I ordinarily would agree with people who argue that donations should be made directly to the Red Cross or other well established, 'official' channels. It is their job and they are (or at least should be) well versed in any type of emergency response. But I also understand people's distrust in Bosnia and Herzegovina as […]

I'm about to hit the road but I feel compelled to write this before I do. Justifiably, this is an emotional moment for most of us. A good chunk of the country is under water, so many have lost everything after perhaps just getting on their feet from the war years, and our government seems […]

During the war most of the aid that arrived in the country first went to the most populated areas. Eventually, if they were lucky, some of the aid trickled down to smaller towns and villages. For that very reason, our team always took the road less traveled. In our 4 ton Bedford trucks we delivered […]

The adjustment period after returning from a visit to the states is sort of like digging blindly into a bag of jelly beans and popping them into your mouth before you can suss out which flavor it is. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and other times you just feel like spitting them out. So yet […]

Everything seems out of tilt at the moment. Mother Nature brought spring early to our door even if we never really started any sort of winter hibernation. And now the early spring of late winter has brought on the Bosnian spring. I'm not so sure this is going to bring about meaningful transformation, though, despite […]

When the war ended I remember one of the most eerie feelings was...the silence. During cease-fires there may have been a day or two, even a week by some freak chance, where the constant sound of machine gun and sniper fire was muted. But we always knew it could, and would, end at any moment. […]

The new census will surely show that Sarajevo is even smaller than we thought it was. Estimates put the four main city municipalities total population at just over 250,000. Granted, with East Sarajevo and the surrounding communities we eventually might reach 400,000. But still, we're small. Smaller than I thought. I don't mind small places […]

The Chronicle of Higher Education from the US spent a year researching and writing an article, or perhaps story would better suit its description, about Sabina and her research (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Science-of-Hatred/143157/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en). It is titled the Science of Hate. It's the only thing in the entire length of the story that I disagree with. I'm not a […]

We had just moved into the second half of the second half and it was still nil-nil. We had all gathered for Bajram, or Eid (sort of like Muslim Easter) as we usually do. But this time the table was set around the tv. It was the final World Cup qualification match. Sabina's uncle sat […]

I was helping a Swiss tv crew do a documentary on Bosnia some years back. I can't recall exactly when but I do  know it was summer. They asked me to take them to Lukomir, the highest and most isolated permanent settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's as close as one gets to a medieval […]