After three full wonderful days in Sarajevo my head and my heart are also full. They've been busy days though and there hasn't been much time to process things along the way. But much of what I've experienced and learned here follows three main streams.
Sarajevo is a beautiful ancient city with a rich cultural history that I was really very ignorant of. Is it most influenced by Austria? Turkey? Russia? it seems to depend on which part of town you are in and what you are having for lunch. In the old city narrow streets and shops bring Turkey to mind. In the background stand elegant mosques with delicate minarets shooting into the sky to catch the sunlight. In the foreground are a multitude of minature shops where wares spill out into the street. A couple blocks further and the architecture changes abruptly to an 18th century baroque style that looks like something you'd find in Vienna. An tidy square opens up in front of the catholic cathedral and serves as a meeting place for people coming out to see and be seen. Still further down Marshall Tito street broadens into a too-wide avenue with the tram line running down the center. The kind of huge broad avenue I recall from walking in East Berlin, walking on and on between big blocky buildings, realizing finally that the very structure of the place was designed to make me feel small, not holy small like in a cathedral, but small like the cog in a great machine. That's how I felt in East Berlin, and I felt it again here, down the big main avenue lined with blocky Soviet era buildings. Still, there is something very powerful about it, like we're all marching together into Progress which is just further down this same street.
The food too is a wonderful, delicious blend of influences. For one meal out we had stuffed everything: peppers, onions, tomatoes, with flavors that made me think of Hungary. Another meal was all kinds of grilled meat, with incredible veal sausages. Coffee out tasted Austrian, espresso with a LOT of whipped cream on top. Coffee in with friends, was Bosnian coffee, what I have always thought of as Turkish coffee, cooked in little traditional pots over the flame and then poured into elegant small cups and served with a lot of sugar. Traditional dessert for Bairam was baklava, which I have always associated with Greece but happily ate up in Bosnia. What a wonderful melange of flavors, and I'm sure I only tasted the surface! In the grocery store in different countries, I always relish seeing what's really important to a culture by inspecting what they have large amounts of. In Switzerland it's chocolate. In Bosnia a huge section of the dairy case was for plain drinkable yogurt, which apparently is what Bosnians drink instead of milk, healthy folk! Another large section is for sliceable meat, like some kind of bologna perhaps? I never tried any, but since the large majority of Sarajevans are Muslim and don't eat pork, if it were offered, I might be more inclined to try the mystery meat.
Then there is the Sarajevo that I arrived with -- memories of the confusing war in the 90s and the voice of Christiane Amanpour listing place names where the fighting was bad: Banja Luka, Mostar, Bihac, Iliza, Dibrojnia. Only now these place names have a face -- they are just towns and suburbs, where ordinary people live ordinary lives. During the brief time I was there, I was determined to try to understand more of what I didn't at the time, how and why such an awfu war could happen. Sean and Heather know a lot and have a lot of helpful books, so after saying goodnight and heading for bed, I kept staying up late and reading and reliving the war and the siege of Sarajevo. "Zlata's Diary" was particularly moving. It's the diary that a twelve year old girl started keeping as the conflict unfolds -- she doesn't know all the reasons why, she just knows her world has been torn apart by tanks and sniper fire.
For many Sarajevans, the past is gone and they want to move forward and leave sad memories behind. But for any visitor to the city, one can't help notice that there are still plenty of reminders of the past in the huge shell holes in the sides of buildings downtown and apartment blocks still riddled with bullet holes. Plenty has been rebuilt, but there are plenty of structures where just the shell remains and leafy trees grow inside, reaching far above what was once the roofline.
Heather took me to the Tunnel Museum, which memorializes the tunnel under the airport runway. It was dug by the Bosnian army and one end was under a family's house. It provided the lifeline which kept Sarajevo alive during the siege, bringing food and weapons in and getting the wounded out. An average of 4,000 people a day passed through this narrow space where I could barely stand up straight and if I spread out my arms I could touch both sides. After the war, the family whose home this is made the bottom floor into this museum. Heather said in the summer busses come there filled with hundreds of tourists and outside you can see where someone across the road has set up a snack bar to catch business in the busy season. On one wall there are pictures of all kinds of dignitaries and actors who have visited, Orlando Bloom and Kevin Spacey posing with the son of the family who runs the museum. When we came out of the museum, this son also kindly posed with me, although somehow my reputation hadn't proceeded me and he forgot to ask for a copy of the photo for his wall. While we stood there chatting, his father walked from the garden out down the road, acknowledging us with a nod but not staying to talk. As he passed, I felt something huge, like I was in the presence of someone historical. This man had given his house, time and efforts to build and maintain this tunnel to protect his family and his country. He felt like a huge hero. And such an ordinary old man. We said goodbye to his son and got back in the van, while son joined his father on the road, gazing across the open space to the airport. Then I felt, more than understood, that this man is tired. Tired of all the visitors who come to see Sarajevo's tragedy. Tired of all the people who come now, but who didn't come then, who watched horrified from afar. Tired from reliving this conflict every day, but driven to keep it alive to remind us of what can happen and the price of protecting your life and family. I felt sad, I felt guilty, I felt achey for this beautiful country and her beautiful people.
