Operation Return Home (Stage 3)

Today was our son's interview at the school we've applied to for him. On this occasion I was very glad that I am naturally punctual & so had left plenty of time to get there. The reason being the police, who were stopping cars at a roundabout, decided in their random way, to stop my car en route to the school. This is my £450 eBay car which sits off road all year at my parents until I come back from Albania, like this week, & tax & insure it for a week.

The police told me they couldn't find my car on their system. Arghhhhhhh. Serendipitously (& bizarrely) I had my insurance certificate, car registration document, MOT certificate, driving licence & even passport with me. Eventually, after a 12 minute delay, they confirmed what I could have told them, that all was in order, & they let me go. My son told me to 'chill' as we still had 30 minutes to get there & it was only another 15 minutes drive away. Just not good for my nerves.

I felt like a fish out of water, parking my little fiesta alongside all the smart cars at the school. All the other interview candidates were in school uniforms or very smart outfits. Our son doesn't have uniform or smart clothes. No call for them in Albania. However, the registrar remembered 10 y-o from the open day & greeted him warmly by name. The headmaster was doing the rounds, sipping orange out of a carton, chatting to parents & then mopping distractedly at the spilt juice on his trousers. In fact everyone seemed very low key & normal, except the parents.

After his interview the teacher who had conducted the interview, lingered chatting about Albania. He taught 20th century European history so was fascinated by Albania.

Whilst my son went off to the loo, he said to me:

"You know I've talked to lots of great boys this last 2 days, but they all brought in a rowing medal or a cricket bat, but your son was so different and produced this fantastic 100 square quilt". H emadde it for his school's 100th day celebration (I knew his effort would be worth it one day!) He said it really had been delightful talking to him & getting to meet him.

I could have kissed him. It's such a relief when you've been living in a tiny little Balkan backwater, your son attending a little missionary school with few facilities & small classes. You think: is he really bright or is it just in the context of his small multi cultural class? What sort of competition is he up against? Will it matter he hasn't had so many extra curricular opportunities or a grade 5 in piano? Would it seem really odd amongst mini rowers, budding Beckhams, & 'rare wood' cricket bats that my son had sewed & brought in a home made quilt as his 'significant object'?

Clearly I needn't have worried. And in fact living in Albania, amongst blood feuds, money laundering, uncharted mountains, abandoned military vehicles & tunnels, not to mention power cuts, chaotic traffic & unmechanised farming only seemed to add to his appeal. What my husband had said all along in fact. I thought it would just make him seem odd & a little too different & too 'out of the UK educational loop'.

They have a very specific ethos & a certain type of boy that they're looking for. I hope our son fits the bill. I htink he would be very happy there. After all, he won't be at school with the parents......

We find out on Monday.

In Case of Emergency....

Today my husband & son flew to England for stage 2 of Operation Return Home. My husband has some meetings about his future, & our son has an open day at one of the schools we have applied to.

Tomorrow in Albania there is another protest, 1 week after the last one. As a result; largely because of the violence & deaths at the last one, the American embassy is closing all day & advised schools to do the same. So my children's school will be closed, the high school, where I teach, will be closed. As one of my American students commented,

"My friends in America have 'snow days', we have 'protest days' which close the schools."

Another organisation which supports missionaries here in Albania sent out the following guidelines today. Guidelines I think you'll agree are worthy of the American embassy. Perfectly practical, but a little excessive.

1. Stay away from large crowds. While things may start peacefully, they can easily and quickly get out of control.
2. Ensure that you have important documents where they can be easily accessed.
3. Try to keep cell phones and computer batteries charged in case the electricity goes out for a long time.
4. It might be wise to keep your vehicle filled with fuel – if there is a need to get out of the area (or country) quickly, you do not want to run out of fuel!
5. Let your teammates know where you are! Stay in touch with one another so that you can be easily reached in case of an emergency.
6. Be prepared to stay in your homes for a few days at least – that means ensuring that you have adequate food and other supplies to sustain you.

Right better go & buy some tins of tuna to put in the cupboard tomorrow...

