Convoy 'Wrap up' report for Montenegro July 2010,
(otherwise known as more 'Borders and Balderdash', part three)

….my last 'Borders and Balderdash' was at Easter, and since then, as you'll probably have read, we've taken the team to the biggest refugee camp still in existence in the Balkans. The trip was unbelievably tough, and hugely stretching, but as usual, we achieved the objectives that we set ourselves……and some!

If you've read my previous 'balderdash' reports, you'll know, and probably expect to read of bureaucracy, obstacles, frustrations, tears, and joy, all rolled into one, and this report's certainly got all that……….again………!

Where to start?......Montenegro wasn't even on our radar as having 11,000 refugees (yes that many) until this year - these are mainly people who went there to flee the Balkan wars one way or another. I flew out to do a recce last November, and having seen what less than one hour's rain did to flood the solid ground of the refugee camps, and make their shameful living conditions even worse than they already were, I very quickly decided, with Bob and Roger who came with me, that we had to return.

2500 Roma, all from Kosovo! (Roma are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, but who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent.) They had fled during the war in 1999, and are now stuck; stateless because their papers were destroyed (to avoid deportation) jobless and without money, because few will employ them, unhealthy in many cases because of the poverty, and not wanted by those who are their hosts, because of their circumstances. Konik Camp, where they survive, is on the outskirts of Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro, with its vibrant cafes and bars, and 'beautiful people', and merely a few hours drive from the stunning and opulent Adriatic coastline, yet the Roma shanty town, which was originally constructed by the UN to provide shelter to so many, is 'a million miles' away……..the camp is split into four segments; Konik camps one and two, plus some families in slightly better houses, and a shabby block of flats. There are, to be fair, some toilets in the houses and flats, but for the c1500 people living in the two camps, there are just four 'sanitary' blocks for washing, with toilets attached…….the four washing facilities are in the open air, and consist of troughs, with taps above, some broken, and some with short hoses to fill buckets and containers. Dirt and rubbish is everywhere, partly because the camps are adjacent to the Podgorica amenity dump! Little children, as well as the adults wash themselves and their family clothes in cold water poured into a myriad of containers. Immediately behind or adjacent, are the toilets, if you can describe them as such ……… festival or open air concert goer's will already have a picture in their minds of rows of plastic cubicles, none of which will need any description by me to convey the sense of foreboding when opening the doors……….oh that these were, or are, anywhere near that luxurious! ……….. squat style, some without a roof or even a door, some of those with doors newly padlocked with keys given to specific families so that they knew which filthy squat to share, and as far as I could establish, all of those from Konik Two, connected (a loose description) to a sewage system that was broken two years previously when modern flats were built in the city, but never repaired! …………I asked Dejan from UNHCR if he would want his Mother to live in the camp………and more to the point would he want her to have to squat there?..............he was very quiet and no less embarrassed, and said he would do all he could…………please read on….

It took 7 months to pull the convoy together, including a second flight out there in May just after the Easter convoy, to put arrangements in place with the help of UNHCR, the Red Cross of Montenegro, and others including the British Embassy in Podgorica, and to find out exactly what the camp leaders said they needed, so that we took the right things. Having never worked with us before directly, there was huge scepticism initially about our capabilities, and therefore the desirability of working with us, not to mention of course the political implications and ramifications……….but as many will know, we don't give up easily, and obstacles were confronted and where necessary, overcome.

The bureaucracy was quite unbelievable, and papers with corrections to content, format, and layout, went back and forth by email, for weeks! Simple requests such as, 'what exactly do your regulations state about what we have to provide on the border'? were met with resolutely constructed sentences designed not to provide answers and frustrate even the most patient of souls, but we got there eventually, and with more than a small amount of 'jiggery pokery' our paperwork was immaculate. Thanks to our wonderful UNHCR hosts, our border crossing into Montenegro was actually relatively painless for a change. I can't recall now, 4 months later, whether we had any travelling incidents or not, but I seem to recall that once we'd actually departed the UK, the journey was quite relaxing, indeed pleasurable, that is to say, apart from the unbearable temperatures!..........

We knew that this convoy would be tough, and one of the key aspects was going to be the heat……….but I hadn't planned for the fact that Robin Hood's cab heater was stuck open, and would remain so for the entire journey out and back, adding to the outdoor temperatures that reached virtually 40 degrees during the days we were there.....evidenced on one occasion by the roadside fires springing up from the numerous cigarette habits being practiced to perfection! We were very nicely toasted!

The new, and not quite finished warehouse, that we'd found for ourselves during our recce, was superb, and the delightful owners, a Policeman and his wife and family gave us free run of the place. The Fork Lift, that was critical to not only our timescales, but also our physical wellbeing in the heat, was our first real challenge; the problem was, there wasn't one! More of our friends down there, Lidija and her husband, managed to locate one after we arrived, but there needed to be some price negotiation first……..when it came several hours late, and quite a few hours later, it arrived on the back of a small flat-bed pickup truck, with it's suspension being seriously tested way beyond normal limits……and they had already nearly destroyed another vehicle in trying to get it to us! Jan set about establishing a workshop kitchen with refreshment and water drinking routines to keep us all hydrated, and thank heavens for the 3 fridges that we took with us, which were put to very good use in the unbelievable heat!

