Our Year Five Blog

Saturday 28th November 1991

Dear Diary,

We have been in this cruel, evil war now for a long 8 months and thousands of innocent people have lost their lives (which was in peace before the war) just because they swapped tough military soldiers between Croatia, Yugoslavia and Bosnia. We are all sick  and mad of it. I have been stuck in this tiny, dark, metal shelter for about 2 weeks (is a long time if you’re doing nothing) and we have not much supply of natural water and tasty food plus we haven’t got any electricity to give us energy for the light. Buildings have been crumbling (as if they were digestives being munched up) for weeks with a burning fire looking like to be a fire blizzard in a couple of ruthless days. Mummy and daddy think we are going to be here for another month or two but they don’t know. We’ve been listening to Radio Ham now for 4 days to find any sign of Srdjan (my parents best friend). So far we have good news and bad news. We might even get more bad news later on but the good news for now is that Srdjan and his wife (Bokica) is alive and the bad news is that the battery for the radio has ran out and the rest of the batteries we left in the house. Who knows what could happen if we left the damp shelter? All we can hear is brave soldiers marching, guns and bombs exploding everywhere, innocent men and women screaming and planes being flied over our wet shelter. Last night we’d heard that Ducal Palace had been blown to smithereens. That was the place where mummy and daddy were married. Mummy cried for an hour. I was really upset and sorrowful. The smell was really bad. All you could smell was smoke from the buildings, the petrol from the planes and tanks and the stink coming from the dead bodies. It was as if there was a million stink bombs in them. Daddy decided to evacuate from Slovenia and thought about travelling to France and live there for the rest of their lives but it would’ve taken maximum 17 days to get there and we didn’t even have enough water and food. We went passed farms, mountains, rivers and we’d only arrived in Austria which took us 5 days to reach. The mountains were very bumpy. In fact they were so bumpy that they broke my sandals. They were already tattered but I just ruined them more. We didn’t have anywhere to go but this kind and generous farmer gave us a room in his farm. It was the only place we could stay. He gave us planty of water to last up to Switzerland. Somehow it lasted up to Liechenstein. We went to the river to get the water from there. At least it was clean. We just had a dip in the river which was very relaxing. I had been travelling for 10 days now and I was so close to France. 3 days had passed and we finally arrived in France. We only brought 7 euros which was enough for me, mummy and daddy to go onto a bus. Luckily, the farmer had given 20 euros from his wages so we could just pay for food. We had a job in a cafe which paid just one of us 50 euros per a day which was a lot for one person. In 10 days we would be able to buy a house. I also had to go to school. So far I haven’t made any friends. They are all very mean to me because I’m an assylum seeker. That meant I got 30 euros per day for my work in the cafe. Daddy was looking for a cheap house and me a nd mummy were working to get money. On my birthday we bought the wonderful little house which was the best present I could have. In my school, my old friend (from Slovenia) came their and I had a friend.

From Zlata