Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 21:29:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 6 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7235    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
06/11/1992

Dobar Dan,

The trees outside are loosing their leaves and slowly the world 
turns in to brown and dark colours. Winter is starting and the 
wetter gets colder and colder. It is cold already in Zagreb, 
but in BiH and the Eastern parts of the country the temperature 
is below zero at night. We have send some heaters to Gasinci 
but it is by far not enough to heat the big hall were they are 
working with the children.

From the Finnish, who came the evening before last with a big 
truck with humanitarian aid, which they brought to Osijek 
yesterday I heard that they haven't start really building 
houses in Gasinci, everywhere there were little piles of stones 
and things laying but that was it.

The representatives of the Dutch Red Cross (who was fired 
yesterday) visit us, we have been looking for him for weeks 
without any results and now he came it was too late. He told 
that if it was up to him they would have start to build weeks. 
He major problem however was that Croatian building companies 
were too expensive, according to what he said they ask for 
30.000 Dem for a little cottage of 4 by 4 meters. So they 
decided to let them come from the Netherlands and now not 
Croatian building company is willing to build the houses and 
they have to wait until a Dutch company has time, or something 
like that. In any case the guy was free from his job now and 
really would like to work for us, when we ask what he did best 
he said: "truck driving". The guy was in charge of a 5,5 
million Dem big building programme of the Dutch Red Cross and 
scouting for some other red cross branches. Okay he did his 
best.

Of course it is easy to attack big organisations and maybe I 
shouldn't do it too often. But they are such an easy target and 
in many ways have disappointed me so much that I continue a 
little. UNICEF again, not what they did least week, but rather 
about what they didn't do in last year and what they are 
planning to do the next one. In our storage lays by the way a 
fantastic present from UNICEF for children in refugee camps, a 
box containing a short of building kit to make yourself a bag 
in the form of an van, just to big to really play with it and 
too small to put something inside.

Already last year some Croatian psychologists start to work in 
cooperation with UNICEF with traumatised children. In that 
whole period they never got one penny from UNICEF, but had to 
give more or less all their reports and results to the 
organisation. Worst was however that the International office 
of UNICEF in Zagreb changed their staff nearly every month, if 
you have to believe the stories of the highly frustrated people 
who work with them. All the ideas which this Croatian doctors 
and specialists brought in were put a side or not listen to. I 
think I wrote about this already months ago. The idea was f.e. 
to involve television and radio in a project for those 
children. They ask UNICEF to advocate it to their state, but it 
never happened.

For next year UNICEF in cooperation with the Norwegian 
government start a test with a new programme for traumatised 
children, developed by Norwegian specialists, which needs some 
field tests. The plan is to work with children in 20 schools 

(involving drama and art teachers and Croatian psychologists), 
who are refugee and see the results before starting a big 
programme. But already they are cutting the project, rather 10 
than 20 schools will be involved in the project.

The thing however what hurts me the most is that the Croatian 
workers get 125 US$ is they are lucky. The sleeping places of 
the foreign UNICEF workers in Hotel Intercontinental cost more 
per night. That is how it works. Some of the Croatian people 
involved are now thinking of joining the psychological 
programme we with Suncokret want to develop. They don't like so 
much that their are used a bit like test pigs.

Another big organisation involved in this war is Helsinki Watch 
or rather the Helsinki Federation, they are doing a great job 
in finding out which war crimes have taken place. But also use 
a great amount of money to get their material together. The 
people in ARK were rather shocked what the representative of HW 
has spend during her last visit in Zagreb, 50.000 US$ and "They 
even don't want to buy another telephone line for us" somebody 
from ARK reacted.

The last big organisation I want to give a bad point today is 
the computer firm which deliver us the computers for the 
office, they arrived today and from the 3 computers 3 were 
broke. None of them was checked before they put them on 
transport and that is for us a big wonder. Anyway they are now 
standing here and not doing anything. Hans who is waiting to 
install software on them for more than 3 weeks now is rather in 
a bad mood.

He can be lucky that most of the people left the house, they 
are all over the country for the weekend, some went to Brac to 
bring new materials, some went to Gasinci to check out if we 
are allowed to build a shelter their for our own volunteers, 
and Ogi and Ivana went to Pula to start new workcamps there. 
Marcus is of to BiH, to which city he went is unclear, he 
didn't want to say, what he was planning to do, but we saw him 
running around the whole day with special maps of the area. 
When he left he said that he is back in a week, so that's is 
what we hope. Not much will happen this weekend with other 
words it will be quiet, nice for a change.

In the morning however Ogi, Mark-Jan and I visit some group of 
students from part of Croatia in Zagreb. In order to find some 
new volunteers. The school for social work has now fully accept 
our workcamps as practical places for their students, but we 
have to promote our ideas actively. Mark-Jan and I have been 
working on a general plan for the coming year in which we tried 
to calculate all our costs and wishes. After working on it for 
many days and nights we have to whole project now in a spread 
sheet and started to count today. We came till the conclusion 
that if we keep on growing as we are doing at the moment we end 
up in December next year, working in 56 camps or centres, with 
at least 500 foreign volunteers and 168 Croatian paid workers. 
At that moment we will reach out to 250.000 people. But when we 
saw the costs involved we had to look twice, over 7.000.000 Dem 
on a yearly bases, from which we have up to know only 500.000 
secured. In principle a huge amount of money, but nothing if 
you compare it with the nearly 80.000.000 US$ which the 
refugees in Croatia needs every day for their food, housing and 
medical treatment every month.
  

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,


                            Wam :-)
--------------------------------------------------------
Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer 
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do. It has no 
copyright and may be used in all forms of further distribution 
among all types of media. But please if you use something drop 
me a line. You can reach me via wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de. I 
dedicate Zagreb Diary to Tyche, Pjort and Rik in order that 
they will know what their father was doing all that time in 
Zagreb.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia