Читать книгу The Shed That Fed a Million Children: The Mary’s Meals Story - Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow - Страница 12

Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to the one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.

ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

All the while, back at home, Mum and Dad continued to phone everyone they knew. Over the years, thousands of people had stayed with them at the retreat centre and many had become dear friends. The calls, telling them about our new effort for the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina, quickly mobilized an army of co-workers. Not satisfied with that, Mum then wrote to every Catholic parish in Scotland seeking support. The response was incredible. All day long the phone rang with offers of help. Each morning the postman arrived with piles of letters containing cheques, representing personal donations, church collections or the proceeds of fund-raising events. Julie would spend hours on her typewriter writing thank-you letters, while I spent most of my time driving all over the country to pick up donations of goods and bring them back to the sheds at Craig Lodge, where we would sort through and pack them ready for shipment. It was hard work and we would not have managed without the numerous friends who helped on a regular basis. One of my favourite tasks was loading the trucks bound for Bosnia-Herzegovina. I felt a huge sense of responsibility to ensure that every last square centimetre was fully used so that each expensive, time-consuming journey delivered as much as possible to those in need. Fitting in the goods of different sizes, weights and fragility became like some kind of huge 3D jigsaw game. It was also hard physical work, something I was missing since leaving the fish farm where I had spent all day every day for six years doing physically demanding manual work. My least favourite job meanwhile was that of giving talks and presentations to people who were, understandably, asking for reports and feedback. Or more accurately, I imagined this would be my least favourite job, because for some time I managed to avoid each invitation by persuading Mum or Julie to do these talks to churches, schools or various other groups of supporters, while I conveniently prearranged to make a collection in some different corner of the country.

In Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, a wonderful retired couple, John and Anne Boyle, came to our rescue. They set up a volunteer support group in the city, and obtained a free warehouse from the city council as well as a van to carry out local collections. Before long this became the biggest part of our operation. The free warehouse was a very welcome gift but hardly ideal in design. Our space was on the fourth floor, meaning all goods were transported in and out using a very old lift. On the days we loaded the truck for transport overseas, one team would repeatedly fill the lift on the fourth floor, before sending it down to the team below, who carried it out to the truck. More than once the lift broke down. We came to understand that the city authorities would only send out a technician immediately to repair it if there was someone stuck in the lift, otherwise we could be left for hours, or even days, without a way to complete the loading. We eventually discovered we could climb inside the stuck lift, through its roof, and sometimes resorted to doing this prior to phoning the council.

‘Yes, there is someone inside,’ we would answer honestly and accurately. I think probably they had a very good idea what we were up to, when they arrived to find one of us inside, red-faced and squeezed in beside a stack of boxes, but it seemed like they, along with everyone else in the city, just wanted to be part of the effort and keep the aid moving. While, initially, much of our support in Glasgow came through the churches, when the large Muslim community there heard of our work, they became very involved too. They organized collections of food at the mosques on a regular basis and would deliver huge quantities to our stores. Many in this Asian community, mainly of Pakistani descent, were involved in wholesale food retailing and they often donated us their surplus stocks. But we could never get enough dried and tinned food. It was always top of the lists of urgent requests we were being sent from Bosnia-Herzegovina. We began to approach supermarkets and seek their permission to carry out food collections. They would allow us to park an empty shopping trolley at their entrance and hand leaflets to customers entering the store, inviting them to buy an item on our list and deposit it in the trolley on the way out. A small team of us would target a different store every weekend with this approach and the willingness of people to donate this way amazed us. It was efficient, too, as a team in the back of our van would categorize and pack each product separately as it came in. We usually returned to the warehouse late in the evening with full boxes ready to deliver, marked Tinned veg, Pasta, Sugar and so on. Nearly all the boxes we used as packaging were donated by whisky distillers. They were strong boxes, ideal, but could cause huge excitement and consternation at border posts. Customs officials and police would stand open-mouthed when we responded to their requests to open the back of our truck for inspection, their immediate assumption being that these ‘humanitarians’ were actually whisky smugglers. They usually seemed a little disappointed when we opened the boxes to reveal their more mundane contents. As time went on we became aware of another interesting pattern at the supermarket collections. At those in the deprived areas of Glasgow – often housing schemes with some of the worst rates of unemployment and poverty in the UK – we noticed that we would be donated significantly more than at those in the more affluent suburbs. Not something I can pretend to explain the reasons for, but something real and quite marked none the less.

