Friday, June 26, 2009

A Foreign Land

Croatia has been a peaceful country to live in for over 15 years now. Yet, there remain quite a few scars from the war.

20 minutes from our house there's a Serbian village (in Croatia) that was destroyed by the war. Rumor has it that the Croatian government is offering to pay people to rebuild and live in towns like this one. So far it seems not many have taken them up on their offer. Here are some pictures of Pusina.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

So tell me... because I'm not very intelligent about such things... why do people not take up the government on their offer?

Jeremy said...

Good question! Neither Petra nor I know the answer for sure but here are some good educated guesses:

1. The government will HELP pay for someone to rebuild an existing house but there are no jobs in the town yet, nor would anyone living there have the money to buy a car to travel to the nearest town for a job (if one was available).

2. Everyone knows it was a Serbian village. Some Serbs (a couple brothers in our church are an example) have moved back. But the other Serbs who have not, have probably now moved to the place they fled to during the war and have no desire to return to a destroyed house. Croats don't have much interest in moving into a torn down Serbian village.

3. Electricity and Water just returned to the village a year or so ago. Many of these houses probably wouldn't have access to utilities yet and the government wouldn't want to pay to get it done if no one is going to move there.