November 30, 2006

If T.S. Eliot had been from Tuzla, I feel certain he would have chosen November or December as the cruelest month. For several weeks now, it has been completely dark at 4:30 p.m. With 22 days left before we pass the landmark shortest day of the year, it feels like forever before this will improve. The weather, which fortunately has been unseasonably warm and bright, has returned to its normal parameters for this time of year, and for the last three days we have all been feeling the oppressive weight of leaden skies. A huge snowstorm would be a welcome change, although I’m told that the snow removal system here leaves a little to be desired.

Many people in the Tuzla area heat their homes with coal, and this is a curious system if you’re not used to it. First of all, the smell is strong and not very pleasant. Second, the coal is delivered by a truck which simply backs up and dumps a huge pile of coal in the street in the general vicinity of the house that ordered it. Whomever ordered the coal must then spend several hours outside with a shovel and wheelbarrow, scooping up the coal and carrying it to the house. I guess this is its own form of heat generation.

To escape the chilly weather and coal smell outside, it is possible to retreat inside, but then there is another problem. In any given room of 10 people taking refuge from the cold, seven or eight of them will be smoking. The anti-smoking revolution that has long been visible in the US, and which has recently made its mark even in France, is nowhere to be seen in Bosnia and Hercegovina. So entrenched is the habit of smoking that it is not even considered necessary to invoke the polite ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ before lighting up. I am currently working on my second major cold of my stay here, and I’m sure that oxygen deprivation is part of the reason.

Three Days Later

After a miserable weekend in basically every way, I am on the mend, and could face coming downstairs to work and drink coffee, a beverage I find unpalatable when I don’t feel well. The sun has come out, which is a big help, and I even managed to smile my way through being chastised that I had become sick because I’m not wearing enough warm clothes. At morning coffee, there was a public service announcement that everyone was required to come up with a strategy for making me get well by tomorrow. Of course, I did not understand the announcement, I only knew it was about me because everyone was looking at me, and someone had to explain it to me afterward.

But world events are providing a large distraction from personal discomfort. Today the Dutch government is giving an award to some of the former peacekeepers in Srebrenica, whom many view as being responsible through inaction for the massacre there. This controversy has filled the news shows here, together with coverage from the trial of a Serb nationalist leader in the Hague, and Hague Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s recent statement that accused war criminal Radovan Karadic is living in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

And as I sit here writing and doing research on these war-related issues, my friend Sajma, who is one of the nicest people I have ever met, has followed this morning’s directive and is bringing me a special tea she brewed, guaranteed to counteract the effects of the common cold. These constant acts of kindness from wonderful, warm people stand in stark contrast to the horrors that have been replaying nightly on television. Several of the young people I’ve met since I’ve been here have expressed the belief that the war can break out again. I hope with all my heart they are wrong.