Needless to say we have heard nothing from the British embassy despite being on their 'list'. I remember during the swine flu scare, we did get an email from the British embassy which basically said , (in the nicest possible way) "You're on your own chaps, we can't do anything to help, should there be a pandemic!"

so my husband wrote his own version of what he thought the British embassy might write should they bother to give us advice about the political situation:

Hello Chaps,
As many of you are aware, the Albanian Socialist party is revolting. Or, to
be more precise, demonstrating, in central Tirana on Friday 28th January.
Protestors are expected to start gathering from 1200 onwards. The
Demonstration is expected to start around 1400.
The Demonstration will create further traffic congestion in the centre of
Tirana and we strongly advise all members of the local British Community to
pack their G&Ts and ankle away from Tirana for a long weekend on a golf
course somewhere. After all, in Albania, incidents of violence cannot be
ruled out, and we wouldn't want to be a part of that, would we?

Mum's the word.

Consular Section
British Embassy, Tirana

I know it's a stereotype, but the pastor of our church on Sunday was advising all Americans to register with the embassy, not just to be on an email list but so that you have 'the full backing & resources of the embassy wherever you travel'. Then the guy says.
"I use it whenever I travel, even if I'm going to Canada!"
The exclamation mark is mine, not his. It wasn't a line in self deprecating humour.

I'm sorry but when you see the American embassy here, you do begin to think they're paranoid. I took my daughter to the American compound for a birthday party. We were late. well, not until we got there & had to go through security checks worthy of Heathrow.

We had to pull over & have our car examined with one of those extra lareg dental mirrors which looks under the car for bombs. Then we had to 'pop the hood' so the security guy could check our engine, only here Albania added a spot of pure Albanianism into the mix. My car bonnet wdn't 'pop' (it's very temperamental) I tried. The security guy (Albanian) didn't even try for me, he just shrugged, smiled & said "no problem" & waved me on. Unchecked, bombs n all. I then had to drive through the bollard chikanes, but even after being checked, I wasn't allowed to drive into the compound, so we parked outside the compound & then went into the office to walk through the metal detector & put all our belongings (including our suspicious looking birthday present) through the x ray machine, and then sign in with the security guard on duty, say whom we were visiting & for how long. And then the dad had to come & meet us & escort us in. I then left &, believe it or not, had to go through the checks all over again exactly 2 1/2 hrs later when I came to pick her up. I guess it's not really surprising the spouses don't leave the compound much. And why would you when it's so nice & safe &, well, American in there?

Once inside my daughter thought she'd 'died & gone to heaven' as the cliche goes. Lots of suburban white houses, complete with pillars & double garages, sweeping vistas of grass everywhere, housewives chatting in the street, a huge children's play area, a soccer pitch & a swimming pool. Even a shop! Like Eurocamp in France. All for 18 embassy staff families. To say my daughter was awe struck would be no exaggeration. 'It's like another country' she said.

Well yes exactly, America, in fact.

My daughter still talks about 'all that fresh grass' She couldn't believe, here in the land of city apartments or village muddy vegetable patches, & her own gardenless flat, that her best friend had all this grass to run around on!

I mean, I could understand if there was a terrorist threat or Americans weren't liked, but to Albanians America is nirvana. Everyone here loves America & wants to go & live there. Maybe there's a 'standard issue' American embassy compound design...

Anyway hopefully, it will be peaceful tomorow & things will have calmed down by Saturday so we can nip out, with full tank of petrol, charged mobiles & tins of tuna & make it to the airport to join my husband & son in the UK.

Tests & Protests

At 8 o clock on Saturday morning, having bounced out of bed with a "yay, this is the big day!"10 y-o & I set out to complete Stage One of Operation Return Home. Our son has been preparing for some school tests to get him into a school in September, should my husband be able to find a job in the UK, and we return home, and we return to our home town. so a tad tenuous. This seems slightly crazy, like putting the cart before the horse, but if we don't apply for schools now & we do go back to the UK in the summer, it will be too late to apply then. So we are doing things in a rather surreal,back to front way, before we have a job, a location, or anything concrete really.

This being Albania, even this Stage was not entirely normal & straight forward. Firstly we drove up the main boulevard where the protest/riot had happened 12hrs before. Half the boulevard was cordoned off & was still strewn with rocks & lumps of brick which protesters had 'dug out' of the paved road & thrown at police. Then, outside the prime minister's office was a growing memorial of flowers & candles for the 3 men shot dead, one in the head, 2 in the chest at close range. A fourth man lies critical in hopsital. And Albanian hospitals aren't good places to be in a critical condition at the best of times.....