That's what brought Sean and Heather here, I think, that ache. That compassionate ache of Jesus which sits beside hurting people and shares in their ache until they heal. And that's what I see that they are doing here. The best way to describe it is thinking of a ministry our church has at a nursing home. Our church puts on a mini church service for residents who can no longer get out on a Sunday morning. In inviting us to be a part the guy in charge of organizing it told me that what they need there is people to worship with; more bodies; more voices in song and prayer. It is hard to worship in a community when you are just a few; worship is meant to be together. That's a little bit what I see Sean and Heather are doing in Bosnia. I went to find out what they do all day and while I got to see that, I left understanding more that it's actually more about what they BE all day, even though that's grammatically incorrect. It's who they are all day that matters and that can make a difference there. They have a vision for what Bosnia could be with the love of Jesus and transformed by his healing.
They said that Bosnia is on a spiritual fault line. A predominantly Muslim country in Europe. Fundamentalist Muslim countries see Bosnia as a stepping stone. If Bosnia became a strictly Muslim nation, it would lend legitimacy to Islam in other European countries. To that end, they are pouring a lot of money into the country, paying women to wear the hijab and building mosques. An enormous brand new mosque in downtown Sarajevo was a gift from the country of Indonesia and two towers destroyed in the war were rebuilt paid for by the government of Kuwait. But not all Bosnians appreciate that influence and are actively searching for meaning and understanding in the choices before them: traditional Islam, the hollow materialism that has swallowed Western Europe or the love and mercy of Christ about which most have never heard.
In a country of 5 million people there are only 800 evangelical Christians. Sean and Heather are there to support those believers as they walk with Jesus and tell His good news. This year is the Year of Prayer for Bosnia.
Sarajevo is a beautiful ancient city with a rich cultural history that I was really very ignorant of. Is it most influenced by Austria? Turkey? Russia? it seems to depend on which part of town you are in and what you are having for lunch. In the old city narrow streets and shops bring Turkey to mind. In the background stand elegant mosques with delicate minarets shooting into the sky to catch the sunlight. In the foreground are a multitude of minature shops where wares spill out into the street. A couple blocks further and the architecture changes abruptly to an 18th century baroque style that looks like something you'd find in Vienna. An tidy square opens up in front of the catholic cathedral and serves as a meeting place for people coming out to see and be seen. Still further down Marshall Tito street broadens into a too-wide avenue with the tram line running down the center. The kind of huge broad avenue I recall from walking in East Berlin, walking on and on between big blocky buildings, realizing finally that the very structure of the place was designed to make me feel small, not holy small like in a cathedral, but small like the cog in a great machine. That's how I felt in East Berlin, and I felt it again here, down the big main avenue lined with blocky Soviet era buildings. Still, there is something very powerful about it, like we're all marching together into Progress which is just further down this same street.
The food too is a wonderful, delicious blend of influences. For one meal out we had stuffed everything: peppers, onions, tomatoes, with flavors that made me think of Hungary. Another meal was all kinds of grilled meat, with incredible veal sausages. Coffee out tasted Austrian, espresso with a LOT of whipped cream on top. Coffee in with friends, was Bosnian coffee, what I have always thought of as Turkish coffee, cooked in little traditional pots over the flame and then poured into elegant small cups and served with a lot of sugar. Traditional dessert for Bairam was baklava, which I have always associated with Greece but happily ate up in Bosnia. What a wonderful melange of flavors, and I'm sure I only tasted the surface! In the grocery store in different countries, I always relish seeing what's really important to a culture by inspecting what they have large amounts of. In Switzerland it's chocolate. In Bosnia a huge section of the dairy case was for plain drinkable yogurt, which apparently is what Bosnians drink instead of milk, healthy folk! Another large section is for sliceable meat, like some kind of bologna perhaps? I never tried any, but since the large majority of Sarajevans are Muslim and don't eat pork, if it were offered, I might be more inclined to try the mystery meat.
