From IDP to returnee
Supporting the return of former IDP’s has been an important part of the DRC efforts in Bosnia since the war ended -Yet leaving the safety of the Collective Centers and returning to the place you left behind years ago is a demanding challenge.
Emira Suljkic
Far from the Collective Center in Capljina , near Trebizat river in the village Struge, Emira Suljkic and her mother still struggle to cope with the transition from a life as inhabitants in a Collective Center to a life as returnees. There is something intriguing about Emira whose personality combines frail and tough , a girlish charm and a melancholic wisdom. Perhaps a reflection of her personal story.
- I am a child of the war, so to speak – I was just a teenager when the war broke out and have spend ten years of my life in a DRC collective center – that is where I formed my personality, where I grew and experienced everything and where I learned most of the things I know.
The DRC took my family from the floor of a public Museum in Jablanica into a collective center, gave me the education and job opportunities – gardening and later office work and accountant jobs - that allowed me to become a responsible adult and finally helped us to rebuild the house and reestablish outside the center.
My father, who was reunited with the family after seven months in a Croat concentration camp, has been the steady center of our family during all these long years when we were forced to depend on others. When he finally had the chance to prepare the ground for the construction of our house and help organizing our return, it brought about unseen joy and energy - as if he had suddenly found a new youth. It was very tough in the beginning, when he was assisted by DRC staff members as rumors about an attack on the construction site turned out to be some threatening radical graffiti.
He actually suffered a stroke chopping wood just five months after his return and left this world busy establishing a better life for my mother – a task that is left to me as the oldest child since my sister and brother have left to create lives of their own.
We get by on the short-term employment I am able to get and cope with life on a day to day basis. I am now just another woman from the village and I get by knowing that in every life there is sunshine as well as rain and it takes a strong will to survive. When I was seven months old I almost drowned in the icy waters of the river Neretva, I survived - and since the war didn’t finish me off either, I am now able to take care of my mother in her old age and that is what I intend to do.
