by Stacey Allbee

Created on: January 26, 2008

After the War

My first day in Bosnia-Herzegovina has me looking at the world in a completely new perspective. I have traveled out of the U.S. before, but no vacation to Italy or France could have prepared me for living in a country that has been devastated by war so recently. This is not a tourist destination; it is an out-of-the way-place for most who visit. I look out the window of the HMMWV (HUMMVEE) and take in the scene. The houses have mortar holes in the walls and fires have destroyed most of the roofs. There is no glass in the windows of the homes. Laundry hangs to dry where the glass once was. About every other home has a cow tethered in the front yard. What an odd way of keeping the grass short.. I can see the vertebra of the cow's spine and not much more than skin covers her ribs.

My eyes cannot believe the amount of garbage lying along the road; I have never seen litter like this. It's everywhere. Not just a cup or bag from McDonald's like you might see in the states, but bags of it. Household waste, junked-out cars, paper, road kill, and anything else you might think of is just tossed recklessly into the ditches. Not only are the streets lined with garbage, but each house burns trash to heat it. It smells, not like any smell I have ever encountered, the mix of an ethanol mill and a landfill. A haze lingers through the mountain valley; I think it is smog.

I know some of the history of this place. War has sent families running to live in the mountains; they escape to the North for refuge. The wars were years ago and some families have come back to reclaim their property. Each family has lost almost everything. Their privacy has been violated, their homes torn apart and shot at. Many times members of the family were killed. Still today, it is evident that the loss was substantial. It is easy to see that those that have lived through the tragedy are scared that it could happen again. Uncertainty peers out at us from the glassless windows as we travel through the village. This place has been rampaged and is now being rebuilt. Slowly.

Could I live here? I guess I'll have to make do. My tour is for nine months. I am nervous; I do not know the language but I am carrying a gun. As a female soldier, I am being stared at; women do not hold much status in this Muslim region. The truck slows down as we pass through a crowd of people in the street. Some are cheering; others look annoyed, mostly we are in the way. We are living in the remnants of a civil war and

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