Further on still, were the burnt out carcasses of 5 cars, poised drunkenly on the steps of Hoxha's former mausoleum pyramid. The centre was eerily quiet.

Arriving safely at school, we met the head of lower school & our son's teacher who had very kindly given up their Saturday morning to invigilate him. The school in the UK had, amazingly, suggested our son sit the test here in Albania so he didn't need to go back to the UK.

I had also had to bring my husband's scanner with us as the school had phoned to say that the school scanner wasn't working properly. So, because I am who I am, my husband gave me a crash course in how to use it. I just knew something would go wrong. Sure enough the scanner didn't copy my son's pencil answers, so the deputy head had to use the photocopy, sharpen twice, then darken twice every page of his tests: all 20 pages & then I scanned them for her.This had the added disadvantage of me seeing my son's answers, furiously trying to do mental arithmetic to guage which he had got wrong & reading his compositions, which, compared to practice ones he had written, were dreadful.

All in all not a relaxing morning. I am trying not to think about it anymore. If only I hadn't seen the papers, I would have only had my son's ebullient confidence to go by, which reckoned he had done a "pretty good job!"

Still Stage One complete. Stage two is travelling back to the UK for the open day & interviews & for my husband to have some meetings about his job situation. Of course there are about 47 more stages to go, but it feels good to have begun........

Tirana Drama

School finished early today. At 12.15 in order for students to get home before roads were closed & the protests started. The Socialist party had called for an anti government protest because of an ongoing 2yr long battle over ballot boxes not being opened, an election which was not free & fair & many corruption scnadals. People are very angry.

The Democratic government as well as many of the Socialists are all 'spot changing' former Communist party members. Berisha, the Prime minister was the man in charge of the pyramid scheme collapse. How does someone like that stay in power??

Anyway we drove home uneventfully, choosing a back route, far from the main boulevard where the protest was happening.

I'm glad people are protesting. I am always amazed at what citizens here put up with without protest, though I can also understand the resignation with so much corruption, no independent judiciary, rule of law etc. I guess also it is the communist legacy, not only having to just put up with bad government but also the huge legacy of fear which understandably makes people wary of sticking their necks out. But today 20,000 were on the streets protesting, storming the prime minister's office, throwing rocks, setting fire to police cars. There were lots of loud explosions but then there always are! People here love fire works, fire crackers....... and guns.

So far 2 protesters have died, the news doesn't specify how; 17 police injured & several protesters too. It even made it onto the BBC.
The pyramid in the picture was designed by Enver Hoxha's daughter-in-law (at his request) as his mausoleum. Presumably it had to be that size to fit his ego in...... When the communist party were defeated, his remains were quietly removed & the pyramid has just been left to decay. What I like best about it is that people irreverently climb up the ouside of it & slide down, & no one stops you. No health & safety Jobsworths here. Seems an appropriate way to treat the mausoleum of a tyrannical meglomaniac dictator. You can see in the picture the numbers of protesters standing on it.
Here's an article about the clash with police.

I just hope the protest achieves something. Albania is such a fragile, fledgling country & though it is making strides, or rather baby steps, it is always, also, taking a few steps back at the same time.

Sleepwalking

Our children went back to school on Tuesday. They were not that keen on the holidays ending, like any normal children, but certainly not anxious about it.

Since stopping wearing night time nappies 4 months ago, our 6 y-o has, like clockwork, got herself up, usually around 10.30 or 11, to go to the loo. We don't even help her, she is so used to it & literally 'does it in her sleep'. Even when in Bosnia, in a ski chalet, with a very steep narrow attic staircase & no lights on, she would get herself up, negotiate her way successfully down the stairs, through the living room & into the bathroom & then retrace her steps, quite happily. In the dark. She never remembers doing any of this.

On Monday night this week, I heard the familiar creak of her door opening, a pause of roughly 'visit to the bathroom' length & then she came into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. I talked to her, telling her what a clever girl she was & suggesting we 'go back to bed now'? She nodded, & I led her back to bed, tucked her in & kissed her, closing the door as I left. Less than a minute later she was back in the kitchen beside me saying “I can't do it. I just can't do it.” I was a bit confused until Mr Ngo suggested maybe she hadn't actually 'been' to the loo. When asked if she needed to go she nodded, so we walked out of the kitchen & she went ahead of me straight of me &.....into the spare-room.

