We Do Adventure

I was gearing up for a light-hearted, hopefully humorous, blog this evening when tragedy struck; tragedy of the genuinely numbing, incomprehensible kind. We'd turned up to prepare to an evening of youth work at Klub Novi Most to discover that one of our new regulars this summer had had an accident swimming in the Neretva in the afternoon. We were told he'd got an electric shock and was in hospital. He had been in Klub this morning, his usual energetic self; full of wide-eyed enthusiasm whether it was playing table tennis, pulling faces or practising his rock'n'roll poses with an unplugged guitar in front of the mirror. About halfway through the evening a tearful girl burst through the door to deliver what in that split second had become painfully obvious news. He had died. Nobody wanted to believe it. In my mind all I could see was replays of him laughing and joking and making fun of me during this morning's session. 'Why?' and 'No!' fought to be...

I wasn't going to post on this story, but then I changed my mind. Back in the summer we went to the 443 rd annual bridge jumping competition from the Stari Most in Mostar. It was an insane – and awe inspiring – spectacle. Divers from all over had come to demonstrate that art of shallow diving. There seemed to be two basic techniques: feet first or head first. One seemed to score points for a big splash, the other didn't. Later that evening, I was leaning on the railings at the launch point, staring down into the swirling waters, discussing with a friend whether I'd have the bottle to jump if my life depended on it. This morning I heard that someone died jumping off the Stari Most on Monday. The local word was he jumped from the wrong side, landed on his back and and never reappeared from the swollen waters. One local friend seemed bothered that people he knew were treating it quite lightly; “perhaps we saw too much death in the war” he offered. The sad fact is this i...