I found ‘giving patterns’ a little harder to predict while doing street collections for money. This was an activity I enjoyed much less than the supermarket collections. Somehow it always seemed harder to ask a stranger for money than for food. Even though it should have been obvious that this was not a personal plea, there was something about rattling a can while saying ‘please help the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina’ I found very difficult. There was a little humiliation involved; perhaps the tiniest taste of what it must feel like to have to beg for your own needs. To pass the long hours on the pavement I would sometimes enter into a private game of guessing the response of each pedestrian as they walked towards my solicitation. The guy with the muscles and tattoos; the woman pushing the pram; the schoolkids on their lunch break; the busker who had looked annoyed by my presence on ‘his patch’. Each one would, more often than not, surprise me. I could not form any conclusions on categories of people and the likelihood of them dropping some coins in my can. And I could not compare and distinguish giving patterns between men and women, young and old, meek-looking and fierce, or the singers of old depressing Scottish songs and upbeat-but-off-key bagpipe players. I am sure others have carried out more scientific experiments in this matter, and could therefore prove me wrong, but I certainly concluded that people of all sorts could be extremely generous and extremely mean. Our experience of this even included the potential of a much more controversial comparison when we were given permission to do a street collection outside the national football stadium before a Scottish Cup Final, which was to be contested by the two giants of Scottish Football, Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic. Rivalry between these two teams has a reputation for being perhaps the fiercest in world football, representing as they do the Protestant and Catholic communities of the West of Scotland and the rather unsavoury, historical baggage that goes with that. So it was with some trepidation we ventured out with our collecting cans among the swarming fans, approaching the stadium in their tens of thousands. I wondered if they would even notice our presence or hear our invitation. They certainly did and their giving was incredible – the most generous we had seen. I suspect there may have been a competitive element involved. Perhaps they thought we would keep separate totals for amounts donated by fans wearing blue and those wearing green and publish it for the world to see. Or maybe it is just that pre-match beer helps open hearts and wallets. Whatever the reasons (and I am sure in reality they were much more laudable than those I mention), we collected a record total in a very short space of time as the fans entered the stadium. The link with those Glasgow football clubs actually has continued in various ways ever since.

A couple of years after that event I was introduced to two famous former footballers, Frank McGarvey and Gordon Smith, who used to play for Celtic and Rangers respectively. They decided to organize a match between former players of both clubs to raise funds for us. As a Celtic fan myself and a lover of football, I could not have been more excited. They booked a small stadium in the East End of Glasgow and phoned their old friends from both clubs. Many famous players agreed to play. The day before the event I chatted briefly to Frank about some last-minute arrangements. I asked him how his team was shaping up.

‘Not too great, actually,’ he replied. ‘A few have called off at the last minute. You better take your boots along yourself.’

I laughed.

‘No, I’m not joking. Take your boots. You’re a big lad and you told me you could play a bit.’

He hung up. I stopped laughing. Then I phoned around my friends to tell them the news. Then I looked for my old boots, which had not been usefully employed for some time. The next day I found myself sitting in a dressing room with a group of players who had all been boyhood heroes of mine, talking about tactics and how to beat Rangers. I remembered having lots of dreams just exactly like this when I was young. This was very strange indeed.

‘Where do you like to play?’ asked Frank as he began to organize his team, and I realized he was talking to me.

‘Umm, up front – striker.’

‘Great. You and I will play up front together.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep you right.’

And so it was that I ended up playing in a Celtic–Rangers match. Actually, I was playing directly against one of their most famous former players and recent captain of the national English team, Terry Butcher. He was a big man. I think he went easy on me during the game, although his kindness didn’t extend to letting me have many touches of the ball. In truth I didn’t play very well, missing a couple of chances that I should have scored. And we lost the match. A few of my friends from Dalmally had travelled down to watch me, something that meant a lot to me, although afterwards in the bar they had some fun analysing my performance.

This whole experience felt like God was giving me a little treat. A wonderful, surprise gift. Something completely unexpected but connected to some heartfelt desire (even a childish one that I might not dare to articulate as an adult) or longing of mine that only He understood. And a sense that He wanted me to know that He understood me. And this has happened to me many times since. Undeserved, unexpected, gratuitous gifts that can only be unwrapped when feeling like a small child.

