Solidarity: traveling to the Balkan countries devastated by the earthquake
22/02/2021
It was a pleasure for us to participate, together with so many fantastic people, at this solidarity birthday
of Gianpietro Dal Ben, friend and president of the non-profit organization Energia & Sorrisi.
In our own small way, we have brought some aid and hope to these Balkan countries devastated by the earthquake, where the conditions of life are difficult, almost impossible to imagine in 2021
Anna tells us about the journey...
This time we leave, Baloo and I, not on the legendary Land Rover, but with our little camper Possl, to provide logistical support to the members of our Energia & Sorrisi Onlus association, engaged in a humanitarian mission on the Balkans and in the territories tormented by the last earthquake in Croatia.
We start early in the morning on 12/02/2021 and it is our Charity Birthday Rally, yes, because our president and friend Giampietro Dal Ben decided to celebrate his birthday with a humanitarian mission that involved us at various levels, who stayed at home and worked hard to prepare the boxes with jackets, warm clothes, shoes, blankets and food. We knocked on many doors and many doors have been opened for us, friends, unknown financiers, supermarkets, lyons, parishes, individuals, entrepreneurs, associations, scouts, Alpine troops, San Vincenzo, everyone has helped us, some with donations, some by making available their free time, some giving us the availability of transport from one region to another of the collected material, some even giving us trucks ...
And so our solidarity adventure begins. We go on through a journey never made, in lands never crossed. Usually our land is Africa, where we bring the aid following the Rallye, but here in the Balkans and above all far from the tourist destinations, no one has ever been there.
The group is formed: new friends and old, we also have two Don: Don Edy and Don Emanuele, who accompany us with their minibus full of help, two wonderful people, enthusiastic but above all with a big heart!
Our first stop is Glinar in Croatia, where we arrive on the very cold evening of Friday 12 February.
The gravity of the disasters is not yet perceived, because the night envelops us in its cold mantle. We manage to unload a truck at a warehouse made available by a private individual. My companions had planned to sleep in the bodies of trucks and vans, but the cold is really a lot, we are already at -6 ° C, it is impossible to think of sleeping like this. Don Edy miraculously found us a contact of an acquaintance of his friar, with an unpronounceable name, but whom we immediately baptized Fra Cristoforo. He opens the doors of his small convent to us, makes us sleep in the warmth, and the evening passes between music and songs (Don Emanuele brought a guitar and Luciano sings the most beautiful songs). I sleep in the camper, but at 04.55 a strong earthquake wakes us up. They tell us that the tremors follow one another, but they really scare us so much!
The morning shows us all of Glinar's injuries. The center looks like the day after, deserted, with the houses that seem intact, but, to a careful eye, you can see torn roofs and large cracks. Further on we notice one, two, three caravans near half-ruined houses and then, along the road, rubble and more rubble, caravans and chemical toilets. The earthquake has devastated and continues to devastate this already battered area, the cold looms more and more, the thermometer of the camper plummets, the earth is frozen and there is ice everywhere.
We go to the nearby earthquake village of Petrinja, and here the situation is not very different from Glinar, except that there are two huge warehouses, one of the Red Cross, and one of the Civil Protection, but they do not seem very organized, especially in the tent of the Civil Protection where we unload the second balance of aid. There are garments crammed together, and outside, briefly covered with a sheet, beds and mattresses sprout. My thought is that if they leave them there, in the cold and water, they will soon be useless.
The guys from the Croatian army help us in the unloading and, after understanding how we want to store our aid, in a climate of cooperation they begin to work with us.
We then head towards the border with Bosnia, but we are leaving Europe and everything gets complicated. We spend 26 hours in customs. The military is trying in every way to nitpick not to pass aid to refugees, to go to Lipa (the refugee camp devastated by fire) is not even mentioned, very forbidden! But as always, our stubbornness wins over the cold and the border police. We manage to find a truck with a Bosnian license plate and quickly tranship all the aid from our tow truck to the Bosnian one: we have finally found a trick to circumvent the customs restrictions that prevented our vehicle from entering Bosnia and we head towards Bihac.
There we were told it was an unauthorized but tolerated camp. In fact, a good-hearted person even gave an entire hill at their disposal for the refugees to settle. The scenario we are presented with is absurd: groups of young people from Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq live (indeed they survive) under plastic awnings arranged in the best possible way in this forest, with frozen ground. The consistency of these tarps is like that of the black bags that we usually use for garbage. The field is crossed by ropes stretched between one tree and another, which at first glance would seem to hang clothes. Instead the ropes are used to keep up and down when it rains. Yes, because the ground turns into an impossible mud.
Here and there are stray dogs who share with these kids the leftover food they manage to scrape together. It is an inhumane condition, some are without shoes, they say that the police took them away from them, that they were robbed of the little money they had brought with them and that they were beaten. These guys are between 20 and 25 years old, they are strong, otherwise they could not resist those hardships. They light the fire inside truck rims to warm up and to cook some eggs. We distribute blankets, shoes, food, in a precise order and in an unreal silence. But for them their eyes full of gratitude speak.
Your heart tightens, and then you remember those catechism phrases that you were taught as a child: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was cold and you covered me ...". Never ever would I have thought of encountering a reality so "really hard, true, absurd".
We distributed everything we had in three camps, even our food that was kept for the return!
We also visit an abandoned factory, a refuge for 400 migrants always coming from the same areas. They have frightening faces, but they are their faces, perhaps they notice our slightly scared attitude and reassure us: "don't be afraid, we're just hungry and cold!".
But the thing that screeches the most is the wish that the boys, after receiving our help, thank us saying: good luck! Good luck ... to us ...!
We return to Italy. At the border we are stopped by the finance that asks us what we carry: tiredness, bitterness for what we have experienced and the stubbornness that will make us return to those places, because it is not acceptable that human beings like us can be hungry and cold in 2021, while the world casually turns away.
Anna Chieregato
San Benedetto Camping Relais