We Do Adventure

Yesterday we arrived back in Bosnia and Herzegovina after three weeks in England. Most of the people we met during this trip have never seen this country. If they have heard of it their only frame of reference is usually news reports from the early nineties. We tried hard to give them a fair picture of how things are now. This included enthusing about the hospitable people and the beautiful countryside, as well as talking about the segregation ingrained in society and the state of political stalemate that saps all sense of hope from most normal people we meet. Sadly these last two points can be linked to the international intervention the ended the armed conflict. This intervention did stop the killing, of which there had been a lot, but progress towards a fully functioning democracy has not been so quick. At least that's what I used to think. It was the Belgium elections in 2010 that first got me questioning. It went without government for 541 days while political parties fail...

So today we read that Casey Affleck has confirmed what some of us suspected all along, namely that the ' documentary ' following Joaquin Phoenix's lurch from an acting career to hip hop experimentation was staged. Fake is a word being bandied about. That seems a little strong given that the clip of him on Letterman that announced his apparent celebrity meltdown did actually happen. However when it comes to the integrity, or credibility, he was claiming it's true Phoenix is left in need of a resurrection. Still, this little Hollywood side show serves as an interesting parallel to the real news here in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's election time. You can tell because, as much as anything, something like a million political posters have been plastered over Mostar. Rowan and I are not here for any politically motivated reason, and we don't have voting rights for this country, but living here we've obviously interested in the effect of the political situation o...

I think I achieved the impossible today, or at least the highly improbable. I had a couple of conversations with an American and didn’t once mention the ‘I’ word or the big ‘O’! Am I the only person to achieve this feat? Probably not, but I suspect I’m in a very small minority. Still, the events in Washington did not pass me by. My mother had sent a text before I left the house this morning expressing her hop all was well with me ‘on this auspicious day’. But it was our Welsh friend who seemed most excited about the Inauguration. He was positively gushing about Obama’s speech. For my part I caught a little of the proceedings online, thanks to the BBC. That snap shot including watching a number of ex-presidents taking their seating, listening to the tail-end of Rick Warren’s prayer and hearing the first sister of soul, Aretha Franklin, do her thing. Oh, and I did get a minute or two of that Speech too!