Meanwhile there were lots of things to do which were a little less exciting. Now that this work seemed to have developed into an ongoing mission we realized we needed to register a charity. Originally the name we had written on the side of our old truck was Scottish Bosnia Relief. When the word ‘Bosnia’ became politically sensitive during the war, it began to create a risk when we drove through certain areas or border crossings and so we scrapped off those particular letters. After some time we decided to paste the word International in the untidy space between Scottish and Relief. After all, we reasoned, we were delivering goods to Croatia as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, and who knew where else in the future? So we had named the organization: Scottish International Relief. My brother, Fergus, then spent some time doodling various ideas for a logo. We choose a blue Celtic cross he had drawn, with the letters SIR – the acronym we became known by for many years – written on it. This ancient symbol, a cross on top of a smaller circle, is a very familiar sight across Scotland and Ireland, representing the transition by our ancestors from Paganism to Christianity, from worship of the sun (the circle) to worship of Jesus (the cross). Next we needed a slogan, and once again round the family table we bandied about different ideas, finally agreeing on ‘Delivering Hope’. ‘Hope’ has always been my favourite word. We also briefly discussed whether this work should be an extension of Craig Lodge Family House of Prayer – which had existed as a registered charitable organization for several years – and therefore a Catholic organization, or whether we should be non-denominational. While we all felt this was a work of God and a fruit of Medjugorje, we also felt unanimously and strongly that this should be an organization open to people of all faiths and none. And so we set up a new non-denominational charity and, in addition to members of our family, we invited on to the first board two non-Catholic friends who had already done a huge amount of work. We worked with a lawyer in our nearest town, Oban, to write up a constitution and at our first, rather informal meeting we elected my brother-in-law Ken, Ruth’s husband, as Chairperson. This board would meet three or four times a year, while Julie and I, with huge support from Mum and Dad (despite the fact they were also running the retreat centre) did the daily work, with the help of a multitude of volunteers.

Julie, who among her other gifts fortunately had a talent for administration, took responsibility for thanking donors and recording their names and addresses. I did most of the driving within Scotland to collect the aid donations, as well as the planning and preparation for deliveries. This included communicating with our partners on changing areas of need, request lists, customs paperwork, route planning and trying to repair holes in the roof of our truck. I also wrote the appeals and newsletters we began to send to our growing band of supporters, and to my surprise found I enjoyed this very much. In fact, to make ends meet (I was still an unpaid volunteer living off my savings and Mum and Dad’s free lodging), I began writing a few articles on other unrelated topics and sold them to various publications. And, of course, a huge amount of our time was spent driving the truck back and forth across Europe. In the year since our first trip with the Land Rover I had driven to Bosnia-Herzegovina over twenty times.

While I learnt things every time I made one of those deliveries, I was learning at least as much from people who, in all sorts of incredible ways, were supporting our work at home. I was very deeply moved and challenged by some of the generosity that I experienced.

Mrs Duncan Jones lived in a little cottage – the sort you read about in fairy tales – at the end of a very rough track near the village of Kilmartin. We always enjoyed visiting her with our van to collect various goods – both her own donations and things she had collected from friends in the area. Each time we visited her she would give us wonderful bowls of home-made soup, and, ‘in order to provide sustenance on the journey to Bosnia’ she baked us the most delicious fruitcakes I have ever tasted. These cakes contained a truly amazing quantity of brandy. She would sometimes leave them for us to collect at a particular filling station on our road to Glasgow, neatly wrapped, along with a note of encouragement. Her husband, an Episcopalian minister, died shortly after we met her but her hard work and support of our efforts never wavered. Once, I remember visiting her to collect yet another pile of donations. When she served me my soup I noticed that, rather than a ladle, she used an old mug to fill my bowl. I began to look around her kitchen at her empty cupboards and shelves, and noticed nearly everything was gone. Worried, I asked her if she was OK.

‘Yes, fine,’ she smiled.

‘Are you moving house?’ I enquired.

‘No, no. I love it here. No, I just thought about those families in Bosnia returning to their homes with nothing at all. They need these sorts of things more than I do now. I mean, does an old lady like me, living on her own, really need a ladle? Or extra plates and pots?’

I trundled down the hill from her home, my van full of her household belongings and carefully wrapped cake on the seat beside me. In my rear-view mirror I could see Mrs Duncan Jones waving. She wore a wonderful huge smile.

I was being challenged in lots of other ways too. A few weeks prior to this, Julie and I (by now engaged to be married) were chatting on the last leg home from another trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina and she gently began to question me about my shyness – and my clothes. I had, to her dismay, just told her, quite smugly, that I could fit all of the clothes I owned (apart from my kilt) into one washing-machine load. For her, it was a horrible realization that I didn’t look this bad just because I was currently driving and loading trucks all day.

