Northern Friends Peace Board
In August 1999 we made a decision (the first ever to be minuted in our leaderless group) that we should change the work that we do. A new post war phase is beginning to emerge in Croatia and we should like to support our friends as they move on to the reconstruction of a just civil society, and as groups emerge who are concerned with reconciliation and peaceful community building. This will all need money.
This seems a good time to take stock and to record some of our experiences as a group, and some of my personal experience.
Women's Aid for Peace in former Yugoslavia grew out of the wish of women in the anti-war/peace movement in Britain to give support to those who were speaking out against war in the Balkans. At first it was thought that this support would be personal and emotional, as great courage is needed to speak out against war when your country is at war. Those who did speak out (mostly women) found themselves increasingly involved in helping refugees and displaced people. This is where they needed support and this is where our listening started. Early on we learnt to listen to refugees and those who aided them, for them to tell us what they needed and not to assume that we or others knew. This was underlined in the first camp that we visited, where a bitterly spoken comment has been a reminder ever since: "the officials asked us to a meeting where they told us, the refugees, what we are feeling and needing". We vowed then to listen to their opinions, their needs and to respond appropriately. We have also tried to faithfully report the experiences of ordinary people caught up in war and its consequences when we have returned home.
Three of us made the first journey to Slovenia and Croatia in October 1992. We were in a truck hired for us by Oldham Council and we were carrying three and a half tonnes of aid. We joined up with six other women in two trucks from Southampton. Many Friends in the Manchester area know all about this and were at that time fully involved in helping to collect and pack the aid which we took. The whole operation took over a large part of the basement at Mount Street, and on occasion, the large Meeting House as well. When we returned, and reported our experience it became clear to all of us that we should do our utmost to return as soon as we could. Hiring trucks proved impossible and so, due to generous grants from Quaker Peace & Service and Oldham Council and a couple of loans, we were able to buy Faith and Hysteria from Parcel Force. Little did we know what we were letting ourselves in for! Parcel Force had finished with the trucks and they were in a bad state when we drove them down from near Edinburgh two days before we were due to leave for the Balkans at Christmas time 1992. Thanks to the generous help with maintenance of Barrett Haulage in Oldham our two trucks have completed thirty two round trips, each of three thousand miles, carrying much needed aid.
We can measure the amount of material aid, mainly good quality food, clothing and selected medical aid, all of which was within date. We have collected, packed, transported and delivered close on £1.5 million worth. We cannot measure the value of friendship and hope that we brought when we delivered the aid. The value of personal contact has been impressed upon us time and again and has been one of the benefits of owning our two trucks, and delivering ourselves.
We have always used personal contact and local advice as to where our support has been needed. About seven months after we began working in l992, one of our group stayed in Zagreb for three months, and the experience and local knowledge that she gained has been a great help. For instance, it was whilst she was working in Croatia that we got to know about the severely disabled children in the long stay hospital at Gornje Bistra. Many of them were fed by naso-gastric tube and were on poor diets through lack of funding - casualties of the war. We were able to pay for and take regular deliveries of good liquid nutrition.
A question that we get asked a lot is "how many of you are there?" There are about 15 of us intimately connected with the work of Women's Aid for Peace. Most of the women have been to Croatia at 1east once. However the work since October 1992, has been all consuming. For some this has meant, on average, at least one hour daily. And I mean daily for seven years, when you take into account sorting and packing weekly, giving talks to all sorts of groups all over the place, mainly in north west England and North Wales, appealing for food at supermarket collections and for other aid donations at other places, and travelling to collect it, producing and mailing the newsletter and keeping the books. Keeping in contact with the groups that we support and the implications of responding to their needs has been vital but emotionally draining. For two in our group, all the above and the detailed planning of each trip to Croatia (28 of them for W.A. f. P. since October 1992) has meant full time voluntary work for seven years. Despite the fact that, collectively, our backs have aged during this time, we are now having to cope with the withdrawal symptoms from Wednesdays spent in a cold, damp and dark, disused cotton mill basement in Oldham.
The journeys to Croatia have been a huge experience, and, at times, a scary adventure. Winter trips with snow and 20øC below temperatures have required a special kind of resourcefulness and thermal underwear. So have Summer trips when food we take to eat goes rancid and unloading a truck in the baking sun can be completely exhausting. We have learnt to cope with breakdowns and double back wheels with punctures, with surly customs officials and other bureaucracy, and our sisterly solidarity has proved a foil to some of the Balkan chauvinism.
To return to the beginning, our aims have always been rooted in our belief that war is not a solution to conflict, and our wish to help those suffering as a result of war. Now it is time to move on, and. to give support to emerging groups in the present post war situation. We aim to help reconstruction, reconciliation and community building initiatives. As before this will involve listening to the needs of people directly involved. Our help will again be in the form of moral support and encouragement, and it will also be financial, as and when the money comes in to make this possible. We will still be working with the groups that we know, and we have already given some money to Klub Zene Pakrac (Women's Club Pakrac) for the work that they are doing running anti-violence workshops with secondary school children. We also want to provide money to buy seeds for returnees to plant in Spring 2000, to support a community women's work-room in the Lika area, and possibly a practical reconstruction work programme next summer.
From our experience we hope we have got our new strategy right, for helping the people in Croatia with whom we are connected to move on. If this is so, then funds will come in. They are already starting to do so.
Clare Whitehead
February 2000
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