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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lin huan chen who wrote (9428)	5/21/1999 3:52:00 PM
From: RavenCrazy	Respond to of 17770

copyrighted by the New York Times: Living in Between: A Refuge That Will Never Be Home By DEBORAH SONTAG For the Kosovar refugees, the journey itself was so harrowing and the trauma of violent displacement so stunning that it takes weeks to blink into their new reality. For the moment, that reality consists of tent cities, makeshift encampments, mattress-strewn gymnasiums and other hastily re-imagined spaces in the poor country of Albania. For the moment, homeless and stateless, the refugees are confined within the perimeters of these way stations -- if they are lucky, for many more knock at their gates than are permitted inside, given the limitations of space and supplies. Once inside the gates, their photos are snapped for new ID cards -- which stamp them as refugees -- to replace those ripped from them by the Serbs. They are given a tent and a number. They queue up for soup, for bread, for water, for showers, structuring their days around securing the most basic necessities. Then they make elaborate rituals out of their rationed meals -- spreading threadbare blankets on the ground outside their tents, ladeling beans from tin pots onto paper plates. Behind the fences of the camp -- they must take a ticket to leave and re-enter -- they tell one another the horror stories of their flight from Kosovo. The telling and retelling passes the time and helps them cope. They also network, in a sense, working their way through the camps to try to find news of a missing loved one -- many families lost at least one member along the way. Those who are fortunate receive a novel or a newspaper as a gift. Then there are those who are not, like the little boy who lies on the ground outside the gate of a camp in Durres. On his dirty blanket, he falls in and out of a light sleep. He barely moves, except to extend a hand for the bread crumbs around him, to place it in his mouth, and to suck it slowly, with his eyes half closed. Raven geocities.com I can't attach the picture of the little boy here, but I'm sure all of you agree that no little boy deserves this. Why US? Why do I keep hanging around, annoying some. Because we now have two people over there and we are getting a TRUE picture, not a glossy network TV picture, of what it's like. Because with us, every cent, EVERY CENT, goes directly to the refugees. I don't get reimbursed for my long distance calls. We pay for our own stamps. I PM'd one of the posters here and said this to those of you who want to know that your donation goes straight to the heart of the matter: If the people on this board will, combined, raise $500 and send it through one of the two churches sponsoring us, I will take it personally to Skopje, use the pickup truck that the Mother Tereza Organization has available, buy flour, and deliver it myself directly to the refugees living in Skopje. It's tax deductible for you. Television is focusing on the camps. Most of the refugees are not even in the camps. And they do NOT have enough to eat tonight. Raven K_refugees@hotmail.com geocities.com