike. Just before I leave him he gives me this little white box and say it is my “Christmas gift”. It is this really awesome knife! I know, probably most of the people would freak out, get scared… I am thrilled! I lost my Swiss knife a long time ago and just recently I lost the kitchen knife I was using to cut vegetables and fruits. So for me this is “Yay!”. I could not barely believe…
Next man is also nice but a little bit over warmed by my presence / trips. It is with him that I cross the border to Bosnia & Herzegovina. Super easy and fast. He drops me in some town and wants to give me some money. I refuse to accept but I have nothing to eat so I get just something around 5€ to buy lunch. I buy that and some more other stuff for the next days.
I am standing out of a gas station when 3 guys offered me a lift to somewhere before Sarajevo. I suddenly do not feel like trusting a lot on them, so I make an excuse and refuse. Soon after that, two older man also offer me a lift to somewhere before Sarajevo but on them I felt trust so I got in. They even offer me a beer and one of them give me a bag of pistachios. Sweet! Very nice guys they are. The drop me at another gas station.
A Turkish young guy, going to Sarajevo, stops. We are not far. It is a pleasant conversation and he is quite cute for his age. He drops me at the bus station as me and the volunteers from the House of All, the refugee shelter where I would work, had agreed.
After 2 hours waiting in the cold weather outside, I am looking for someone to borrow a phone and give the girls a call. At a souvenir shop a nice lady helps me and, when I talk to them, for my totally surprise, they say some one came over and could not find me. What a fuck?! Of course later on I would figure that this kind of shit and misunderstandings happen all the time around them.
I do not know exactly how to explain the house. I believe that because there is no one in charge of it, apart of the volunteers who arrive without a clue, everything is chaos. The volunteers are doing a good job. We are doing a good job. But is is just difficult to keep a system when the one in charge, the one responsible for the place change so much from time to time. So I face it big problems with the organization system (or the absence of one) since I am quite systematic. For me it is a huge obstacle to enjoy more the place because of that.
The residents: They all also surprise me a lot. In the opposite of what I a, expecting from people in their situation, who have to leave their country as neglected and lose everything, they are quite ungrateful and very picky about anything we could possible offer to them. From the food to the clothes and activities outside of the house. They are never satisfied. Of course some of them are lovely people and totally get into my heart. But most of the time I could not understand them. We grew to believe that since they had a good life before, with good jobs and nice cars, a respected name and a proper house, they are still feeling as it was like that. They are expecting to keep in the same life style. Unfortunately we are far away from that.
The volunteers house: It is a nice old house but unfortunately we are facing a lot of issues. Just one bathroom for eight people to share. The heater system is a nightmare. The kitchen is too small. And when I first arrive, none of the other volunteers had any idea of sanity and how to live in a house which you share with other people. Dishes always dirty (there was one time that I almost cried when I got up in the morning because of the situation of the kitchen), clothes and wet towels everywhere, and to make it worse, they decided to adopted a cat. Nobody asked me or if anyone wanted, they just brought to the house and that was it. I mean, the house was already a complete mess without a cat and then you get one who makes poop under the cupboard in the living room where we suppose to eat. Unbelievable! But since I was the last arrival, and apparently the only one who had any sense of cleaning, there was not much I could do.
When everybody left a few weeks after and the new volunteers arrived, I saw some hope in the end of the tunnel. Mainly because we talked about and everybody agreed with the new clean system. It was better, I have to admit, but I still could not find a clean mug to have some tea. Most of the times.
With the time you kind of get use to. With everything, the residents and their way, the mess and the lack of organization. I am still being me, of course. I become the kitchen coordinator after my dear J leave, and I am caring the position with my (as later on is well known for everybody) strict way. Because I care not just about the present but also about the future of the residents and the House of All itself, I believe that following the rules, as they are meant to be, is the best chance we have.
We volunteers are there to help and apart of our, not so much experience in the field of refugees, we are doing our best, giving our time and passion for the safe of the shelter. Many times the coordinator and the doctor have to go overnight to the hospital because of some healthy emergency. Other times we just had to go to the house in the middle of the night because of some security emergency. Which always broke my heart though was that, even we were doing all of that and all we could for the house, many times the residents did not appreciate our help. The made me sad many times, but never made me treat them differently.
At that time I meet one of the ex-residents, N. She and her family lived in the shelter for a few months before get help from the Germany Embassy to leave the place. N. now is helping us as a volunteer too. Although she is just 17, and in many of our conversations she still behaved like a teenager, she have also an advanced mind. I have my suspicion since the beginning that she has a crush on me (which were confirmed by her when I left the shelter). She is a lovely and beautiful girl, but for me she is still a girl, so because of that of course I did not allow myself to have any romantic feelings for her, even so I love her very much. She will always be in my heart.
Because I have some migraine and got sick of my stomach, I left the house two days after I planned. The night I said goodbye to the residents was difficult. So many of them grew up in my heart and it was hard to say goodbye. What surprised me more was when I heard, through one of the volunteers, that my dearest resident friend, Sokar, was waiting for me to leave, so she could cry because she did not want to cry in front of me. I left the house very early in the morning so I did not see any volunteer but I had said goodbye in the night before. I walked for less than 30 minutes to my hitchhiking spot.
P.S.: I still can feel the vibe of the House of All and the Volunteer’s House. The feeling of how it was to be there is still alive on me. That happen with some of the places I have been…