About SOS Bosnia
SOS Bosnia is a medical relief organisation which was set up in the autumn of 1992 in response to the tragedy in the former Yugoslavia. Since then we have developed good medical contacts with hospitals in many different parts of Bosnia.
The hospital Fax to us lists of their urgent needs and we respond by raising money from churches, schools and personal contacts which we use to buy drugs and equipment at rock bottom prices. We then deliver them using volunteer drivers and lorries loaned to us either free or for a nominal rent. As a result each hospital receives what the doctors themselves know they need, not what we may think they need. At the same time our supporters are assured that their generosity is effectively targeted and nothing is wasted. We take aid, not sides and have delivered aid to Muslims, Croats and Serbs alike. We have taken an amputation saw to a surgeon operating only with a swiss army knife (with the patient under the influence of Rakir the local fire water as a general anaesthetic), local anaesthetics to dentists performing extractions without them and insulin to many hospitals where diabetics could not be treated.
We have been asked for and have delivered incubators and ventilators to the Premature Baby Unit in Banja Luka where babies were regularly dying for lack of them and a vacuum extractor to help deliver babies where no other facilities were available. We have also donated the only gastroscope in Republica Serbska and the only kidney dialysis machines in Jablanica , plus to each hospital we have visited a wide range of standard hospital drugs in sufficient quantity to keep the hospital going for about three months.
The Hotline
During a convoy to Bosnia there are two things which cause a prickle between the shoulder blades. One is the shelling which I am sure everyone can understand. But the second is the Hotline which may be less well appreciated. It is not just that prayer is answered because we know that, but it is the specific and quite awesome way in which God answers the prayers offered on our behalf.
Technically, the Hotline works only when we ourselves have tried everything humanly possible to remove the obstacle to our progress. Whenever we have ground to a complete halt I try to find a telephone line to ring our curate in Northwood who then prays for us quite specifically.
Pennies from Heaven
There are many stories about the Hotline as it is in evidence on every convoy. For example when I was trying desperately to think how to finance a phototherapy unit to help jaundiced babies in the premature baby unit at Banja Luka, by the next post arrived a bequest for SOS Bosnia of 1/17th of her estate from a lady, whom we never knew, for - yes you have guessed it- the exact amount of £2,400 required. Surely the precision of the fraction giving us to the nearest £ what we needed has to be more than coincidence?
Any port in a storm
On one convoy the electrical wiring of our lorry was destroyed when my son Stuart fell as he was getting out. We had no lights and no windscreen wipers and we were in the middle of a snow storm. He could not see to drive for the snow and I was desperately trying to connect two out of a selection of fourteen bare wires to each other to provide power. If I did manage it there was a flash, a brief swish of the wipers and for thirty seconds the screen was clear. Due to the pot-holed road and not having three hands (one being needed to fend my head off the windscreen) I was losing the battle and began to pray that God would help me keep those two wires together. In fact I never did, but a more imaginative answer was found. A mile further we went round a bend and there in front of us was the entrance to a road tunnel of which we were previously unaware. Biblically and thankfully we drove into it and out at the other end where miraculously there was no snow and no longer any need for lights and windscreen wipers.
Bereft of batteries in Banja Luka.
An even more extraordinary example perhaps happened on our seventh convoy. We had delivered all our medicines and equipment and were due to leave Banja Luka by 10.45am so that we could get through the Brcko Corridor in daylight as it was regularly shelled at night. We were all ready to go when we discovered that the batteries from one of our two 40-ton articulated lorries had been unbolted and stolen despite being guarded by the Police. We could have jump started the engine but we would still have neither lights nor indicators and no way of restarting the engine if we stalled en route. We were very tired from lack of sleep and by now enraged. Several people made off to look for a needle in a hay stack (ie batteries in Banja Luka where there were no garages, no shops and no lorries of our size). The chance of finding even one battery let alone two was about the same as my chance of winning the National Lottery. I said to anyone listening that I would try to find a phone to activate the Hotline.
It was a minor miracle that I succeeded for the first time in getting an international line during the day, but when I got through all I could do was to leave a message on our curate's answerphone saying "Please pray for us. We have to get our lorry started and get out or they will shell us". I nevertheless said that we would move at 1pm (the same as midday in Northwood when our Church and many others regularly pray for us). The group took sides - on one side those who knew us and had seen the Hotline in action and on the other the realists who knew there was absolutely no chance of finding spare batteries. The realists were so sure that we would not move that day that a bet of one dinar was struck. We shook hands, waited and waited and prayed.
As we waited I also wondered and as 1pm approached I wondered again if perhaps I had been over-confident this time. However at 12.50pm to our total amazement a police car arrived and two policemen got out each carrying a battery. Up to our lorry they went and we waited breathlessly. Then at 1.03pm precisely the engine fired. How do you know it was 1.03pm you may ask? It was because I found when checking that my watch was three minutes fast compared with everyone else's. I won my dinar and we got out safely in daylight but I can only think that somewhere in Banja Luka there must be another totally immobile 40-tonner minus its batteries because these were definitely not ours!
What next?
As we get hungry, weary with the effort and frustrated by the bureaucracy of getting our aid into Bosnia we remember the strained face of the young doctor who told us that she was working with one hand tied behind her back and facing accusations of not being a proper doctor because she had no medicines to treat her patients. We also rememeber her saying memorably 'Because you have come today, we shall call it Christmas Day'. We therefore plan to continue adding our drops to the ocean of humanitarian aid because, as Mother Teresa has reminded us 'the ocean is made of drops'. Our next convoy leaves in April 1997. Only God knows if there will be peace in Bosnia by then.
This article came to us through 'Christians in Health Care. Ed.