I had managed to persuade UNHCR and the camp-managing NGO, the Red Cross of Montenegro, (much against their judgement for fear of losing control of the crowd) that to do the distribution, we would turn the 'big rig's into a sort of long market stall, with both artics parked end on end, and with one side open, out of which we would pass the required items from each commodity. Consequently we needed to end up with all of the goods that we would distribute laid out along the lengths of the trailers. The teamwork was terrific, and all four trucks (2 x 7.5 ton, and 2 x 40 ton) were unloaded (in part, or in full) despite the heat, with the aid sorted into rows and columns ready for reloading as soon as we had the energy. 

Even though we had a good quantity of tinned food, we took an early decision that we'd need more food, and between us in a whip round, with typical crew generosity, we raised another £2000, and John and I went shopping! We soon discovered that we could buy huge sacks of yellow and green peppers for 2.5 Euros per sack, (and of course we bought all that we could find); we also bought sacks of potatoes, and onions, as well as cooking oil, and flour, and John spent several hours painstakingly working out how many of each item we could then afford to give to the 2500 people who we'd come to help. Others in the team did exactly the same inside the warehouse, many hundreds of single shoes that hadn't been paired were sorted into pairs, clothes were sorted, boxes repaired, and everything then spilt equally for the day three and day four distributions.   

We ended the first of the two warehouse days with a visit to the camps, for two key reasons. Firstly so that I could meet all of the camp leaders and let them know that we'd kept our promise, but much more importantly seek their help in 'managing' the distributions…….we needed a dozen willing but trustworthy and reliable 'porters', to receive the aid from us, and carry it, but secondly, so that all the other members of the team could see for themselves why we had come, and what the security and crowd control issues were going to be when we went back the next day. ……… no surprises, there were children everywhere, loads of noise, dust, smells, and of course smiles……..on both sides!

The distributions went well. We gave out all 44 tons of aid that we'd taken, plus the other 6 tons that we had bought, to all 450 families, in just two days! We used the wall of the only large building there as one side of a corridor we created, with the artics end on end as the other side, and with the two 7.5 tonners backed in at one end to create a completely enclosed and controllable corridor. Family representatives were brought in at one end with a 'porter and trolley', and as they passed down the line alongside the trucks they were given what eventually became a huge pile of all the items we had, appropriate to family size and makeup; shoes were sized, clothes given out as best we could by age and gender. Each of our volunteers had an allocated 'stall' to look after, and one or two were on 'security' duty with me. Bill (the duck impersonator!) Loose was our resident 'optician' who did a terrific job out in the heat but under his tropical hat, in putting clambering residents through the eye test that we'd rigged up, before giving out some of the thousands of reading spectacles that Boots had donated. We had about 5 or 6 interpreters working with us, and what a great job they did, but more of that shortly…………

Back at the Hotel after a few extremely refreshing glasses of liquid!....., Dejan joined us from UNHCR at about 10.30pm and gave us the bad news……….that the next day, our last, we'd only have two, maybe three interpreters!........ "You cannot be serious!"………I'm nearly ashamed to admit that we had words, and I might not have been as typically polite as always, but of course always courteous……….and the next day, somehow, we had at least a dozen, if not more…………..not to mention the head of UNHCR Montenegro, 3 TV crews, 2 Radio interviewers, and lots more camp volunteer porters………

………the children were our biggest challenge on the second day, in a playfully irritating sort of way!.........they had discovered how to release the truck straps that hold the curtains closed, and were enjoying finding ways to distract, 'divide, and conquer', and it wasn't long before a few things were falling out of the trucks at the back of us……..but we were on to it, and able to keep things under control….we recruited the biggest guy in the camp to help us (I think his name was Magid) and he had a way with words, as well as with his long thin stick!

By the end of the last day, we were all pretty exhausted, but very pleased with what we'd achieved. The heat had been the biggest enemy, and as luck would have it, just as we were closing the trucks up and saying our farewells, we felt the spots of rain that precede a thunderstorm and I suggested to one of the helper/porters that this would be a welcome cause of fresher and cleaner air………but I was gently rebuked……….as the reality was that this would likely cause the camp to flood again as usual, bringing back the misery of wet rugs and mattresses that so typically adorn the floors around the spaces that are called home!.........I felt pretty helpless………we all returned to our nice Hotel!

When we had been back in the UK for about a week, I had a conversation with Dejan from UNHCR and asked how things were?.........everyone had been really pleased with our visit and what we'd taken, but most especially because we'd cared enough to actually do it! Four International well known agencies had only managed to provide 5 tons of aid to the camps in 2009; we managed to give out 50 tons in just two days, and even that wouldn't last them all that long……….but the other major achievement (or so I thought - see below #) was the news that Dejan had been true to his word back in the camp in May when he said he would do all he could about the toilets………agreement had been reached through UNHCR to install new septic tank(s)! The toilet squats?..........would probably remain!
[# I've just learned that 2 days before work was due to start, the brakes were put on by the local municipality; it would appear that one of the criteria for EU accession talks, is to have a solution for Konik.  Apparently this could mean repatriations or relocation (voluntary??), and therefore there was no permission granted for the problem to be sorted out. However, I've also just learned that the UN put in around 40,000 Euro in funding to dig large drainage holes in both Konik 1 and 2, and the work was finished in November, which means that other than leaking roofs rain isn't a problem!!!]

The most difficult question………..will we go again?..............we'll have to wait and see. It's certain that help will continue to be needed, and we can't envisage the people going anywhere else anytime soon, but only time will tell!

Charles Storer 'Robin Hood'

READ THE VOLUNTEERS DIARIES FOR THIS CONVOY