Belgrade and Nis Serbia: Tues. July 18, 2000: It was hot in the hotel last night, but I was exhausted and slept well. At breakfast this morning, Slavka Draskovic informed Jim Peters that a bright young girl who was preparing to go to medical school had been one of the victims killed in the recent bombing raids. Family and friends had raised money for a scholarship to help her pay for her education. During the middle of the day, she was crossing a bridge near her town, and the US–NATO plane zeroed in on the bridge and blew it into the water. The girl was killed in the explosion. Most of the US planes flew from ships anchored in the Adriatic Sea, but some B-52 bombers flew nonstop from America to deliver their payloads.
Alexander Cvetanovic accompanied us to our first hospital assessment. Dr. Vesna Bosnjak Petrovic and her assistant, Dr. Dragan Mandovic, run the Institute for Pulmonary Disabilities. More than 50 percent of all Yugoslavians are serious smokers. Incidents of throat cancer, and lung cancer in particular, are rising rapidly in the country. Another 10 percent of all the patients at the hospital have tuberculosis. Dr. Petrovic is a very busy lady. More than seventy institutions are under her jurisdiction throughout Serbia and Montenegro. She literally begged me for asthma medications, inhalers, and oxygen concentrators.
At 2:30 p.m., we were scheduled to visit Yugoslavia’s largest surgical hospital. It was at one time the leading abdominal surgery center in Europe. But now they have no surgical supplies and can’t get spare parts to repair their surgical equipment because of the NATO-imposed trade sanctions. Dr. Miroslav Milicevic, the director of the hospital, was trained in the United States and still lectures all over the world. He was torn with emotion as he showed us around the hospital, because he is watching his hospital deteriorate into a third-rate institution.
At 5:00 p.m., Jim and I walked to the offices of the humanitarian organization of the Serbian Orthodox Church. I was hoping they could help us get our donated supplies safely into Serbia and delivered to the correct hospitals. We met with Dragan M. Makojevic, the director. He was pretty puffed up with organizational importance and assured us that without him, it would be really difficult to accomplish our goals. His plan was for us to send the medical goods to him, and then he would determine which institutions were worthy of receiving them. I tried to be kind as I let him know that we had traveled a great distance to perform needs assessments on the various hospitals and clinics, and we would insist that the goods go to the places we designated. Mr. Makojevic said he couldn’t guarantee that would happen, so I told him that we probably wouldn’t be able to work with his organization even though there would be some mutual advantages for us to do so.
Olga and Alexander Cvetanovic picked up Jim and me at the Moskva hotel at 7:00 p.m. They drove us by more of the destroyed bomb sites around the city, including the now-famous Chinese embassy near the Hyatt hotel. The US planes had targeted the embassy three times and demolished it by sending smart bombs inside to gut it and still leave the structure standing. Supposedly, the United States hit the Chinese embassy by mistake, and when it nearly threw the bilateral trade agreements off course between China and the US, the Clinton administration offered apologies to the Chinese and paid reparations. The Chinese diplomats were still inside the embassy when the explosions occurred, and they were killed. The consensus was that the Chinese had set up electronic devices on the premises capable not only of monitoring the bombs and missiles but also of altering their guidance systems.
At Olga and Alexander’s home, we enjoyed tea and then went to a lovely restaurant on the Danube River for dinner.
Wednesday, July 19
Following breakfast today, Jim Peters and I walked to the offices of the Yugoslavian Red Cross. There we met up with Slavka Draskovic, who had arranged for our meeting. I was hoping that if I couldn’t work with the Serbian Orthodox Church, I could perhaps work with the Red Cross to get our loads into Serbia safely and efficiently deliver the medical goods to the individual hospitals. I don’t want to work directly with the Milošević government. Many places Project C.U.R.E. goes, I try to work with the government to guarantee the success of our shipping. But even though I agreed to meet with the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of health as a stipulation for getting a visa to enter Yugoslavia, I don’t have any desire to work directly with declared war criminals. All I really want to do is deliver some desperately needed medical goods to the hurting people of Yugoslavia. Perhaps the solution will be found in working with the Red Cross in Belgrade.
