One distribution day melds into another when looking back, but all were different; everyone seemed to feel that each day was very worthwhile, albeit there were, as always, one or two drops that seemed less important than others. Robin Hood's drops were all good, although each one seemed to be a challenge; one day we went with 'Sea Dog' and 'Busby' in a small convoy group and were stopped in what looked like a tiny backstreet on a three road intersection that was only big enough for one vehicle, and told, this is where all three trucks will work from………err, I don't think so!......I noticed a walled yard off to the left, and after a few hurried conversations, with traffic already stuck behind us all, we established that if 'Sea Dog' reversed into it, and 'Robin Hood' drove onto the end of the road, we could leave 'Busby' which was at the back to be worked from that spot. Actually they used their own initiative and also found a yard to back into, and we stopped a bit further on, surrounded by still-war damaged buildings. It was pouring with rain, and we backed the truck at an angle against a wall with an overhang to try and give some shelter at the back. The rain abated, the reading glasses wall chart was hung up, and the distribution began. We only had enough baby gyms on board for families with very young babies or pregnant women, so those were identified and given out first. (They were really good - loads more back in the warehouse for other days, and we never ran out). Next to the truck was a grassy bank…….with rubble and rubbish beyond……but all the families, and mostly the women, used the bank to rest and layout their gifts which they seemed to really enjoy looking though and discovering…….handbags opened with glee, and toys discovered for the young children……….shoes for someone in the family, and lots more besides…..and spectacles to see them all with properly!.........it was a very good day!

I forget which day it was when 'Busby' had their incident, but we'd commandeered a school entrance hall that day because of torrential rain, and had enlisted a handful of the local men who we'd given our yellow vis-vests to, to help us move the goods inside and control the hundred's of children……as we got closer and closer to completing everyone's piles, the crescendo of excited noise became deafening, but then there was a small 'altercation' with one of the locals who wasn't happy that his relative wasn't on the list!........the local Police were called, even though the situation was under control, and when they arrived, we shared details and the matter was easily resolved….mistakes happen in life, and can usually be sorted out. The policemen spoke really good English and were very helpful…we swapped badges………..but I'll say no more of that! There was one young teenage girl that caught my eye - she'll grow up to be really attractive and could do well if poverty doesn't cause her path to be diverted……..but it was her feet that caught my attention; it had been raining hard for hours, and everyone was standing on grass, and her bare feet were just covered in filthy wet mud, but it was the high heeled shoes that were many sizes too big for her, that stick in the mind!......I managed to point her out to someone in our team just as one of my phones rang and Dawn explained down the phone that they had been robbed! ………I still hope that someone managed to give her some new shoes that fit…..!

Mirlinda (our 'key' co-ordinator with the Mother Teresa Society) had been with 'Busby' all day, and as Dawn was really upset, Mirlinda explained what had happened. I got our police friends out of the crowd and asked them to listen to what Mirlinda explained about what had happened, and they then contacted the police who were local to the incident to go and see what could be done. We finished quickly and said our goodbyes, and then our guide took us as quickly as possible to the remote village where it had happened. You might have read Dawn's account of the incident in her daily reports, so I won't repeat the full story here, but the only way to reflect on it is that someone in great need got a bit more than someone else………the real emotional sadness for the team was that they had just been up a dirt track and taken to see two families who they so much wanted to find shoes and extra food and clothes for, but couldn't because what remained in the truck had been stolen. While the police were taking statements from Dawn and Denise, I went with Shakila, Diane and Bilal, crowded onto the back of the open pick-up truck, back up the muddy slope to see the families. Bev hurriedly untied and more or less threw at me her own lovely tan boots which she said might fit one of the two boys who were living alone, and they did! When 'Busby' returned to see them the next day, with everything they had wanted to give them on that first afternoon, he was wearing them proudly, and they were sitting in the folding garden chairs that we'd also given to them.

The picture that's still in my mind is of the steep mud slope down to their house, the blackened unpainted walls inside the two roomed building, the sparse and broken furniture, and the wood burning stove that wasn't alight, but with it's familiar smoke pipe up to the ceiling and wall……..and the thoroughly burned pot with what we were told contained boiled water for them to drink, but that was covered in a film of scum and dirt, and you wouldn't even want to wash in. They didn't seem to have any food at all, and hadn't yet had time to bring what they had just been given down the muddy slope. Their floors, as so often, seemed to be mud covered with old rugs. It seemed to be the same in the other family's house higher up the slope, except that the dirty old pot on their stove had what we were told was boiled milk, again with a skin covered in dirt, which was going to be drunk in the evening. I was really pleased that I'd thought to grab some of the amazing 'life straws' out of the box still on 'Robin Hood' that Rotary Emergency Box organisers had so kindly sent to me back in the UK, and I gave each person including the children of the two families their own water filtering straw with instructions on how to use them, making it clear that if treated properly, they would last for at least a year. The two houses share a Well, which is just below the first house on the slope, but it has no cover and is open to the elements, and it's a few feet down the slope from the animal shed which is what, effectively, the basement of the first house has been turned into - we think that the families share a cow, as many families do, and survive largely on its milk……..but the fact that the natural Well is just a few feet lower than where the animals live………I guess I don't need to paint you the picture!