No, it's this way.” I said. She sat on the loo, eyes closed, feet dangling. Once finished, again I led her out & pushed open the bedroom door, turning to speak to her, only to discover she was no where to be seen. I called “Where are you?”

“Here.” she said. She was in the sitting room. “What are you doing in there?” I asked. She didn't know. Of course. Next morning she had no recollection of this whatsoever. She is also convinced we make up these stories for our breakfast amusement. She is very sensitive to being 'laughed at'.

Later that same night, around midnight, I saw the children's bedroom light on, so I went in & found our 10 y-o sitting on the floor in nothing but his underpants rummaging through his drawer looking for socks.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting dressed,” he replied “But I don't know what to wear.”

“How about pyjamas?” I suggested. He looked at me as if I was mad, so I explained it was still night time & he still had quite a few hours ahead of him. He checked his watch, gave a little smile & put his pyjamas back on.

They say sleepwalking is not indicative of any psychological disturbance,but you do wonder what's going on in their little minds.

It normally occurs between 11 & 1 in the 1^st third of the night, only usually occurs once a night & is hereditary. It is also most common in children aged 4-8 & also commoner amongst bed wetters. My daughter isn't a bed wetter, since abandoning nappies. If she didn't sleepwalk, she would be though...

It is also supposed to be hereditary. I know my mum used to tell me I would engage her in conversation at night or sit bolt upright in bed when she came in to tuck me in saying “I am awake you know” (Strange child that I was.) It also doesn't have to involve actual walking but more often repeated or routine behaviours.

The only 'sleepwalking' I've known my husband to do once in 20 years was when he got up for his customary visit to the bathroom, but mistook the landing for the bathroom. Fortunately, having been disturbed, I often get up too, & on this occasion followed my husband out onto the landing. Let's just say spotting the characteristic stance, I got there in the nick of time & steered him into the bathroom.

Of course he is convinced I made up the entire incident for a joke. Like father, like daughter.

A former colleague of mine had a husband who had a severe sleepwalking problem, he had got out of the house, tried to drive the car on several occasions, & , more helpfully, when they were moving house, was taking pictures off the walls & packing boxes in his sleep. Seriously though, that would make me lose sleep. What a worry.

It has always been something of a mystery & wasn't even seriously investigated until the 20^th century. It seems the reality is much more mundane than all the literary & musical allusions make it out to be. And indeed there are some interesting cases of people who have committed murders whilst sleepwalking & been acquitted. Legally it's called temporary insanity.

Do you have any experience of sleep walking?

Happy New Year

Well, it's New Year's Eve. We are safely back in Albania.
I have discovered a few things I didn't know,namely:
1.With clear rds you can drive from Albania to Bosnia in only 9 ½ hrs, not 16!
2.Bosnia is ¾ covered by forest, yes 3/4! And is beautiful with mountains, river canyons & pretty valleys.
3.That on a 4 wheel drive all the tires need to be the same or the circumference will be different (2Pi r etc) & so cause big problems for the 4WD mechanism. Guess what? Ours were all different....More noises, more repairs needed.
4.That in the space of a week, we could spend a third of the car's value on getting it fixed.
5.My husband will run over & kill a puppy rather than swerve on icy, snowy rds to avoid it & cause an accident. I know this is what you should do, I am just glad he was driving as I think I would instinctively have swerved. Fortunately our dog-besotted children were both asleep when this happened.
6.That the effects of a holiday can be erased so fast with the appearance of pot holed roads, mad drivers, death wish drivers, daily power cuts & a house hovering overnight at 5 degrees & 10 degrees during the day.

Both Mr Ngo & my hearts sank as we crossed border. I had been to a 'cross cultural' talk the year I arrived, which talked about when you notice your 'grace levels' going down & you get unreasonably angry & irritated by every little thing, that you normally cope with. e.g the traffic, the bureaucracy, the litter, the bad driving, the noise & pollution, corruption etc. yes I have been like this for about 2 months! But the speaker said that this is caused by the stress of living in another culture particularly if it is very different or difficult (e.g developing etc) This happens about every 2-3 months & you need to get out to recharge your batteries.

