A Week in the Serbian Countryside

DONJA TOPONICA, SERBIA

The young German swings his shovel wildly, stumbling over the pile of dirt which he is loading into a wheelbarrow one small shovel at a time. I cringe each time he turns, afraid he will clock one of the others working in the fairly small area, but they are aware of his erratic movements and give him a wide berth. Someone suggests that he take a break, but he replies "I just want to go home so I will work until its done." He is breathing heavily, and his cheeks are flushed so they match his sunburned shoulders. Only when he picks up a mattock and starts swinging a little too close to his own feet and those of others do I step in and insist that he is done and I will take over. He is tired and hungry and no longer focused or coordinated and its only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. A field trip to a Serbian hospital is not on the agenda for this week. 

I work alongside Alexander who has very particular preferences about the way one should work, though I secretly wonder if he isn't also slightly uncomfortable with a girl swinging a mattock. But we bicker a little all in good humor, he scolding me in Serbian, me answering in English. I stop to wipe the sweat from my brow and look at my watch. We have only been at this for 2 1/2 hours, and there is still plenty of light left in the day. If not for the mosquitoes, working at dusk would prove quite pleasant. Most of the other volunteers have stepped away from the project, swigging sugary fruit drinks or sitting cross-legged in the cool grass. Two other women half-heartedly pull rocks out of the dirt and sling them onto the growing pile, while the members of the local group work diligently. 

I arrived at this work camp unsure of what to expect, but assuming that the work would be steady. Perhaps not grueling, but good sweaty garden and trail work. Instead the week has so far been dotted with small projects, often with inadequate work for everyone in the group to participate. There have been more breaks than work, lots of siestas and lingering at meals, socializing in the afternoons and evenings along with a few meandering walks through the surrounding countryside and neighboring villages. Though initially frustrated, I have made peace with the pace, and am doing my best to enjoy the time. But when the others begrudge the work or complain about the difficulty, I am curious what brought them here. One South Korean fella left after one day, hopping on a bus with a muttered excuse about needing to run into the city and returning the next day. Of course he never returned, and I wonder if the story would not have been repeated with some of the others had the work been what was described to me- approximately 6 hours a day. 

So while "work" camp seems to be a bit of a misnomer, the week is providing a glimpse of life in Serbia, a place and culture that I previously knew very little about. I only knew of the country in the context of war criminals. The guide book I borrowed describes Serbia as an international pariah, and I think that's about right, and fairly unfortunate. There were certainly some Serbs who did terrible and horrible things, but the citizens here are no more supporters of war than any other individuals. Living through war is not a pleasant affair for any civilians, no matter what side of the battle on which they find themselves. But war is far from here. For now, this is a sleepy village in the south where every house no matter how basic or luxurious has a sizeable garden and at least a chicken or two scratching in the yard. The school is a bustling affair, more or less the same everywhere- middle school girls giggle and gossip across the yard from the boys. Younger boys laugh as they emerge from the washrooms with soaking wet shirts, clearly having found mischief without the watchful eye of the teacher. The hosts of this camp are an ambitious group of twenty-somethings who have good intentions to contribute to their community and preserve village life. (Like so many places, Serbian villages often watch their children leave for the big city, leaving the villages slowly aging and fading away.) The group has been amiable and welcoming, interested in what brings people here and what we think. They seem incredibly aware of their questionable reputation in the world, and are anxious to change it. There are two Germans here, and I think about the fact that at one time, Germany was the epitome of evil in the world, but 70 years later, Germans do not carry with them that connotation. I assume that it will be so with Serbia as well. Someday, barring further conflict, they will shake this part of their past, and the world may be able to see Serbia as another foreign land worth visiting, its people worth knowing. 

City Walls

DUBROVNIK, CROATIA

City walls seem like such ancient things, relics from another time. But the last time these city walls were under siege was in my lifetime, not quite 24 years ago. From the top of the city walls, one can look out over the rooftops and peer down into the narrow streets of the stone and tile city snug within its walls. On the other side the clear turquoise water of the Adriatic Sea shimmers in the sun. As I follow the walls behind a long line of tourists from all over the globe, it is hard to imagine the time not so long ago when the city was under siege. Siege. Even the word sounds ancient, a word for the history books and not for the modern tongue. Though the old city walls proved meager in their ability to guard against the weapons of modern warfare, still the city sought shelter inside its walls. I went to an excellent photo exhibit in the city at a gallery called War Photo Ltd. The permanent collection features photos from the siege of Dubrovnik that began in the weeks before Christmas in 1991, as well as portraits from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Croatia as a whole, in their wars for independence. There is also a gallery dedicated to photos from even more recent wars. Right now there is a selection of photos from Ukraine, and other recent exhibits have included Syria, Palestine, and the Congo. The photos are all at once beautiful and terrible, both stunning and heartbreaking. I look at the faces in these photos, the portraits of families who lived for months in stairwells and basements, who sought water first from cisterns and drainpipes and later delivery trucks, who lived in fear and by candlelight  for nearly seven months, and I find it impossible to think of war as either a necessary evil or as something which could ever be considered just. I look at the faces of Dubrovnik from a different time, and I see their pain and exhaustion and grief, and I wonder where they are now. Though many survivors fled the city, many stayed and I am certain they are here now. At a time when the city was constantly under fire and basic necessities were hard to come by, could they ever have imagined that not even 25 years later their city would look like this? More or less intact, gift shops displaying trinkets and postcards, restaurants clamoring for the attention of throngs of tourists who follow tour guides bearing flags from Germany, France, Bahrain, and Japan? Certainly there are scars here that as a foreigner, I do not see. But in spite of the pain and strife that might still linger, this city is thriving. Surely that is the best tribute to those who lost their lives defending this city.

Up in the Air

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA

After a sleepless night, I watched the red sun rise over Bucharest from the back of the cab. Whether it was the late night tea, the anxiety of sleeping through an alarm, or the lingering jet lag, there was no more than a short nap to be had during the wee hours of the morning. Despite the resulting sleepy stupor, I have stumbled my way through another foreign airport and am now enroute to another strange place.

A little over three months ago, I sat on a small Airbus with my nose pressed up against the window, watching as the plane left behind the eternal daylight of my austral summer in the Antarctic and slid into the darkness. A line in the sky between the haze of twilight and the deep cerulean of night was nearly as pronounced as the one on the flight path screen that showed a pixelated white airplane icon crossing from the light half of the planet onto the dark. Somewhere below the Queen Victoria Range stretched farther and farther behind me. Since then there has been what seems like a constant parade of airplanes and airports. After a blissful month of hiking and road tripping around the South Island of New Zealand, I skipped through Cincinnati hugging nieces and nephews and grandmothers, then mosied only slightly longer through Chicago gossiping with a sister and wrassling a different niece & nephew pair. Since then there's been Washington DC, Chicago the sequel, rural Illinois, Sacramento, and Lake Tahoe. I have not spent more than 8 or 9 nights in the same place since I left Antarctica on February 3, and nor will I until the end of June. Aside from the bouts of laundry in between, it has hardly been worth it to unpack.

Now it is the Carpathian Mountains that pass beneath me unseen, blanketed by a thick cloud cover. I had hoped for glimpses of peaks, maybe even the monasteries and castles tucked in their valleys, but alas it is only cotton candy I see. The obstruction lets me off the hook and I sink into the narrow seat and close my eyes, no longer fighting the weight of my eyelids. In another hour I will land in Prague, a geographically bizarre layover on my flight path from Bucharest to Dubrovnik.