Category: Viaggi

Srpsko Goradze, 16th September 1996

It is cold outside the little room of the local election commission, where the counting of ballots has been going on for several hours.

The office of the commission is at the outskirt of the Serb fraction of the town, which used to be the ‘industrial’ district; you may perceive the ‘national’ border at the end of the road.

It has been difficult to gain the confidence of the Serbian election agents, on one side because they mistrust any representative of the international community, on the other side because we associate them with the massacres we watched on TV.

Just some days earlier, the driver assigned to our team by the OSCE was bragging about having thrown many Bosnians into the Drina river (later on we found out that he was a Radical Party’s candidate for the municipal elections, luckily postponed).

In any case, slowly and cautiously we’ve began communicating with the commission members. Communication then evolved into dialogue and eventually into collaboration.

Election day, the 14 of September, was tense and moving. Bosnians were coming back for the first time from Goradze town, escorted by the IFOR militaries, to vote at their home place. No problems were detected. Maybe also because the Portuguese tanks were patrolling along the road.

The driver says with emotion that it was long time ago when he last saw one of ‘the others’, even if they live just few kilometres away. We did not distinguish the ones from the others.

Now everybody is tired. All the Serbs smoke. One cigarette after another, with no interruption. But the atmosphere is fine, some pleasantry, some food and rakia going around.

The counting is going on calmly. Regulations for Bosnia elections are very complex: people living in Srpsko Goradze before the war could come back to vote or vote where they live now, in Bosnia or abroad. But their votes should be counted here, together with the ‘fresh’ ones.

OSCE is running this exercise, in this case we are not observers but supervisors, taking part to the election activities.

The bags with the abroad ballot papers finally arrive. We throw them on the table. Many of them come out in stacks, with the same vote, traced by the same hand.

The atmosphere is less happy now.

Do you know about the expression ‘va..ffan..cu..lo’?

Playing ‘risk’ on the internet brings you inside a community with its own discussions, jokes, seldom quarrels.

When the game is spirited the debate becomes more passionate too.

Yesterday, one guy who kept attacking me in unfair coalition with other players, noticing that another participant was taking advantage from this situation to gain territory, asked me to join the fight against the new threat.

You can read my answer above.

The human touch

On the plane, the woman sitting next to me grasps my arm. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t look; only this gesture almost automatic. Compulsory.
It’s flight panic. Fear make us more instinctive, less scheming, more direct.
Few occasions remain for real physical contact between people. Especially among strangers, but often also among friends, with the family.
What make us abstain from contact with our fellow men? Etiquette? The urge not to engage? Laziness?
Taking someone else’s hand still is a strong experience. I was a bit shocked the first time I sow African adult males walking around hand by hand.
And surprised, a bit intimidated, when some of them got my hand: friends, neighbours, just colleagues.
Touch is stronger than words. Is a sign of mutual acknowledgment.
It is human and animal at the same time.

Formentera


No, we aren’t there, slightly more south, among Ivory Coast and Congo, but we were in that island just some weeks ago, and the photo could be a folklorist post-card.

All the elements are there, the savage nature in its multiform tint and the human labour, refined by centuries of tradition.

Notwithstanding the outbreak of motorbikes and Italian tourists, the island keep a certain charme and simplicity. Especially in June.

The taxpayer

Another recurrent rhetorical character is that one of the taxpayer. Among ‘international community’ labour forces we often look at him as source of inspiration and incentive.

We imagine the global taxpayer fastening his own belt in order to assist the international bureaucracy in its gigantic responsibility.

And we imagine his proudness when a well established mission renew its entire fleet of air-conditioned 4×4.

In these times of technological advance, it should be simply realizable our most genuine dream: to have in front of us in the office not the simple portrait of a wife and children, but a self-renewing frame presenting the faces of millions of tax payers, smiling to us with confidence.

It’s all an eating eating

The magazine Diario advertise itself telling that, if you (the reader) recently joined a dinner where someone pronounced the phrase giving the title to this blog, you really need to subscribe to that source of fresh and accurate information.

I like Diario very much, but lately I am quite keen in using myself that expression, as one of the key for interpretation of the global society.

Another one is obviously the idiom the cleanest has got scabies, adapted to describe the sector of public works as well as the political arena.

And the third one, much more optimistic and constructive is: who’ll kill us…..

It is surprising how many occasions you have to use one of these categories to represent events occurring here or in country.

And almost everyday you may also take advantage of them to describe your own deeds.

Eating by hands

In my neighbourhood, the majority of people still eat by hands.

I tried once near Reo to have rice sauce with my fingers, and the experience was not unpleasant.

Of course, the psychological burden of childhood’s first commandment: do not eat by your hands converted this incident in a cultural shock.

Eating by hands could look as an uneducated behaviour, but is not. You have to wash carefully your hands before and after the meal and there are some more rules of etiquette, especially if you are sharing the bowl with others (that is the natural African complement to this way of eating).

If you enjoyed the chopsticks Chinese way, now try your fingers, you’ll not regret.

March 16

‘Pintades’

At the corner, along a busy road, the pintades look at cars passing by trying to wiggle out from sellers’ hands.

It is one of the few signs of a ‘developing’ country in this town quite modern and sophisticated.

From my office’s window I see a bunch of new buildings and if in the evening you go listening jazz at Nandjelé the skyline has nothing to envy to New York’s one.

Markets are similar to other African towns, but I am not shopping there a lot, lately.

Now it starts raining, the sky is dark.