Kosovo...
I'm really struggling today. The volume of work is ridiculous, looking forward to basketball tonight to sweat all this tension out.
It's frustrating to be so close to achieving your goals and yet be held back by red tape and processes which seem to exist only to test my resolve...
There are rules for various things, but no one can tell me why they exist. There are constraints on activities, but no one can tell me why. There are methods and processes, but either no one knows what they are, or no one knows where they came from so chasing anyone or anything down is a long, arduous process with very little reward...
Kosovo declared its independence last night...
It doesn't quite seem real. Less than a decade ago the term "ethnic cleansing" became all too familiar, when Kosovar-Albanians were being massacred by Milosovic's Yugoslavian forces...
In the last 5 years or so I have been trying to track down a news report which shocked me into organizing relief for Kosovar Refugees... It was a short piece, just a journalist and a cameraman following a man who was returning to his village the day after Yugoslav forces had attacked, driving those villagers who could escape into the surrounding hills.
He was looking for his family, who had been separated during the attack. In the morning he had found his wife and mother hiding in a ditch just outside the village, but had yet to see his sons.
About 5 minutes into the piece, as he was walking through a field, he suddenly began running towards some shrubs. The cameraman and journalist sprinted after him, having no idea what he had found, and unable to understand what he was saying...
The camera caught up... this was live footage, no time for editing, no blurred images, no covered sounds... the heads of his two sons had been thrown into the shrubs, the bodies nowhere near...
I'll never forget that scene. Never have.
I know, I know, it all sounds like rubbish, doesn't it? I read what I write on here sometimes and it sounds like some melodramatic UN wannabe caught up in a UNICEF ad (thanks again Erin)...
I wish it was. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so much bloody pressure...
Speaking of which, I can't stand not speaking the language... anytime I need to make a point, anytime anything comes up where there has to be an argument, a discussion, an issue raised, I have to rely on others, who understandably can't or won't deliver the message the same way I do...
I don't know how some expats can live here for years and never learn the language...
It's frustrating to be so close to achieving your goals and yet be held back by red tape and processes which seem to exist only to test my resolve...
There are rules for various things, but no one can tell me why they exist. There are constraints on activities, but no one can tell me why. There are methods and processes, but either no one knows what they are, or no one knows where they came from so chasing anyone or anything down is a long, arduous process with very little reward...
Kosovo declared its independence last night...
It doesn't quite seem real. Less than a decade ago the term "ethnic cleansing" became all too familiar, when Kosovar-Albanians were being massacred by Milosovic's Yugoslavian forces...
In the last 5 years or so I have been trying to track down a news report which shocked me into organizing relief for Kosovar Refugees... It was a short piece, just a journalist and a cameraman following a man who was returning to his village the day after Yugoslav forces had attacked, driving those villagers who could escape into the surrounding hills.
He was looking for his family, who had been separated during the attack. In the morning he had found his wife and mother hiding in a ditch just outside the village, but had yet to see his sons.
About 5 minutes into the piece, as he was walking through a field, he suddenly began running towards some shrubs. The cameraman and journalist sprinted after him, having no idea what he had found, and unable to understand what he was saying...
The camera caught up... this was live footage, no time for editing, no blurred images, no covered sounds... the heads of his two sons had been thrown into the shrubs, the bodies nowhere near...
I'll never forget that scene. Never have.
I know, I know, it all sounds like rubbish, doesn't it? I read what I write on here sometimes and it sounds like some melodramatic UN wannabe caught up in a UNICEF ad (thanks again Erin)...
I wish it was. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so much bloody pressure...
Speaking of which, I can't stand not speaking the language... anytime I need to make a point, anytime anything comes up where there has to be an argument, a discussion, an issue raised, I have to rely on others, who understandably can't or won't deliver the message the same way I do...
I don't know how some expats can live here for years and never learn the language...
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(you need Bangla word of the day to improve your vocabulary)
What happened to Mr Thomas?