The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2001, Side 11

Vol. 56 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
93
Letters from Bosnia
by Len and Karen Vopnfjord
Dobra Dan to you all: (Bosnian for
Good Day)
Len and I are starting to pick up some
words here in Tuzla Bosnia, we found a
phrase book which should help if we can
wrap our mouths around some of the new
sounds. They have four extra letters which
we find even more confusing. I told our 24
year-old translator, Alma, who spent two
weeks with us in Victoria, that I probably
won’t leave here speaking Bosnian, but I
will no doubt speak English with a Bosnian
accent. Communicating here is pretty
much in sign language when we are on our
own as just about no one speaks English.
So it is somewhat of a challenge. There
appears to be two prices for everything that
doesn’t have a price tag on it. One price for
the locals and another for foreigners. It
seems strange to be referred to as a “for-
eigner,” and we are gaining a new respect
and understanding for newcomers to
Canada. When we are with our driver and
translator and wish to make a purchase,
they ask us to stand back and they handle
the transaction. In this way we save about
half of the cost. They are taking good care
of us.
We hear about the dangers of depleted
uranium here but everyone says, “Well that
happened over there, not here.” So I guess,
there is no problem here, at least none that
we can get information about. Basically we
get all our news from CNN, so you are
probably just as informed as we are. When
over 250,000 people were killed in the war,
a million became homeless refugees, a quar-
ter of a million were wounded and some-
thing like a third of the population suffered
from post traumatic stress disorder, a little
“depleted uranium” isn’t something to
write home about.
We see the homeless refugees trying to
sell old clothes and household goods beside
the market area. Small fires are lit to keep
them warm. They lay out a blanket on the
mud by the side of the road with their stuff
on top. They call out “Marka, Marka,”
meaning Deutchmarks. Some of them are
housed in an old hotel on the outskirts of
town. Others, we don’t know where they
sleep. There is a major housing shortage
here. Building homes and apartments is a
top priority. Most people build their own
homes, adding on as they can afford to. The
building material is mostly red square
bricks which get a coat of white plaster and
the roofs are red tile. Although there are
forests all around they choose not to make
houses of wood. Someone translated a
statement that “A wood house will last for
75 years, a brick house will last for 150.”
Little refugee children come up to us on
the street begging and we have been told
not to give them anything as it would be a
case of being mobbed by other kids. The
worst I’ve seen for little kids, and I mean
around age three and up, is when they are
out in the middle of the road with traffic on
both sides. When cars stop for a light they
run up to the window. Frequently, there
will be a big sister, maybe seven or eight
years of age with a baby in tow trying to
beg like this. It is winter and they are poor-
ly dressed.