‘Well, I suppose that is why all of your clothes are that same sort of horrible grey colour,’ she said dryly after a short silence.

‘What do you think you will do after this finishes? Will you go back to being a fish farmer?’ she asked me.

‘I really just don’t know,’ I replied after a little thought. ‘What I am sure of, though, is that it won’t be something that has anything to do with people!’

As the months went on, however, and I had to spend more time speaking to people I didn’t previously know, I very slowly grew in confidence. With Julie’s encouragement I would sometimes even relent and give talks to some of the support groups. And I found myself even beginning to enjoy some of these encounters and the sense that I had a particular thing that I could do – and do well. I found our supporters were hungry for information about our latest aid deliveries. We started taking pictures and bought an old slide projector so we could illustrate our presentations. And we developed our newsletters to include pictures. I began to derive an enormous sense of purpose from being able to communicate the needs and words of those who were suffering to those who wanted to help them. For a little while I thought that perhaps I could try to become a journalist. One day I noticed a fish-farming magazine advertising for a reporter and I applied. To my surprise they asked me over to Edinburgh for an interview. The two men across the table were complimentary about some samples of my writing that I had sent them and it seemed to be going well. Then they posed me a hypothetical question.

‘What would you do,’ they asked, ‘if you came across evidence that a product sold by a company, who had a very substantial advertising account with this magazine – say a chemical used for getting rid of parasites on salmon – was having a hugely detrimental effect on wild shellfish in the area?’

‘Of course I would write a factually correct, well-researched article, exposing this. It would be an important story to tell,’ I said with some relish, not for one second thinking that, to them, my answer was hopelessly naive. But then I noticed them looking at each other, one with raised eyebrow, the other smirking. Too late, I realized that my fantasies of writing award-winning journalism as a weapon of truth and justice were not necessarily compatible with writing for a Scottish fish-farming magazine. Julie was waiting for me outside and when I told her what had happened we laughed so much, realizing that our hearts had never really been in it. In fact our hearts were not really in anything outside of the work we were already doing. And in Julie I had a fiancée who not once, ever, expressed any concern about our future financial security or well-being.

However, we were running out of money. It was a year since I had given up my job. We needed to make some choices. The board of trustees proposed that I start to take a small salary so that this work, which was growing steadily, could continue. Eventually, after much discussion, thought and prayer, I accepted. It was a very difficult decision. This had not been part of the original plan, and to take even a small portion of the money given us in order to support myself made me feel very uncomfortable. We wanted our organization, and still do to this day, to be as low-cost and as reliant on volunteers as possible. But the alternative was for me to go back to another job and for us to wind down the organization, just at a time when more and more people were supporting us and encouraging us to go on. And one small salary represented a very small percentage of the value of donations. So I accepted the offer and I am very glad I did.

We continued, relentlessly, to look for the most effective ways to deliver the aid that people kept entrusting us with. I was happy that our new bigger lorry had reduced the costs of transport significantly, but now I became bothered that we were driving back across Europe on each return trip with a huge empty trailer. I began asking people if there was anything someone would pay us to carry back from Eastern Europe to help offset costs. Around this time I came to know Sir Tom Farmer, perhaps Scotland’s best-known entrepreneur and founder of Kwik Fit, the enormous car tyre and exhaust-fitting company. He had, years previously, visited Mum and Dad at our retreat centre in Dalmally and been very kind in supporting them. It turned out that at this time he was importing lots of tyres to Scotland from Slovenia and northern Italy. He was happy for us to carry some of these as ‘return loads’ back to his Kwik Fit depots and to pay us the going rate. Sir Tom became a great friend and mentor over the next few years, giving me his time whenever I asked, and some hugely important words of wisdom.

‘Target your values, don’t value your targets,’ he told me when I mentioned growth figures or ambitious plans. On other occasions, when I talked of new ideas, he would refocus me by saying, ‘Magnus, just stick to the knitting!’