SOS Bosnia is a medical relief organisation which was set up in the autumn of 1992 in response to the tragedy in the former Yugoslavia. Since then we have developed good medical contacts with hospitals in many different parts of Bosnia.
The hospital Fax to us lists of their urgent needs and we respond by raising money from churches, schools and personal contacts which we use to buy drugs and equipment at rock bottom prices. We then deliver them using volunteer drivers and lorries loaned to us either free or for a nominal rent. As a result each hospital receives what the doctors themselves know they need, not what we may think they need. At the same time our supporters are assured that their generosity is effectively targeted and nothing is wasted. We take aid, not sides and have delivered aid to Muslims, Croats and Serbs alike. We have taken an amputation saw to a surgeon operating only with a swiss army knife (with the patient under the influence of Rakir the local fire water as a general anaesthetic), local anaesthetics to dentists performing extractions without them and insulin to many hospitals where diabetics could not be treated.
We have been asked for and have delivered incubators and ventilators to the Premature Baby Unit in Banja Luka where babies were regularly dying for lack of them and a vacuum extractor to help deliver babies where no other facilities were available. We have also donated the only gastroscope in Republica Serbska and the only kidney dialysis machines in Jablanica , plus to each hospital we have visited a wide range of standard hospital drugs in sufficient quantity to keep the hospital going for about three months.
The Hotline
During a convoy to Bosnia there are two things which cause a prickle between the shoulder blades. One is the shelling which I am sure everyone can understand. But the second is the Hotline which may be less well appreciated. It is not just that prayer is answered because we know that, but it is the specific and quite awesome way in which God answers the prayers offered on our behalf.
Technically, the Hotline works only when we ourselves have tried everything humanly possible to remove the obstacle to our progress. Whenever we have ground to a complete halt I try to find a telephone line to ring our curate in Northwood who then prays for us quite specifically.
Pennies from Heaven
There are many stories about the Hotline as it is in evidence on every convoy. For example when I was trying desperately to think how to finance a phototherapy unit to help jaundiced babies in the premature baby unit at Banja Luka, by the next post arrived a bequest for SOS Bosnia of 1/17th of her estate from a lady, whom we never knew, for - yes you have guessed it- the exact amount of £2,400 required. Surely the precision of the fraction giving us to the nearest £ what we needed has to be more than coincidence?
Any port in a storm
On one convoy the electrical wiring of our lorry was destroyed when my son Stuart fell as he was getting out. We had no lights and no windscreen wipers and we were in the middle of a snow storm. He could not see to drive for the snow and I was desperately trying to connect two out of a selection of fourteen bare wires to each other to provide power. If I did manage it there was a flash, a brief swish of the wipers and for thirty seconds the screen was clear. Due to the pot-holed road and not having three hands (one being needed to fend my head off the windscreen) I was losing the battle and began to pray that God would help me keep those two wires together. In fact I never did, but a more imaginative answer was found. A mile further we went round a bend and there in front of us was the entrance to a road tunnel of which we were previously unaware. Biblically and thankfully we drove into it and out at the other end where miraculously there was no snow and no longer any need for lights and windscreen wipers.
Bereft of batteries in Banja Luka.
An even more extraordinary example perhaps happened on our seventh convoy. We had delivered all our medicines and equipment and were due to leave Banja Luka by 10.45am so that we could get through the Brcko Corridor in daylight as it was regularly shelled at night. We were all ready to go when we discovered that the batteries from one of our two 40-ton articulated lorries had been unbolted and stolen despite being guarded by the Police. We could have jump started the engine but we would still have neither lights nor indicators and no way of restarting the engine if we stalled en route. We were very tired from lack of sleep and by now enraged. Several people made off to look for a needle in a hay stack (ie batteries in Banja Luka where there were no garages, no shops and no lorries of our size). The chance of finding even one battery let alone two was about the same as my chance of winning the National Lottery. I said to anyone listening that I would try to find a phone to activate the Hotline.
It was a minor miracle that I succeeded for the first time in getting an international line during the day, but when I got through all I could do was to leave a message on our curate's answerphone saying "Please pray for us. We have to get our lorry started and get out or they will shell us". I nevertheless said that we would move at 1pm (the same as midday in Northwood when our Church and many others regularly pray for us). The group took sides - on one side those who knew us and had seen the Hotline in action and on the other the realists who knew there was absolutely no chance of finding spare batteries. The realists were so sure that we would not move that day that a bet of one dinar was struck. We shook hands, waited and waited and prayed.
As we waited I also wondered and as 1pm approached I wondered again if perhaps I had been over-confident this time. However at 12.50pm to our total amazement a police car arrived and two policemen got out each carrying a battery. Up to our lorry they went and we waited breathlessly. Then at 1.03pm precisely the engine fired. How do you know it was 1.03pm you may ask? It was because I found when checking that my watch was three minutes fast compared with everyone else's. I won my dinar and we got out safely in daylight but I can only think that somewhere in Banja Luka there must be another totally immobile 40-tonner minus its batteries because these were definitely not ours!
What next?
As we get hungry, weary with the effort and frustrated by the bureaucracy of getting our aid into Bosnia we remember the strained face of the young doctor who told us that she was working with one hand tied behind her back and facing accusations of not being a proper doctor because she had no medicines to treat her patients. We also rememeber her saying memorably 'Because you have come today, we shall call it Christmas Day'. We therefore plan to continue adding our drops to the ocean of humanitarian aid because, as Mother Teresa has reminded us 'the ocean is made of drops'. Our next convoy leaves in April 1997. Only God knows if there will be peace in Bosnia by then.
This article came to us through 'Christians in Health Care. Ed.