On another day, 'Robin Hood' was sent north to the mainly Roma Collective at Leposavic, a mixture of dark and squalid one room dwellings all contained within a metal structure that must have been a warehouse at one time or another, surrounded by shanty style constructions made from old bits of wood, plastic, and anything else that can be made to fit. Leposavic is well inside the mainly Serbian region north of Mitrovica, and so, shortly after we entered the Region, on a remote piece of road, the vehicles stopped, and Arsim changed the number plates on his car to Serbian ones, to make the vehicle less of a target. When we arrived at the camp, the children very quickly came running, having recognised us from last year, and started chanting 'Robin, Robin, Robin'…….Dawn did a brilliant job as the pied piper and shunted them all away as I reversed into position. The distribution was made much easier and quicker, because knowing how difficult crowd control would otherwise have been, we'd had all the family packs made up in the warehouse so that everyone would be seen to get the same. Wheelbarrows of somewhat remarkable and rickety construction were 'wheeled out' and used to ferry the large quantities of food and other things into everyone's living space, and then we locked up and went inside to see how things were…….. Pitch black cold corridors, and darkened rooms, but adults and children alike pouring over their piles, trying on clothes and shoes, playing with toys, and with smiles everywhere caught by our camera flashes. Once again, here in Leposavic we came across a couple of adults who had been 'returned' from Europe. I wish I could remember which country they had been sent back from, but to end up there, yet again brought home to us how savage and unjust the civilised European 'voluntary returnee' issue has become!

On the morning of departure, the heavens opened, and a deluge of water dampened even the heartiest of spirits. Dave Smith had been struggling in the downpour to get trailer lights working, and managed to succeed by diverting power cables as a temporary fix. The 'Busby' crew had to drive all the way back to Skenderaj to report to the police station and complete their robbery report, while others including 'Robin Hood went to Pristina. For the journey home, the trucks divided into two groups; the big rigs with two of the smaller trucks, and then the remaining 4 trucks. I had managed to arrange a last minute meeting at the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, and while I was there, 'Sea Dog' and 'Gonzales' took their final loads to our friends at the Mother Teresa Society (MTS). Before we all left Kosovo, some of us went to see the Aliju family, who live in a burned out and derelict house right in the middle of Pristina; among the worst of all the vulnerable cases that MTS (with our help) try to support, it was clear that everyone was shocked by their living conditions. After entering the front door opening, it's a bit like walking through a short dark tunnel with muddy and stony ground, surrounded by old rubbish. You then have to climb up and over a broken internal brick wall, carefully avoiding the temporary steel roof supports and ducking under broken timbers, to stand on a cold half landing in the open air (but under what purports to be a roof) which leads into the only two 'usable' rooms (laughably described) or down four steps to their outdoor bathroom and kitchen facility! This is actually no more than a broken concrete slab with a tiled surface, again surrounded by piles of rubbish, but with a hose of running water that only stops when it freezes in winter. They wash their pots, and themselves, on this slab! We had a car full of food and other things for them, and Dorothy gave Mrs Aliju some Euros that had been donated specifically for them by her employers, the MOTO organisation. 

The airborne crews were taken to the airport that afternoon, and by the time we'd reached NIS in southern Serbia, I guess most of them were either enjoying a hot soak in a bubble bath, or tucked up in bed? Our journey was pretty normal………an air brake problem with 'Sea Dog' in Austria, caused by a broken pipe, but with a certain amount of ingenuity at the local Iveco garage to remake the joint, and a little bit of persuasion to bend some pipes sufficiently to fit back on, we were off again without too much drama. Everyone was back home by Friday afternoon.

………and now, as I sit here finishing this report looking outside at deep snow, with "record low temperatures never known before in the UK", it's hard not to worry about all of our friends and acquaintances out in the Balkans, where unemployment reaches 90%, where 60% of roads are unmade, where 30% of the population don't even have access to a tap, and where living conditions are so often lower than we would provide for our pets!

BUT I need to finish by making a very special appeal…………….here in the UK and western Europe, our economies ARE floundering, and families ARE struggling to pay bills, and people ARE unhappy with all the cuts and increasing costs……… but we really ARE the lucky ones!.........we CAN afford to heat our homes, and we CAN afford to fuel our cars, and we CAN generally afford to buy the food that we want………..

Hope and Aid Direct, has wonderful support, and our volunteers work tirelessly to raise the money and obtain the goods that we take and give away on your behalf. We will always need your support, and we do hope you'll continue, but if it wasn't for our sponsors out in Kosovo, the Mother Teresa Society (MTS) and their few people out there who have virtually run out of funds, are struggling to survive themselves, and yet are trying all-year round to help others, we wouldn't be able to continue going back to Kosovo ourselves. They badly need financial support just for the basics of fuel for their vehicles so they can reach out to the vulnerable, in places that are hard to get to, so if you would like to make a separate donation to us which we will allocate specifically for them, the Mother Teresa Society, please will you do so; I undertake to ensure all such funds are specifically allocated accordingly. Please send any such donations to me, Charles Storer, with cheques payable to Hope and Aid Direct, at our registered charity address.

Thank you!

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