We Do Adventure

I've been thinking about writing this post since I snapped the photo on the left about a month back. I wanted to craft something thoughtful, perhaps even a little profound, to accompany this image. As I sit typing now I get no sense that I'm going to achieve my aim this evening. Nevertheless, like a fine impressionist painting, I hope these words go some way to conveying the picture in my mind. I loved cars as a kid. Either my ninth or tenth birthday outing was to the Motor Fair at Earls Court, London. (Whichever it wasn't was a trip to London Zoo!) I can still remember the cars I got my photo taken with that day: the then new Toyota MR2 , the MG Metro 6R4 and behind the wheel of a BMW 628 CSi – the 635 CSi was my favourite but there wasn't one of those on display. There were plenty of other super-cars roped off where you couldn't get your sticky little fingers on them. These where the days when the Lamborghini Countach was cool! Yes, these were the Thatc...

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’...

There are two inspirations for this post. The first was a chance encounter in our local Sainsbury’s with a friend with questions. Essentially her question was 'are you really going to go?' I replied in the affirmative which she countered with 'I just can't imagine it!' To be fair, six months ago I couldn't have imagined that we'd be doing what we're doing now. Although perhaps Rowan could! The second inspiration is the lunch I had with another friend yesterday. She's someone who has long taken me to task, probably with some justification, for what she perceived as my shallow western consumeristic outlook on like. I distinctly remember the late night argument in which she and another friend really battered me on the subject. 'Have you actually ever seen poverty?' Although these things are always relative back then the answer was basically no. That has changed. There will be challenges ahead. I know that. I also know I need that. It is too easy...

I popped home for lunch to discover some mail from Novi Most. The document included, amongst other things, background on NoviMost and a brief overview of Bosnia Herzegovina's history since Tito. It was all absorbing stuff but I thought I'd post a few of the statistics here. 77% of youth (who form 25% of the population) want to leave Bosnia Herzegovina, having no hope for their futures. [UN OIA report in 2005] 62% of young people in Bosnia Herzegovina are unemployed. [DfiD, June 2007] Half the country lives in poverty. 30% of those living in poverty are under 18. [DfiD, Oct 2004] I haven't searched for comparisons; that would be unnecessary. Those figures scream 'need'. While improvements in education, the emergence of new jobs and the injection of foreign investment will be part of the answer, the restoration of hope is vital to see a lasting transformation in the nation. I've taught song-writing for years and always encouraged would-be songsmiths to include an ...