Chris Kelly is PPC for Dudley South and is one of 30 Conservatives who have been volunteering this week as part of Project Maja, the party's social action project in Bosnia-Herzegovina. His first report is here.
Project Maja 2009 has just come to a close and we are now travelling home en masse via Zagreb and onto the UK.
On Thursday we completed our many and varied projects in a village in the hills surrounding Srebrenica. Hundreds of logs were chopped in advance of the harsh winter for a grateful elderly widow by Sam Coates who will be familiar to many ConservativeHome readers as the site's former deputy editor. The lady was extremely grateful for Sam's efforts because, despite the gruelling mid-summer heat that we experienced, within a few months the temperatures will start plunging to well below freezing. The local record was minus 30 degrees and so Sam's firewood will be much needed over the winter. There can't be too many countries with such weather extremes - from blistering summer heat to freezing winters in just a few short months. The lady in question showed her gratitude by providing delicious home grown tomatos and water melon to the aforementioned labourer. Her worry that she would be left axe-less for the winter was assuaged when two new axe handles were found replacing those destroyed by Sam's sheer brute force!
The football pitch project was completed on time and within budget on the third day of the project. At the side of the pitch villagers now have benches, a table and a gazebo designed by Tobias Ellwood MP to provide shade from the summer sun made from a mix of both prepared wood and fresh timber sourced from the surrounding hillsides and carried down by each member of the team. In the early evening with the temperature still high Lord Ashcroft KCMG, Deputy Chairman of the Party, arrived to officially open the pitch. With Michael's inaugural kick we were off with a series of six-a-side games including village children resplendent in brand new football strips, village men in donated England shirts and Project Maja participants in our social action t-shirts. As we watched the children playing one elderly lady in particular looked on fondly. She had been displaced by the fighting in the early-90s and had lost all of the men in her family; her husband, her sons and her nephews and cousins. She had returned to the village where Lady Nott's Fund for Refugees in Solvenia has now built more than one hundred homes. She explained how she was happy to donate the land from which the pitch was carved to the community as she has no-one to leave it to. Her eyes were full of sadness as she observed, through an interpreter, that she would never see her grandson playing.
Today we left Srebenica at 7 a.m. for the 3 hour, winding drive back to Sarajevo. First port of call was the Presidential building where Lord Ashcroft, Baroness Warsi and Tobias Ellwood MP led a delegation of PPCs including Richard Cook, Jackie Doyle-Price, Deborah Dunleavy, Marcus Jones, Andrew Stephenson & Eric Olleranshaw. We met two of the three Presidents of Bosnia Herzegovina, including the serving President, along with a representative of the third (the Presidency is rotating in order to represent the three constituent parts of BiH). Next we had a frank discussion with the UN High Representative followed by a meeting with the Grand Mufti at his residence before lunching by the river. We boarded our plane at Sarajevo airport in the late afternoon with much to reflect upon from our week in BiH.
TWO PHOTOGRAPHSTop: Candidates Jackie Doyle-Price, Deborah Dunleavy & Chris Kelly with the President of Bosnia Herzegovina plus the second President (rotating Presidency), Željko Komšić and Dr. Haris Silajdžić
Bottom: Lord Ashcroft KCMG, Baroness Warsi, Tobias Ellwood MP & candidates at the Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina (UN)