Normally this rejuvenates you to enter the fray once more. This time however, despite not having had a brilliant holiday, so it wasn't 'end of holiday blues', we still felt depressed! Mr Ngo said he thinks he's getting to the stage with Albania that he got to with Sri Lanka. Fed up with everything & wearied by the never ending fight against bureaucracy, unfair taxes, & hurdles the Albanian government put in International organisations' way to make it so hard for them to grow & make a success of his microfinance organisation. This for a perfectionist adds to his stress at being thwarted constantly from doing well.
It just so happens that we are going to try & return to the UK next year. Our eldest will be 11 in May, so it is a good time to repatriate in time for secondary school. However, for my husband who works in international development, this could be easier said than done! So far Mr Ngo has changed career 4 times, from Army, to British Airways, to children's charity to overseas development in his 21 year working life. All very successfully I might add. He reassures me that if he cannot get a development job back in the UK, he will opt for career number 5 & retrain as a teacher & send me out to work full time for a year whilst he qualifies!

I have come to the conclusion, that he lives by Mark Twain's quote “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
He's much more of a “throw off the bowlines” man & I am a “safe harbour” kind of gal. I never used to be, but now I am. I am tired & I want to go home. I hope 2011 is the year we manage to do so.
We are off to celebrate New Year with friends of 5 different nationalities. On such occasions it's nice to dress up. However in an Albanian winter when you know everyone else's house is as cold as yours, you opt for Practical not Party Frock. And of course when, anyway, you always get given 'shapka' (slippers) to put on, it rather defeats the fashionable effect of little black dress, tights & heels. So thermal vest, woolly tights, plus socks & at least 3 more layers it is.
Albanians have been 'warming up' with their fireworks night & day for the last few days. At midnight in Skenderbeg square, all hell breaks loose. People let off fireworks in the crowd, in the street, everywhere. It's utterly mad, chaotic, dangerous & very......Albanian!
We will be watching from the safety of friends' 7th floor baclony!

Happy New Year one & all!

The Sarajevan Samaritan. Our Christmas Tale.

My winter's tale of Balkan adventures seems to be becoming a regular fixture. For the 3^rd

year running we have had an adventurous ski holiday, on each occasion, the adventure being just the getting there!

This year's has to win the prize though. We set off at 6a.m to drive to Bosnia; through Albania, through Monte Negro & up into the mountains where Paddy Ashdown goers skiing. An 8 hour trip.

(Above, a digger removing an avalanche from our mountain road!)

We got to the capital of Monte Negro, Podgorica in 5 hours. This was where the snow started. Our speed halved from 80km to 40 kmh. It was falling thickly, the roads were covered & there were no snow ploughs in sight.

The conditions carried on getting worse & worse. Fog, sleet, snow. As we drove up the Tara canyon to the Bosnian border, through tunnels & a winter wonderland of thick icicles & snow laden pines, we came to 6 cars stopped on the road. Ahead the road just ended, in a wall of snow & beyond it was a digger digging out the road which had a massive landslide of snow across it. It was about 20 feet high. The children wondered if the digger would unearth a car beneath this avalanche. It had obviously happened very recently. Fortunately no car was buried. This little event took an hour.

We also had to keep putting on & taking off the snow chains so as not to damage the tyres, as the road wavered between slushy covered tarmac & snow packed roads.

By 7p.m we were just getting to the turn off to climb into the mountains where we were advised the road was impassable (it was also dark & snowing heavily) So we had to take a long detour. By this point we had been going 13 hrs (had had 1 coffee stop but no lunch stop, to make the most of the light, & run out of rolls, tangerines & biscuits) & we were getting anxious about our 4 wheel drive which wouldn't disengage when we changed to 2 wheel drive. (We were later to learn another useful piece of mechanical advice; you just reverse to disengage it. That knowledge could have saved us 600Euros).......

At 8 p.m 14 hours after leaving Tirana, we heard the noise we were dreading, as something ominous made a sudden, horrible grinding clanking sound & we ground to a halt On the side of a mountain road, in the dark, snowing lightly, very few cars passing, -15 degrees & 8 o clock at night..

Now what, we thought? No international breakdown recovery, in a foreign country, where we didn't speak the language.... We did the only thing we could do; phoned the guy we were renting our ski chalet from. And said 'Help!' We waited in the car with no heating in -15 for 2 hrs.

