And all this with less than half of the staff normally required for such a program. The project on which I am working with my Bosnian economist counterpart is pumping out loans to help restart Bosnian businesses and put thousands of people back to work. This is already having a substantial impact. The businesses that have been started or upgraded include everything from concrete block and roof tile factories to bakeries, dairies and furniture workshops. I have visited factories that make shoes, windows, electric motors and chocolate.
Work is everything, and people are desperate to land a good job.
We have college graduates driving our vehicles. Our cleaning lady is an engineer, and we have an economist working in our yard. We took our first break from the hectic pace last Thanksgiving. When we returned from a few days in Naples, we found that the first snows had arrived and the temperature inside our dark flat was below freezing. It was a stark reminder of how it had been for hundreds of thousands of Bosnians during the war.