Walker has talked with wives who say they saw their husbands shot or bayoneted to death, children who watched as their parents' throats were slit, women gang-raped. Often, children are so traumatized they won't talk, won't eat and just stare blankly ahead. It gets to you. At the best of times, Kukes was an impoverished town of 25,000 nestled along a lake under snowcapped mountains. Roads are unpaved.
Tap water runs for only a few hours in the morning and evening.
The local hospital has only 250 beds. The emergency room is only beds, no equipment. There is no film for the X-ray machine. Now this dirt-poor backwater has become the temporary home of at least 150,000 Kosovar refugees, who live mostly in tent camps erected by international relief agencies. Some sleep 20 to a room in apartments.