We Do Adventure

Rowan spotted this video on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. It's from a high school graduation celebration here in Jajce. We were out of town when it was filmed so we missed the parade, although we did see a similar one in the boarder town of Gradiška on our way back from a recent trip to Zagreb. It's a fun video to watch - we know a few of the characters in it - and it does a good job of showing Jajce off, which we think is a cool thing. Posting it tonight has an added significance because I've got that end-of-term feeling. My work on the children's album (that our last post talked about) is officially finished. After nine months of the project simmering in the background and two weeks of intense work, today we put a CD on the bus to Mostar, where the artwork is being designed and where it will be duplicated. It is a satisfying feeling to have delivered what was asked of me inside the timeframe we initially discussed. That the initial feedback has all been positive is...

It looks like it's going to be another sunny day in Jajce but I'm inside, sitting down for another of mixing. It's what I've done for the last two days; it's what I'll be doing for most of the next three days. At that point we'll assess progress and work out what needs to happen before the end of next week. You'll have to watch the video below to get the details of the project, it's enough here to say it's going well but the timeframe is tight. The looming deadline means there's little room for interruptions. However, in my experience, achieving an uninterrupted working day is a big ask in Bosnia and Herzegovina - but here's hoping!

I had a long conversation about humanitarian aid with a co-worker today. It was about humanitarian aid but it touched on education, transport, housing, displacement, development...the list could go on. The seemingly endless list says less about our ability to stick to the point than it does about the complexities of helping people in difficult situations. When faced with so many variables, most of which you have little influence over – certainly none you control – it would be easy to admit defeat before even attempting anything. While neither of us seem predisposed to pre-emptive defeatism, as we look at where we go from here it’s fair to say we’re both grappling with the question: where do you start? You have to start with what you can do. Yes, there needs to be a big picture, a grand scheme perhaps, but those are never achieved overnight. But the picture must be of individuals, of names not numbers. Help must help them. Self-serving projects may make for great project reports but for...