Alrighty... so I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, and for that I’m sorry.
Anywho, so I’m in Manila, Philippines now, but there’s some stuff before that that I should talk about. I just spent 6 days in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina which was really cool to be there, but to long to be alone without knowing the country at all. My first couple of days there I just wandered around the city, took in the sites and lounged in cafes and pubs.
On my third day there I walked out of the old city down what has been called “Sniper Ally.” This is the main road that runs all the way through Sarajevo. It’s very wide, clear and open, so during the siege anyone who had to cross the road or use it to get from one part of the city to another was an easy target for all of the snipers hiding in the hills surrounding the city. Just outside of the Old City is the Bosnian History Museum and the Sarajevo War Museum. The History Museum had some pretty cool things inside of it. Lots of old Roman and Ottoman artefacts. The coolest thing that was there is the Sarajevo Haggadah. It’s basically the Jewish or Old Testament creation story written out in a picture book used during one of the Jewish holidays. The thing that makes this one so special is that during World War 2 this book was one of the main things that the Nazis were trying to find to destroy and then again during the Bosnian war it was one of the first cultural things that the Serb army was looking for to destroy. What’s the price tag on a ancient book that has survived centuries of war where it was one of the main targets? $700,000,000! The Sarajevo War Museum was really well done too. The museum is very much meant for people from Sarajevo, and very rightly so, so because of this if you are looking for a way to learn a lot about what has happened, you won’t find a lot of history there. Having a decent idea of what happened there in 1993-95 really helped in appreciating the museum. The only thing that I can compare it to, which won’t be much help to most people reading this, would be the Nyamata and Ntrama church memorial sites in Rwanda... or maybe the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC but on a MUCH smaller scale.
The rest of my time in Sarajevo was spent pretty much doing almost nothing... A lot of time sitting in cafes by the river reading or walking around the city. I’m really happy that I was there, but maybe not for that long... and next time I’ll take someone with me. It gets kinda boring when there’s no one in the same city that you can have more than a 1 minute conversation with... and if there was anyone else there fluent in English, I didn’t find them no matter how hard I tried. Apparently everyone staying at hostels in Sarajevo are just from other parts of Bosnia... not many travelers. Lets just say that I ran out of things to do pretty quick. And the public transit system isn’t in any shape or form foreigner friendly. But again, I am still happy that I got to be there... it’s been on my “list” for a long time.
One thing that sticks out the most to me is the impact that the war has had on the city and the amount of that that you can still see everywhere you look. Every other building that you walk past is still covered in bullet and mortar holes, buildings are still in the process of being fixed up or demolished all over Sarajevo, and so many people were killed during the siege of Sarajevo that almost every park/green space/back yard is filled with graves. The War Museum is great example of this because the building that it’s in has been kept exactly the same way as it was at the end of the war all the way up to the crumbling steps you walk up in to the building, to the burnt out tank behind the building where a cafe dedicated to the former Yugoslavia’s original Communist dictator, Tito, has been set up.
Another really cool thing about the city is the way that so many different cultures live together in peace. You can walk down a street almost anywhere in Sarajevo and walk past a Jewish Synagogue, a Serbian Orthodox Church and a Muslim Mosque within 5 minutes. A Muslim call to prayer will ring through the valley and you’ll see groups of friends split up, some going to pray, others going off to do other things and then see them meet back up and go on their way together again after prayers are done. All of this in a city where 14-17 years ago there was one of modern times longest and worse city sieges and genocides.
Three mornings ago I woke up, packed up and headed back to the airport for flights 8, 9 and 10 of my summer from Sarajevo to Istanbul Turkey, Dubai UAE and finally to my last major stop this trip in Manila Philippines. The first two flights were pretty short, and so was the amount of leg room in each plane... Turkish Air is NOT meant for tall people to fly with!! By far the most cramped I’ve ever been in an airplane!! From Dubai I flew Air Emirates which I at least had some leg room in... not as good of a flight that I’ve heard Air Emirates should be, but not bad...
Yesterday late afternoon I arrived here in Manila to a bright yellow sign, John Coffey and Tin Tin, who works with ITeams here, waiting for me at the airport. We took a bus and taxi through the streets of Metro Manila to the apartment where I was welcomed in the best way possible... a game of Settlers!!
Last night I crashed pretty hard and slept probably the best I have this whole trip (Sooo happy that John’s room has its own air conditioning!!). Could have slept a lot longer, but this morning we got up and went to the daycare that John helps teach at. It was really cool to start to see some of the other International Teams projects happening here. All of the kids that come to this daycare live on the streets in the community around the church and International Teams office (which are in the same building). Tonight we will be going to Alabang, which is in Metro Manila, to help out with a street kid feeding that ITeams partners with in that community. And I’m sure that Brett Ostrander will bend my arm in to another game or two of Settlers when we get back to the apartment.
Well, I should be a lot busier here than I was in Sarajevo, which means I’ll have more to blog about again, so hopefully I’ll be blogging more again this week than I did last week. I’m really excited for what I’ll be seeing and doing here with the International Teams Philippines folks so it should be an awesome week!!
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