Then there is the Sarajevo that I arrived with -- memories of the confusing war in the 90s and the voice of Christiane Amanpour listing place names where the fighting was bad: Banja Luka, Mostar, Bihac, Iliza, Dibrojnia. Only now these place names have a face -- they are just towns and suburbs, where ordinary people live ordinary lives. During the brief time I was there, I was determined to try to understand more of what I didn't at the time, how and why such an awfu war could happen. Sean and Heather know a lot and have a lot of helpful books, so after saying goodnight and heading for bed, I kept staying up late and reading and reliving the war and the siege of Sarajevo. "Zlata's Diary" was particularly moving. It's the diary that a twelve year old girl started keeping as the conflict unfolds -- she doesn't know all the reasons why, she just knows her world has been torn apart by tanks and sniper fire.
For many Sarajevans, the past is gone and they want to move forward and leave sad memories behind. But for any visitor to the city, one can't help notice that there are still plenty of reminders of the past in the huge shell holes in the sides of buildings downtown and apartment blocks still riddled with bullet holes. Plenty has been rebuilt, but there are plenty of structures where just the shell remains and leafy trees grow inside, reaching far above what was once the roofline.
Heather took me to the Tunnel Museum, which memorializes the tunnel under the airport runway. It was dug by the Bosnian army and one end was under a family's house. It provided the lifeline which kept Sarajevo alive during the siege, bringing food and weapons in and getting the wounded out. An average of 4,000 people a day passed through this narrow space where I could barely stand up straight and if I spread out my arms I could touch both sides. After the war, the family whose home this is made the bottom floor into this museum. Heather said in the summer busses come there filled with hundreds of tourists and outside you can see where someone across the road has set up a snack bar to catch business in the busy season. On one wall there are pictures of all kinds of dignitaries and actors who have visited, Orlando Bloom and Kevin Spacey posing with the son of the family who runs the museum. When we came out of the museum, this son also kindly posed with me, although somehow my reputation hadn't proceeded me and he forgot to ask for a copy of the photo for his wall. While we stood there chatting, his father walked from the garden out down the road, acknowledging us with a nod but not staying to talk. As he passed, I felt something huge, like I was in the presence of someone historical. This man had given his house, time and efforts to build and maintain this tunnel to protect his family and his country. He felt like a huge hero. And such an ordinary old man. We said goodbye to his son and got back in the van, while son joined his father on the road, gazing across the open space to the airport. Then I felt, more than understood, that this man is tired. Tired of all the visitors who come to see Sarajevo's tragedy. Tired of all the people who come now, but who didn't come then, who watched horrified from afar. Tired from reliving this conflict every day, but driven to keep it alive to remind us of what can happen and the price of protecting your life and family. I felt sad, I felt guilty, I felt achey for this beautiful country and her beautiful people.
That's what brought Sean and Heather here, I think, that ache. That compassionate ache of Jesus which sits beside hurting people and shares in their ache until they heal. And that's what I see that they are doing here. The best way to describe it is thinking of a ministry our church has at a nursing home. Our church puts on a mini church service for residents who can no longer get out on a Sunday morning. In inviting us to be a part the guy in charge of organizing it told me that what they need there is people to worship with; more bodies; more voices in song and prayer. It is hard to worship in a community when you are just a few; worship is meant to be together. That's a little bit what I see Sean and Heather are doing in Bosnia. I went to find out what they do all day and while I got to see that, I left understanding more that it's actually more about what they BE all day, even though that's grammatically incorrect. It's who they are all day that matters and that can make a difference there. They have a vision for what Bosnia could be with the love of Jesus and transformed by his healing.
They said that Bosnia is on a spiritual fault line. A predominantly Muslim country in Europe. Fundamentalist Muslim countries see Bosnia as a stepping stone. If Bosnia became a strictly Muslim nation, it would lend legitimacy to Islam in other European countries. To that end, they are pouring a lot of money into the country, paying women to wear the hijab and building mosques. An enormous brand new mosque in downtown Sarajevo was a gift from the country of Indonesia and two towers destroyed in the war were rebuilt paid for by the government of Kuwait. But not all Bosnians appreciate that influence and are actively searching for meaning and understanding in the choices before them: traditional Islam, the hollow materialism that has swallowed Western Europe or the love and mercy of Christ about which most have never heard.
In a country of 5 million people there are only 800 evangelical Christians. Sean and Heather are there to support those believers as they walk with Jesus and tell His good news. This year is the Year of Prayer for Bosnia.
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