Topic: Zagreb Diary 
** Written 12:50 AM  Aug  1, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in gn:yugo.antiwar **

Zagreb Diary
30-07-1992

Dobar Dan,

When we had a bad thought about somebody or something and we didn't had a good reason for it, my mother said "The inn-keeper trust his guest the way he thinks himself", that is a wonderful Dutch expression. It means as much as look through your prejudices and try to find out if their is maybe another reason for the other person to act the way he or she is acting.

Forgetting your prejudices, it is simple said, but not easy to do, we are full of them, big ones, small ones, but above all cultural ones. It is so easy to sit on our own cultural island and make judgments about other cultures and believes, about each other strategies and ways of thinking.

It also can work the other way round, I never thought about that. But prejudices not always have to be bad, you can have very positive prejudices about somebody, some situation, some places and than suddenly have to understand that you overestimated the power, the feeling, the possibilities from that other person or place.

I made a mistake when I came here beginning to write this diary, I have the feeling that I also developed prejudices towards me, people putting me on a much higher level than were I should be. In fact this diary is just a lot of bullshit. An hour of meditation every evening before I go to bed. This country is not mine, this stories are not mine, this war is not mine, I am just an observer, a parasite who walk through the streets and describes the bad situation of others. You know like a flea on a sick dog, the flea maybe survives the dog will die.

I should not have put my name under it, since it is absolute not important that I write it, it is a story everybody who took the time for it could have written it. Now it is too late to change and the only thing I hope that will happen is that I loose my imagine soon. That you see me as I am just a strange guy (on this moment again with a very little ulcer, which cost me some problems the last days), who likes to do a lot, but needs 48 hours a day to get it all done. 

When I realise that I am in a country where some hundred thousands of people live in tents and that nobodies knows what will happen with them when the fall and winter comes only that picture is important. When I close my eyes I see the disasters in the mountains where the curds were living some winters ago. That picture has burned itself into my brains and will stay there forever. Rain, cold and hungry and no place to shelter. That also will happen to the thousands in the colder parts of this countries, not only in the refugees camps, but also those in the houses without glass.

It doesn't matter so much what I think and what I think of them, or what you think of me. We all should think about how to help this people. I don't want to ask them "Are you Serb, Croat or Muslim", "Are you pacifist and against the war ", "Do you have prejudices against somebody". Probably they have prejudices, and probably they are not pacifist and probably they have the "wrong" nationality, but does that matter if you like to help.

Wasn't it Jesus who said "what you do to the smallest of all people you do to me" or something like that. Wasn't he the one who help the tax collectors (hated by everybody). Or is that also just a nice story we only should listen to on Sundays.

If I hear the stories from abroad, how they make big welcome parties for the refugees in South Germany I get tears in my eyes, at least some good things are happening to them. But so many stay behind, so many are not lucky that they can go to the well established camps in the northern countries. If you read the Dutch and German newspapers you really get the feeling that the lucky ones will be pampered by our states, they are surrounded by attention (if you compare it with the situation in the camps here that is). At last the borders are open a bit, limited but still.

The war puts every thing in an other light, knowing that a few hundred kilometres away people are dying and people are scared like hell is something which goes under your skin after a while. It makes you tired whenever you think about it and more and more cynical when you have to re-explain it over and over again. For years nobody (including myself) did have any big interest in what was going on here and when there was no war nobody would read this diary. Now the world is full of EX-YU specialists and I as a fool misuse the wretchedness of these countries for my own stories. We all know what is the best for these countries and we all have so our own opinion how peace organisations should work.

I think everybody should follow her or his own heart and see how he or she can help. Don't think that every new plan immediately works, it is trying trying and trying. Peace work is like drops on a stone, it can takes years, but at a certain moment the stone will break. Another nice Dutch expression is "Without willing dogs you can't catch rabbits", but with dogs who are fighting with each other you can't catch rabbits as well. Peace work is sticking together and taking each other the way they are, with his or her good and bad things, nobody is a saint, nobody is a devil, but we only can do it together. 

That is for you out there the same as for us here, we only can do if we keep together and we can only do it if you trust us and we trust you.  

I am glad whenever I met an inn-keeper who takes my money without checking it, it means he or she trust me. That is such a shinning light in a war, just simple trust.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)

P.S. We get sometimes medicines, we would like to stress that not all medicines have English or Croatian or any other understandable information on their packages. So if you like to collect and send medicines to these countries, please go to a doctor and let him or her write down in Latin or English what you bring. Medicines are no candies and by wrong doses dangerous. We try to hand over what we can directly to camp doctors or better to Doctors without Borders or any other organisation who deals specific with this type of aid. 

** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **