Crossing the Border into Brcko
June 23, 1999
After their inauspicious start, Rob and Leon are eager to find someone willing to talk on camera. They hope their chance will come in Brcko, the Bosnian city that is the geographic crossroads between Serbs, Muslims, and Croats.
Rob's
Journal
There is so much anticipation today because we are finally going to Brcko. I’m anxious to get started and also somewhat uneasy, as we are about to put it all on the line.
In our guesthouse in Gunja, we meet another American at the breakfast table. "Pepsi" is a black guy from Spanish Harlem who is filled with exuberance and positive energy. Brcko changed his life when he first came as a NYPD detective for the International Police Training Force (IPTF), an international organization that monitors and trains the local police.
He was so affected by that experience that he has now he has returned as a volunteer for the Global Children's Organization to take kids devastated by the Balkan wars to the Croatian coast to forget their hardships for awhile and hopefully learn to live with each other.
We hear some amazing and horrific stories from him, including one about a young boy who found a live grenade on the way to a birthday party. Then at the party he pulled the pin, killing himself and injuring several of the other children at the party. We exchange e-mail addresses with Pepsi and he gives us some phone numbers, including one of the girls that was seriously injured at that fateful birthday party.
Leon and I then hurry to Zupanja to exchange some traveler’s checks, but they don’t accept them and now we are in desperate need of both dollars and deutschmarks.
As we drive back to Gunja, we are both very quiet and worried because we don’t know what to expect. More than just money, we are worried about our moving our equipment across the border or whether we'll even be able to find anyone willing to talk. We decide that we should just bring the smaller mini-DV camera into Brcko and not even expect to get an interview.
Our first border crossing into Bosnia goes much smoother than expected and it is there that we discover the Carnet Bond we couldn't afford for our equipment is not even accepted. I think Leon finds some satisfaction in all this and I am relieved that our gamble paid off.
Once across the bridge in Brcko, I’m overwhelmed. This is a city more than a town and there is so much going on with the strong and varied international presence here. In the streets, Hum-Vees with 50mm guns roar past with SFOR painted on them. The U.S. soldiers all wear stylish Ray-Ban or Oakley sunglasses and a confusing concoction of organizations are set up in inconspicuous buildings every kilometer or so.
After we pass by a few of them, our field producer Dejan tells me it is okay to start taping. But I tell him and Leon that it will be worthless to shoot from a moving car on roads that have been badly damaged by the heavy armor of the SFOR troops. I tell them I will need to get out of the car. Apparently that is not an option so we continue on until the Zone of Separation.
Once there, we immediately have an interview with some gypsies that live in a three-meter square house. It is a pitiful sight as there are not even doors or windows to cover the holes where they belong. Dejan asks excellent questions; as another Hum-Vee rolls by he asks the gypsies if they know whose armies are those. They do not. We are all unprepared for their condition and we give them some cigarettes, money and food before we leave. I also buy a small pillowcase from the youngest boy, which is how he makes money to survive.
Up the road we shoot some footage of an old agricultural center which is badly damaged. Then two men from inside approach us so Dejan goes over to talk to them. Before I know it, we have another interview with a guy named Abdulah, an old guy in hand-me-down army fatigues who now lives inside the shelled building.
Abdulah tells us that he went to Croatia when the fighting in Bosnia began and, when he returned to his home in Brcko, he was locked out and ostracized by his own Muslim community. He and his wife are now essentially squatters in the agricultural center. The worst irony is that he lives right next door to his old home, which is being used for storing coal. When we ask Abdulah how the international community has helped, he replies that all they gave him was a foam mattress which he sold that day for 15 marks so he could eat.
We then cross into the Serb section of town and try to talk to some people there. The Serbs seem more reluctant to talk and suspicious of our camera. I hear Dejan repeating "No CNN, no CNN" before they agree to speak to us, but eventually they do. Their stories seem to mirror Abdulah's. In just one day we have gotten many good stories in Brcko.
Rob and Leon have finally gotten people to open up to them and their cameras (and have done so in their first day, contrary to what the American journalist they met the previous day had told them). But they refuse to stand on their laurels, knowing that the
y still have a long journey yet ahead of them. They have a lead on a story in Tuzla so that's where they're off to next.