The return loads worked wonderfully well and, in time, through agents, we also began to arrange other cargo (refrigerators, flat-pack furniture, etc.) that we could carry back. To do this we had to obtain an Operator’s Licence to run a haulage company, which necessitated me doing some study on international haulage and passing an exam. The return loads worked really well in offsetting much of the cost of transport, but before long I realized that I was now spending most of my time running a trucking company. I felt that was not what I should be doing with my time. So I began to think about it the other way round. I observed on our journeys that there were lots of Eastern European trucks delivering goods to the UK. They must also have empty trailers to fill on their return journeys? And so that is what we began to do. Now that we had established, trusted partners, like the Family Centre in Zagreb, we could load a Croatian truck in Scotland and pay them a very reasonable cost to transport it for us. This became our preferred way of working, allowing us to concentrate on raising awareness of our work, collecting aid and thanking our donors. It also enabled us to cope with the ever-increasing scale. By the peak of our aid deliveries, during the Kosovo crisis in 1999, we were loading a 40-tonne truck almost every day for two consecutive months, from four Glasgow warehouses. We asked a radio station in Glasgow to make an appeal for more volunteers, and over just one weekend 500 people registered at our warehouses to help pack and sort the goods. These trucks took the aid by road to Split where, with the help of the redoubtable Dr Marijo, our trusted friend in Croatia, it was transferred to ships for the final leg of the journey into Albania, where huge numbers of refugees from Kosovo were arriving.

Also, the kind of aid we sent evolved as we went on. As stability returned to certain areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, some refugees began returning to homes that had been damaged and looted. An urgent need grew for the things they required to start life again. Now our trucks began to carry cutlery, kitchen utensils and tools.

One group of people who were grappling with the possibility of a return home were good friends of ours. They were Bosnian Muslim refugees living in Glasgow. They had fled their hometown, Bosanski Petrovac, which lay in a Serb-controlled part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1992, and eventually arrived by chance in Glasgow, having been evacuated by the UN. It was there, when they began coming to our warehouse to volunteer their time to help prepare the aid donations for shipment to their homeland, that we got to know them. They became part of the ‘team’ of warehouse volunteers and told us that being able to do this gave their broken lives a purpose. Not only were they struggling to learn English and adapt to a foreign culture; they were also finding life on the seventeenth floor of a block of flats in the city very different from their former rural existence. There were twelve of them, all closely related, and sometimes we invited them up to visit us in Dalmally where they would enjoy barbecues with us. Suad, and his wife Zlata, who had a young son, were about our age and we became friends. As their English improved, they wanted to tell us more about what had happened to them. They explained that before the war their village had been home to Serbs and Muslims who had lived peacefully together. Many of their neighbours were Serbian whom they had known all their lives.

‘We were just working in the fields like normal,’ Suad explained. ‘Shooting just started. There was tension in the village. We all knew what was happening in other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But even one week before we had been invited to a party at the house of our Serb neighbours. The shots were coming from near that neighbour’s house, beside our field. My father and my brother Mersad fell. They were bleeding. I was hit too.’ He pointed to the scars on his withered arm.

‘My brother Mersad took a long time to die. He kept shouting “Suad, help me,” but I couldn’t. I was all bloody too.’

‘We were watching it all happen from our house,’ Zlata said quietly. ‘We wanted to run out to them in the field but the Serb was shooting from some bushes nearby. He would have killed us. Edin, Mersad’s son, was ten. He kept on trying to run out to his dad and we had to hold him back. Eventually when it became dark Suad managed to crawl home.’

The next day they squeezed on to overcrowded buses provided by the UN to evacuate them to Zagreb. They were shot at by Serbs and endured an appalling journey in the heat, without food or water.

‘I had to use my shirt as a nappy for Zlatan – he was still a baby then,’ Zlata told us through tears.

By 1995, the fortunes of war began to change and the Serbs had largely lost control of that part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. We were able to begin sending trucks of aid into the city of Bihac, which had endured a horrific three-year siege, and then to our friends’ hometown of Bosanski Petrovac. Suad began to receive messages from people who had already returned home to their town, urging them to come back too. And so, despite having no savings, no paid employment opportunities there, no assurance of safety, only a badly damaged home and some fields that might now have mines in them, they decided to go home. And we decided to go with them. We filled a large truck with all the belongings they had accumulated in Glasgow, as well as various other goods and tools to help them begin their lives again from scratch. Meanwhile, we had also been donated a minibus for a psychiatric hospital in Croatia to which we regularly delivered aid, and so we formed a plan for me to drive the group home in that minibus and then leave it at the hospital before flying home. The BBC heard of our plan and decided to make a documentary about our journey. And so, for the benefit of the cameramen, we waved goodbye to the bulging truck as it departed ahead of us from our Glasgow warehouse, and climbed into our bus. The group ranged from a two-year-old to an elderly granny. We headed south towards the ferry and Europe.

