Question n*3: Oliver Burch moved to the small country of Bosnia from Britain as a volunteer. He moved to Bosnia and started off in a bakery in Mostar, where he met his Muslim wife, Nerma. Oliver runs the Goradze operation for the charity “Feed the Children” with his wife. Oliver has a baby daughter called Medina and the three of them live in a tiny flat in a private house. Oliver goes around Gorazde helping his ‘beneficiaries’ supplying them with food and blankets and most importantly visits, he brings warmth to the cold cellars. Oliver, like many volunteers is very kind and generous, to the refugees he is more than someone helping, he’s a friend. Oliver is very careful about who he trusts, if he sees something how it shouldn’t be, such as a delegate stealing food, then he will remove all the food going to that area until they find a new, legit delegate.
Question n*4: “Sometimes the boxes in which aid is delivered turn out as useful as the contents.” This tells me that the amount of material and furniture in The Balkans is very poor, they use the boxes to make tables, stools and storage units for the next contents that arrive, the woman live of what they receive, they rely on what is donated to them.
“… these poor woman who have been living like this, some of them, for four years.” Most of the women in Gorazde live in centres, which use to be ex-hotels, schools and blocks of flats, all of them very cramped and dirty. The women had to stay with all their family in a single room, causing horrible hygienic conditions.
“… they welcomed us with smiles, strong, freshly ground black coffee and something to eat; they posed willingly for photos.” This sentence shows how much the women loved company; they take much more pleasure from the visits than from the food and blankets. The most important thing for them was to be in among other people.
Question n*5: Oliver faces many difficulties by not being able to deliver the food himself, however the key to this question is trust. Each area has their own ‘delegate’, who is the person who delivers the food parcels, although from time to time not one hundred percent of the food reaches its destination. When he finds irregularities he stops all deliveries of food to that area. When this happens, people from that area ask him if he has to stop and he has to tell them to find a new delegate and until that happens they will not receive food parcels, it is a question of trust.
Question n*6: The old lady had not been moved into a better house due to the fact that the local social services, the people in charge of moving people from one place to another are lazy, Oliver would like to mover her but doesn’t have the right.
Question n*7: Oliver provides the people of Gorazde with food and blankets along with regular visits. He does regular spot-checks to make sure everyone gets their fair share of food. He insures that all of his patients don’t feel lonely and tries to get involved as much as possible.
Question n*8: If I had gone to Gorazde with the author I think my two chief memories would have been meeting the old woman in the cellar as I have never and hopefully will never have to experience those living conditions, it would give me an idea of what the world can be like in bad situations. I would have offered to help the old woman by trying to contact the local services to find her a new place to live.
The next memory would be living with Oliver for a day to see how his life is, a volunteer in such disastrous conditions demands a lot of courage and generosity, he sounds like a very loyal man. I would like to meet him to ask him what made him want to move to a poor country like Bosnia, what was his inspiration.
