Serb town dwellers grasp at normal life
Serb town dwellers grasp at normal life
By Natela Cutter
NEVESINJE, Bosnia (Reuter): One sign that life is slowly returning to normal in the small Bosnian Serb town of Nevesinje is that the local undertaker has no work to do.
"I haven't had to bury anyone in the last two months," said Lazo Miletic, who reckons that more than 400 young men from Nevesinje have died in nearly two years of war.
The front line is no more than 10 miles (16 km) from the town and combat duty is still a fact of life for its men, but they are now beginning to live a life that has as much to do with peace as with war.
"It is good to go back to work, but we still have to go to the front lines every other week," said 35-year-old Milko Vjesnica, who works in a furniture factory.
The local authorities are trying hard to encourage factories, shops and other small businesses by leasing out cheap premises, while the town hall has been renting land to people who want to grow fruit and vegetables.
A textile mill is running at 30 percent of capacity, while metalworking and furniture factories are producing a fifth of their peacetime rate -- big improvements in a country whose economy has been wrecked by war.
The Serbs have been resisting U.S. invitations to join the peace process that has resulted in a federation of Moslems and Croats in Bosnia.
But in Nevesinje, which lies 50 miles (80 km) south of Sarajevo, Serbs have already begun opening small shops and cafes.
"I decided to open a cafe last month because I have no other income and I have a wife and two children to support," said Dasa Kapor, 38, who once practiced law in Sarajevo.
He fled to Nevesinje, where his family owns a house and a video shop, at the beginning of the war in 1992.
"I am one of the lucky ones because my family is here and I have a place to live," he said.
Kapor's wife, Milena, who was a kindergarten teacher before the war, is planning to open a drug store on Nevesinje's main street.
"Since there is no place to buy make-up in town, I thought I would open a small shop, with high-quality goods," she said.
Dragomir Odalovic, a 70-year-old refugee from Sarajevo, has taken up the Nevesinje local authorities' offer of land available on a short-term, one-year lease.
"We received 250 square meters (2,700 square feet) of land to plant peppers and tomatoes this year," he said.
But many in Nevesinje have still to taste the fruits of an emerging peace.
Nevesinje is host to nearly 10,000 mostly Serb refugees and unlike the Kapor family, who left Sarajevo with enough money to start a new life when the opportunity arose, most have no savings and are forced to live on aid handouts.
The local Red Cross estimates that about 7,500 out Nevesinje's total population of 20,000 are still living below the poverty line.
Gordana Lazetic, 27, has five children aged between eight months and six years. Her husband was killed in action in 1992 and she lives with her in-laws in a small weekend house they built before the war.
"We fled Mostar when the war got too close," she said, cradling her eight-month-old son Goran, born after his father's death and named after him.
"Life is hard with so many small children, but they are all I have," she said.
Her family had a two-storey house and three shops in nearby Mostar, scene of bitter fighting between Moslems and Croats for most of the past year.
Lazetic said the family abandoned all its belongings in Mostar and feels it will never be able to return to the area now controlled by the Moslem-led Bosnian government.
Her mother-in-law Mara keeps goats for milk and cheese to make a change from the powdered milk donated by international aid agencies.
"Our biggest difficulty is clothing for the children," said Mara. "With the rest, we can make do. Life has to go on, if only for the children."
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