We Do Adventure

We had a timely reminder of the complexities of revisiting history the other night. A friend was recounting a version of the events surrounding Srebrenica in 1995 that she had heard from someone, who heard heard it from someone who had said they were there. The story was very different from the one widely reported, the story the has Karadzic currently on trial in the Hague. It'd be too easy to say they were obviously misinformed. So much depends on perspective. I grew up being taught history from an English (or British, if you prefer) perspective; the things that are invariably told as triumphs are also someone else's tragedies. History is so often left in the hands of the victorious. The official version that is. But if the vanquished live to tell the tale they will tell it and the two will not agree. Is true objectivity obtainable? Somehow I doubt it. Should we seek it? Probably. I know I should type an emphatic yes but permit me my pragmatism. Those who do not want to...

I imagine it must be easy to write a snarky blog about people you don’t know personally. I don’t know for sure; I’ve never tried it. Here I’ve tried to avoid unnecessary references to people we work with and I’m definitely not looking to score points. We work with people from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds in a country that can be highly sensitive to such things. This is one reason for discretion; a strong belief that all people should be treated as an individual not as a label is another reason. This weekend a couple of us from the Novi Most team took a group of young people we’ve been teaching uni-hockey to a tournament in Tuzla. It’s not really that far from Mostar if you measure the kilometres, but twisty, single-carriageway roads that weave their way up and down mountains make it an ambitious day trip. And so it was we came to stay over at the big house of some generous people. At the end of a long Saturday – I’d got up at 4am – I sent Rowan a text summarising the day’...