From Kosova, written around June 1999

The following poem was sent to us by Valon Veliqui, who was kind enough to share his home with a convoy of no less than 20 of us when we first travelled to Kosova in July and August of 1999, just as the NATO bombing campaign ended.

Valon was forced to hide underground, in a tiny pit concealed beneath his woodshed. He and a friend, fearing for their lives, hid for almost a week while the Serb militia could be heard killing his neighbours, in the garden above. They had no light, and just 6 litres of water.

Later, visiting his home, I was unable even to fit through the entrance to the hidden underground pit. I am not much bigger than Valon, and I could tell the problem was partly my dread of the small space and its significance, and partly my lack of desperation to squeeze in. As you may have guessed, you may find this poem disturbing.

“Buried Alive”

We entered the grave
Why should I lie, it wasn’t so bad
Maybe it was a solution to crave for
It was too tight and we were two
I couldn’t percept if anybody
welcomed us, on the first day
On the second day, the death was under my toenails
Already filled with rotten bones
On the third day,
my friend somehow whispered to me
about walking amusements that happened once
I long to drink something
said my friend on the fourth day,
while I was “longing to piss standing on foot,” I replied
I admit that this was something
that he was craving for too
“I am hungry,” my friend said
On the fifth day
I had a feeling that he was browsing a cookbook
Constantly I was chewing bits of a broken tooth
Oh I am thirsty
“Only thirsty?” my friend was loathing
On the sixth day
with all my strength I was forming the last circles of spittle for my burnt throat
“Let’s go out,” my friend said
On the seventh day
“Let’s wait until the dark
It’s a night, too dark
they can’t kill us”
We were looking at the sky
Accidentally I learned that we were alive
then I understood the grave’s prayer
I covered it
Anyway the inscription was missing too

By the time of our second convoy, word was starting to spread about what we were doing, helping with very real humanitarian aid, but enabling people to contribute all that they could at a very “grass-roots” level. Some of the big charities that had initially asked us to send them money, had started giving out our telephone number to people enquiring about doing more! We even developed a “branch” in Tewkesbury, 170 miles away! That branch went on to be a fully-fledged charity in its own right, Tewkesbury Independent Aid. We very greatly valued the many convoys to Kosova and Ukraine which were run together with them, and take this opportunity to pay tribute to Roger Laycock, the founder, who very sadly passed away in 2009.

Our second convoy – from Brighton, London, and Tewkesbury! – was run in partnership with a large charity, British Humanitarian Aid. They had experience of delivering to orphanages in Bosnia and Croatia during the 1990s. Its destination was a United Nations compound which supplied various refugee camps in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, bordering Kosova to the south.

In an early example of our ability to be flexible when directed so by the people we’re trying to help, we decided not to deliver to that compound. Macedonian civilians we met along the way explained to us that there was a great problem for villages in the vicinity of refugee camps. Many of the camps were grossly over capacity, and life was quite rough in them. The village we eventually chose to go to was Pirok, with a normal population of about 1500. With a nearby refugee camp swelling with 20,000 people (double its design limit), the village found itself hosting around 4000 overspill refugees! But because it wasn’t officially a camp, it was receiving no United Nations help. We delivered our aid in what seemed like seconds, with every villager including the mayor helping to unload into an empty shop unit!

The food, clothing, and toiletries were used to support the many households who had taken in complete strangers. We also had “one of those moments” where a young man from Bosnia, somehow still caught up in the ongoing troubles of Yugoslavia, approached us to ask if his “Uncle Bob” was with us — it turned out he was referring to an aid convoy driver he had met in the mid-90s in Bosnia. And incredibly, that man was with the main part of our convoy!

Just two months would pass before our next convoy, which was to prove the biggest and most successful yet — in July / August 1999.