Food was readily available. I relish Bosnian food, and there is an interesting variety of dishes accompanied by their thick, tasty pita bread.

Except for a building next to a memorial for a large group of young people killed by a shell, Tuzla today shows few signs of war. In Sarajevo, on the other hand, large areas are untouched by repair crews. But to my eyes there has been much progress in the three years since shelling stopped. In the old part of town many shops are open, selling handmade objects. It was fascinating to see how many articles can be made from brass artillery-shell casings.

Fields that had been marked with red triangles indicating land mines are now growing good crops of corn and potatoes. Villages that had been skeletons of themselves have been fleshed out, and clothes again hang on lines outside the houses. Here and there, though, a village still stands uninhabited.

Beneath the surface

Though on the surface people appear happy and adjusted, painful memories can be easily tapped. One of our translators had worked with Doctors Without Borders, translating during operations between English-speaking and Bosnian-speaking doctors. She recalled an incident under battle conditions where, because of a shortage of medical staff, she had to use her hands to keep a patient’s intestines in. When she got home her mother almost fainted when she saw all of the blood on the translator’s clothes, blood that she had been completely unaware of.

Our other translator, who has worked with us for more than four years, described in detail the problem of getting in and out of Sarajevo by tunnel while it was being shelled and how the Serbs had artillery zeroed in on the entrance to the trench leading to the tunnel. Many people were killed at that point.

This eagerness to share experiences, painful though they were, translated into good attention and participation in our training program, even under the 98-degree heat during the first three days of our seminar. It was relatively easy to find people willing to be clients in our demonstrations of therapy techniques.

As trainers, we may have reactions to the strong emotions of the people we are training, but we can leave the situation and return to a relatively non-traumatic America. The teachers and mental-health workers we are training have to go right back to the pressure. This was especially true of the group who had joined us from Kosova.

Competition

Our team met with the mayor of Tuzla during our visit. A robust man, he is very popular with his constituents. He has an open-door policy, and several days a week he attempts to solve problems of employment, housing and anything else that bothers the city’s residents.

One of the foreign visitors with us pointed out how much money his country had given to help develop a health center in Sarajevo. The mayor’s response was to indicate how much more could have been done with the money in his province because it has 150,000 refugees and many citizens returning who went to places such as Germany during the war. It was clear there is much competition for the limited amount of support and supplies available.

One of the students in our program who spoke excellent English had a conflict I had not encountered, despite the fact that it may be common. Her father was a Bosnian Muslim and her mother a Serb. Her parents had divorced at the beginning of the war, and her mother moved to Belgrade. Just before our conference she visited her mother and was now with her father.