Other Projects: Kosovo
| Albania |
Kosovo:
Continuing assistance for families through
a close relationship with Eastern European Outreach to provide
support for over 500 families in one of the poorest parts of
Kosovo. Ongoing counselling and therapy for so many still traumatised
by their experiences from the war.
One Kosovan Family's Ordeal.
Things are getting back to something
like normality in Kosovo. The health services are slowly recovering
from the ravages of war, and everywhere you look house re-building
goes on a pace. (In some areas up to 85% were damaged.) But
it will take considerably longer to rebuild people's lives.
Together with patrons Lord David Alton, Bishop Thomas McMahon
and Child Action Trustee Ken Hargreaves, I had witnessed the
trauma of Kosovan families in the refugee caps of Albania. Early
Shadows a collection of paintings by those traumatised children,
shows how art therapy helped in their rehabilitation.
I arrived at Skopje from Zurich and
travelled by taxi to the Kosovo border. Half a mile on foot
across the border checkpoint, then a second taxi to Pristina
to meet Jeff Thompson, Director of Eastern European Outreach
which currently supports 500 families which have returned from
the camps. All have lost family members and face a great deal
of hardship.
Our Child Action International programme
which formerly supported refugees in Tirana through the Church,
is now able to give them support back home. EEO seemed a good
organisation to channel this support through.
Kosovans certainly know about hospitality.
They would have none of my plans to stay in a hotel. Yousef
Begaj who works with the organisation insisted I stay with his
family. They live in Malesheva in central Kosovo, very badly
damaged by the war. Even now there are still no telephones,
and electricity and running water are only available for a few
hours a day. Their home is a large farmhouse. It needs to be.
During my stay I was one of twenty-two people living there.
Even when the visitors are gone there are seventeen at home:
Yousef and his wife Ramsea and their five children, his mother,
father, mother-in-law, sister, four brothers, sister-in-law
and baby.
Everyone
in turn volunteered their stories over the next few days. Ramsea
and Yousef had been parted by the Serb army who were separating
the men from the women and children, the men taken away and
shot; the women and children expelled from the villages on whatever
transport they could find. Yousef escaped with others into the
KLA controlled mountains. Ramsea and her five children were
ordered out of their home and took a ride on a tractor-pulled
cart towards the Albanian border. After two days as they approached
the border they were stopped by a group of soldiers demanding
money.
One grabbed five year old Gerta and held
a gun to her head for some minutes threatening many times to
shoot. It cost Ramsea all her savings - five hundred German
Marks, her jewellery and rings but thankfully her daughter was
returned to her.
I was told that this sort of incident
was commonplace and I understood a little better why the children
I'd seen earlier had been so traumatised. During this time Yousef,
with a thousand others, was hiding in the mountains that overlook
Malesheva. His father who is seventy-six years old, told me
how his sons dug a pit for him to sleep in. Six feet long, two
feet wide and about a foot deep. Each night he was able to clamber
in and then be covered over with branches of trees, bushes and
other foliage. "If the soldiers came I couldn't run away" he
told me through Jakob my interpreter. "It was OK until it rained
then the hole quickly filled up with water."
Yousef's
father Dan (right) and his Uncle Jim
Shukrije was also in the mountains,
starving for weeks before deciding the need for food outweighed
the risks in trying to get it. Just twenty years old, the eldest
of a group of fourteen, and the youngest just twelve, she shook
uncontrollably as she recounted her story. They went from deserted
house to deserted house collecting whatever food they could,
even digging for the previous season's vegetables in the gardens.
They had just decided to head back to the comparative safety
of the mountains when around the corner came the soldiers. As
they scattered in all directions shot after shot fired at them,
Shukrije stopped twice to go back to help others who had been
hit and was forced to abandon them as they were already dead.
She reached her family on the mountain late that afternoon,
one of only our survivors.
Yousef had heard that Ramsea and the
children were last seen heading for Kukes in Albania. As the
NATO bombing intensified, he grabbed his opportunity to cross
into Albania. After searching several camps he found his family.
"I spotted the children first, playing together, only about
fifty yards away", he told me. "I shouted to them and we ran
to each other. The distance seemed like miles. I thought I was
never going to get them."