On arrival in Belgium we stopped at the customs post to show our passports. The police studied the Bosnians’ papers and were clearly unhappy. They asked questions and made phone calls. They told us the papers were valid for entry into Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina only, but not for transiting the European countries in between. They decided to deport us back to the UK. We also asked questions and made phone calls, but to no avail, and later we found ourselves travelling back on the boat to England. I realized the Bosnians had no homes to return to in Glasgow and that their belongings were already well on their way to Bosnia-Herzegovina, along with the BBC film crew. I phoned Julie to check what money we had left in our bank account and what flights from Heathrow would cost. We calculated that we had just enough to fly the whole group to Zagreb. So I drove them to Heathrow Airport from the ferry terminal and put them on their plane. I then headed south again, catching my third cross-Channel ferry in two days, and pointed my bus towards Zagreb. By now I could drive to our various destinations in the former Yugoslavia without needing a map, and this time it was pleasing to see just how quickly I was transiting countries compared to the slower pace of progress I had become used to in the lorry. Meanwhile Julie arranged for the Bosnian families to be met by Marijo on their arrival in Zagreb, who took them home to stay with them while waiting for me to catch up. When I finally did arrive the next day, they all climbed back in the bus for the final leg of their emotional journey over the border into Bosnia-Herzegovina. It amazed me, when I finally watched the documentary broadcast by the BBC about this journey, to see how skilfully they pieced together the footage so there was no hint of the deportations and flights that had occurred in between the Glasgow departure and the arrival into Bosnia-Herzegovina!

After the usual checking of papers at the Bosnian border we were finally waved through. As we entered Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zlata broke the silence with a cry.

‘We are no longer refugees!’

Everyone in the bus was crying. And the sobs grew louder when we finally reached Bosanski Petrovac, which was in ruins. Every building was covered in bullet holes and many houses had been reduced to pitiful piles of rubble.

The welcome they received from dear friends they had not seen for over three years was full of raw emotion. There was so much news to exchange. So many terrible things experienced that they had never had a chance to discuss and to try and understand. So many changes, too, in their old town. The Serbs were now gone. The town was now Muslim in a way it never had been before. A new mosque was being built even while many of the houses still lay in ruins. For Muslims like those I had just arrived with, their religion had not been something they previously practised. In fact I had met some young Muslims during the war who told me they never even knew they were Muslim before the war. Only their surname denoted their religion and sometimes sealed their fate. Bosnanski Petrovac might be home, and their hearts rejoiced at being back, but in some ways it was an alien land. I felt a little awkward. These encounters and exchanges that I found myself in the midst of were so personal and intimate that I wanted to leave them to work through it without me, however they could.

I left Bosanski Petrovac very early the next morning, leaving Suad and his family sleeping in their own home. I should have felt elated, but my drive was not a comfortable one. I travelled for many miles through a countryside and villages utterly devoid of people. Wild dogs, the only other sign of life, roamed amid the rubble and rubbish. This was part of the krajina, an area occupied by the Serbs for most of the war. They had only recently been defeated here and I became increasingly scared as I drove through this wasteland on my own. I began to doubt whether those in Bosnanski Petrovac, only recently returned themselves, had been well-informed when they advised me it would be safe to drive this route to Croatia and the Adriatic coast, where the hospital was awaiting the minibus. And given the lack of road signs, and any other way of checking I was on the right road, I began to fear I would drive into an area where I should not be welcome. The hours went past without seeing a human. As well as fear, a new overwhelming loathing for war and its futility rose in me. I wondered what would become of all the Serbs who had now been forced to flee the empty houses by the side of road and the villages to which they had belonged for generations. It was clear there were no winners in this war, only people taking their turn to lose in very horrible ways.

Eventually, I did find my way out of the mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina and that same evening I found myself in a different world, eating delicious fish by the sparkling Adriatic with some friends from the hospital, who rejoiced over their new bus.

It was only on the flight home that I remembered our bank account. The £4,200 we had spent on plane tickets to Zagreb had left us with almost nothing. The aid donations would be piling up. I began to wonder how we would pay some outstanding bills and find a way to finance the next delivery. When I arrived back, a smiling Julie could not wait to tell me her news.

‘A cheque arrived this morning from a priest in Ireland. We don’t know him. He doesn’t want a thank-you letter. He wants this to remain anonymous,’ she said, her voicing cracking with emotion. ‘It is for £4,200.’