There is genuine compassion at all levels, from my taxi-driver who stopped to give his spare diesel to a family whose tractor had run out, to the young Christians using their pocket money to make sure refugees each get an apple. Kukes hospital is a good place for stories. We found a boy, who has survived, and will have little scarring, who had been hit by a bullet that went in one side of his face and out the other. A little girl is also there, in pain, having been burned when a family gas-burner exploded, scalding her thighs. But the incident happened the day before the Serbs cleansed the family, so her suffering has no news value.
Journalists have gripes of our own.
Many aid workers won't let us on to their vehicles, the French Air Force won't fly us back to the coast, even on empty helicopters. Yet without us, there would be no aid agencies, no money from telethons to pay their salaries, no air bridge. None of us is immune. Sitting listening to yet one more tale of woe, you can't help but be excited as the story grows worse and worse, knowing that for you, the story is getting better and better. A man was brought into the hospital, horribly burned, the only survivor of a massacre when the Serbs machine-gunned villagers, then put straw and petrol on the bodies and set fire to them.