There are hundreds of stories like those
of Ramsea, Yousef and Shkrije in Malasheva and the surrounding
towns and villages - experiences that will never be forgotten,
but with our help they can be put behind them as they face up
to a new future. EEO are the only organisation working in the
region, I'm sure the support of Child Action International will
enable them to continue to be most effective. I'm sure too that
the proposed counselling visits by Elda Zeko, child psychologist
and author of "Early Shadows" will be of immense benefit to
the children in their slow but steady recovery.
Article written by Bill Hampson
Early
Shadows: Children's Images of Kosovo
This is a unique book which uncovers
a story of tragedy inflicted by war, and hope instilled through
art. Elda Zeko and Bill Hampson movingly tell the story of how
young children were violently traumatised by the war in Kosovo,
escaped to Albania and how only there did they start to have
an opportunity to face up to their pain, seek support and rebuild
new lives. The book describes their painful journey but also
witnesses to the joy, hope and peace that they have found.
Bill Hampson, Zelda Zeko and David
Alton
at the launch of 'Early Shadows' in Dec. 1999
 |
"Different people have different
ways of coping with trauma, stress and bereavement. Young
children, however, are often made speechless by very great
stress and can remain in this condition for many months.
When that happens, one of the most successful and therapeutic
means of enabling them to communicate is through drawing
and painting... |
| Under
the care of a qualified Child Psychologist the children
I saw had been encouraged to paint scenes of their homes
in Kosovo which they had left recently... These were signs
that the children were emerging from their trauma and
able to focus on other things outside their pain."
Thomas McMahon, Bishop of Brentwood,
UK. |
^^top
Early Shadows is perfect as a personal
read, as a beautifully designed gift, as a learning resource
in school, college, parish or other Christian work. If you are
interested in the impact of war, or in Children, or seeing how
the churches have responded to the pain of the Kosovan conflict
this book is for you. If you have links with Albania you will
also be interested as the project has involved the Christian
community in that country and comes with a forward by Archbishop
Medita of Tirana. All proceeds of the book go towards Child
Action's award-winning work with children.
 |
"All
Americans have been greatly moved by the events of the
last ten years. First communism collapsed. Second, new
conflicts emerged into view. Most recently it is the children
in Kosovo and Albania who have suffered. I welcome Child
Action's fund-raising in the USA and commend this book
to the people of Chicago and beyond..."
Jessy
Dixon, Gospel singer and Patron of Child Action International
in the USA |
^^top
How
to order Early Shadows:
Early shadows is available at the special
price of £9.99 / $15.00 (inc. S & H). To order Early
Shadows, please fill in the following order
form...
Early Shadows was generously produced
by Battley Brothers for the cost merely of the printing and
paper, and all the profits are destined for the work of Child
Action International.
Albania:
From ideas to
action... where the money goes...
When Kosovo refugees flooded into Albania's capital Tirana
emergency assistance was given in support. Now, of course, the
refugees have all returned home, but Child Action International
continues to provide ongoing help for those traumatised by the
war, back in their own country.
Empowering people here in Britain to play a part; for example,
two handicapped Albanian children were brought to Britain with
their mothers for treatment.
Refugee camp for Kosovars in Albania
Lord Alton writes...
"Tirana's general hospital - now named after Mother Teresa
- illustrates the endemic budget neglect which the collapse
of communism has left in its wake. Some very dedicated doctors
and nurses, let alone the patients, deserve better than these
squalid and dirty surroundings. Two families I talked to at
the hospital have children suffering from encephalitis. Armando
aged four and Ernesto aged one, can only be given very basic
treatment - and their mothers receive no respite whatever. It
takes a terrible toll and perhaps this is why so many of the
people look years older than they actually are. Armando and
Ernesto's parents told us how grateful they were for the money
which the Epiphany Trust's Child Action International programme
had made available for them. Click here
to visit Lord Alton's website.
Ernesto
and his mother Antonella
Since Lord Alton wrote this, Armando and Ernesto have been
flown to Britain for treatment arranged by Child Action. The
children received detailed examinations form specialists here
and have started courses of physiotherapy and hydrotherapy which
aim to get them mobile at the earliest opportunity.
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