Zlatko turned out to be our guardian angel. We couldn't have asked for better help if we had constructed a detailed job description. He spoke fluent English, was calm, efficient, & so very, very kind. He called a breakdown recovery service, (turns out they didn't want to help because, understandably, we didn't have an account with them, but in true Balkan style, he knew the general manager so 'persuaded' them to help). He kept calling us back with updates, then drove from the ski resort to where we were (a 50 min drive) to collect me & the children to take us to the ski resort, whilst Mr Ngo waited with our car & went with the breakdown vehicle into Sarajevo (a 1.5 hr journey).

We arrived at the resort at 11.45p.m. We were greeted by Zlako's parents & given apple cinnamon baklava & warmed up by the roaring wood burner in the cosy wooden chalet. Meanwhile Zlatko drove back into Sarajevo, another 50 minute drive, met Mr Ngo at the garage & took him back to his own apartment where he put him up for the night. The following morning he drove both of them back to the ski resort.

Today, Christmas Eve, his parents drove us from the ski resort into Sarajevo to collect our mended car, which had had to be moved to another garage which could find & fit a spare 4x4 part. Zlatko paid the bill at the first garage. He has been phoning the garage & checking progress.

It turned out the car wasn't ready. So we went ice skating at the rink where Torvil & Dean won gold in the 1984 winter Olympics & then Zlatko who insisted on meeting us, & this is where it gets really embarrassing, drove us to to the garage so we could collect our suitcase of Christmas presents left in the car. Our old Isuzu was jacked up 6 feet in the air on a ramp, with another car under it in a tiny crowded garage, so after the mechanic had given Mr Ngo a guided tour of the underside of our vehicle pointing out all the (many) other things wrong with it, or badly mended in Albania, they had to then get a ladder out & Zlatko & the mechanic held it whilst Mr Ngo climbed up it, opened the back door & climbed in to retrieve the suitcase & our Dwarf Christmas Tree, emerging seconds later wobbling atop the ladder & waving the midget pine triumphantly aloft. This was just too much, I couldn't watch, I felt so awful about the whole debacle. The kids reasoned with me:

“Mum, it's not at all embarrassing, we're children & everyone knows children like presents. It IS Christmas Day tomorrow after all.”

Zlatko then drove us back to his apartment where his parents took us back to the ski resort. No amount of arguing, protesting, offering remuneration for petrol etc. prevailed. They said they felt bad for us that the snow had all melted on day 3 & wanted to help give us a good holiday! However they did finally accept our liquid & edible presents offered under the guise of “Christmas.”

I am sure hospitality is as much a part of Bosnian culture as it is in Albania & frankly it puts the West to shame. How many of us would put ourselves out this much for people who were strangers & foreigners merely renting an apartment from us? And refuse to accept any remuneration, petrol money & wave aside our profuse thanks as if it were nothing. It was a truly humbling experience.

This man was a civilian defender in Sarajevo during the 92-95 siege of Sarajevo. He was on the front-line. With generosity of spirit & character like his, I am not surprised the indomitable Sarajevans held out during the longest siege in modern history with no water, gas or electricity for 3 ½ years. They coped & persevered in horrific & dangerous conditions, being targeted by Serbian snipers in the hills as they went about their daily lives. They helped each other & kept going against the odds. A great fictional account, but based on real life stories is 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Stephen Galloway, which gives a graphic example of what daily life was like.

I am sure the war taught the Sarajevans something we have learned living in a foreign culture where infrastructure is not always established & where it is not always possible to be self sufficient. That is, that we are interdependent. We need each other & we should do all we can to help our fellow neighbour. And it is something we feel privileged to have experienced on many an occasion.

The original parable of the Good Samaritan was Jesus' response to the question 'Who is my neighbour?' when Jesus said we should “Love our neighbour.” The answer given showed that our neighbour is not the person who lives next door, or someone local or someone who can repay us or simply our friends. In the story the man who actually helped the injured man was a foreigner, an alien, a hated person amongst Jews, a man of different, or no religion, a merchant, who knew the value of time & money & the 'cost' of helping, but he extended the hand of practical friendship & did all he could for the man.

In much the same way as our Sarajevan Samaritan did for us.