I was as pleased with my meeting with Dr. Rade Dubajic, secretary general of the Yugoslavian Red Cross, as I was exasperated last night during the meeting with Dragan Makojevic of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Dr. Dubajic is a real gentleman and took a liking to Project C.U.R.E. right away. He was very complimentary of our approach of personally traveling to Belgrade to do the Needs Assessment Studies and setting up meetings with the key players in Serbia.
“That sends the message that you are willing to humbly come in and work with the locals and learn the system and situation rather than just come in on an inflated, do-gooder ego trip,” Dr. Dubajic stated.
Dr. Dubajic offered to work with us and even let us store our medical supplies and equipment in his warehouse, if necessary. He also offered to make his trucks available to Project C.U.R.E. at no cost to deliver the medical goods to the hospitals. He gave us his guarantee that our goods will go exactly where we direct them, and he will ensure complete accountability by providing a distribution record for the goods. He also had Dr. Dragisic and Andrea, the medical coordinator, sit in on our meeting and instructed them to work with Project C.U.R.E. to get all the proper paperwork through to customs and the shipping forwarders.
“Dr. Jackson,” Dr. Dubajic concluded, “I’m really glad you are here. Yugoslavia is in a bad way right now and will continue to be in the near future. We need all the help we can get, and you can count on us for helping Project C.U.R.E. in any way we can.”
To me this was a miracle and another affirmation that I’m on the right track.
We left the meeting and went right down the hall into Dr. Dragisic’s office, where we started working on all the procedures and logistics.
Afterward Jim Peters and I walked back to the hotel and met the driver we had hired to take us to Cuetojevac village, the town of Kragujevac, and then on to the city of Nis (pronounced “Nish”). There was no time for lunch today, but before we left town, we had one more very important stop to make. We drove to the main government offices for the minister of foreign affairs, where we met with Ambassador Slobodan Morchkovic.
The ambassador was far more relaxed and friendly than I had assumed he would be. There’s simply no way to second-guess how a government official will greet you when you’re an American, and the Americans have just blown your ancient city apart and killed your neighbors. Slavka Draskovic was right. Almost everyone I met was surprised or fascinated by my presence in Belgrade. They all had assumed I would hate them and not come to visit, or that I would decide it was just too dangerous for me to be there.
Our meeting with the ambassador went extremely well. We talked about Project C.U.R.E. and our work, and he gave me a copy of the written policies and procedures to follow for shipping in the medical donations. He said he would cooperate fully with us and the Red Cross and assured me that the goods will go where we direct based on our needs assessments. He was in no way “offish” toward me, even though we talked briefly about the bombings throughout the country. He wanted me to know that the door to his office will be open to Project C.U.R.E. in the future.
By 2:15 p.m., Jim and I were on our way out of Belgrade, heading south toward Nis. An hour and a half later, we pulled off the main road onto a side road that led to the farming village of Cuetojevac. The small rural clinic is run by a young, single doctor named Branko Gajic. The clinic receives no government help but does receive some support from a foundation.
Right next to the spotless little clinic was an old, ornate Serbian Orthodox church. The Communists had closed up the church and shot the priests years ago, but in the past few years, the government had granted permission for the quaint edifice to reopen for worship. We were invited to enter the sanctuary, and the bearded priest in his flowing, black robes showed us around.
The priest has taken his mission quite seriously. He opened a Bible school to train the children on the weekends and organized adult Bible studies in the evenings during the week. The villagers who had been forbidden to pursue anything religious during the Communist days are now very eager to learn. Before we left the village, the mayor came to greet us, and the people at the clinic insisted we sit down and have a cheese sandwich and a piece of melon with them before we continued our journey.
Next Week: Total Acceptance in Nis