Text and photos: Kristina Perić
While statistics, both civil and ecclesiastical, say that we are inexorably moving in one direction from Bosnia and Herzegovina, there have always been those who defy being part of the statistics, and go in the right direction, to find their peace and home and family togetherness.
We met Jelena Bartolović, at first impression a hard-working, talkative, optimistic young woman at a protest gathering near Žuvela in Stolac. On that occasion, she invited us to visit the ethnic village of Bartoli, in the immediate vicinity of Radimlja and the bakery Radimlja, which she and her husband Nedjeljko built after they returned from Germany. And after several rainy days, when the sun finally shone, we responded. Bartolovići – Nedjeljko and Jelena have four children, they are Lara (7), Lora (5), Klea (3), Teo (1).
Unlike most of their peers, they have a small zoo in their backyard. There are about twenty mangulica pigs, ordinary pigs, two types of goats, three adult donkeys and two chickens, three types of sheep, among them the popular il de France, chickens…
Along with the basic building, a meat drying room was also built, where organic dried mango meat, about a thousand kilograms, will be prepared, and about 190 thousand euros have been invested in the property so far. For example, the water well alone cost about 15 thousand euros.
There are many questions that a man would ask a mother of four children and her husband, but we started with the key one. How and why she and her husband decided to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina, turning their lives and the lives of their four children completely upside down.
“My husband got sick last year, he got cancer. On the day he was to have the operation, I was to give birth to my fourth child. I had very difficult moments in which nothing is worth more than what you have at that moment, except children. If I were left alone, if he wasn’t there, I would fight for the children, but he was always the 50 percent of the family that he doesn’t have. The moment you think you might lose someone, everything becomes clear,” Jelena said openly. In Germany, they were engaged in the installation of elevators, working both from morning until tomorrow.
“He was under a lot of stress up there, he grew up too early, worked as long as he could remember and struggled all his life. I met him when he was struggling. He is a hardworking and honest man,” says Jelena. She reveals that her husband’s health condition is now stable, he does not go for chemotherapy, only for check-ups every few months, and he also consumes all the local bio products of his ethnic village, goat and donkey milk, meat and the like, just like the other family members.
Interestingly, the Bartolovićs, who decided to spend the best years of their lives in Stolac, are not old here, they are natives of Bosnia (Nedjeljko) and Serbia (Jelena). They found the property in Poprati on the Internet. They originally thought that this would be their cottage and a place where Nediljko could chase wild boars with a hunting rifle, which is his passion.
“We bought it before my husband’s illness. We wanted to have something of our own here. It was an old estate, we found it on the internet and bought it. It was completely neglected, not even the goats could pass anywhere, there were no walls, nor this garden, and the house was buried in the ground, you couldn’t even see it. We bought, and we didn’t even know there was a house, because it was impossible to get to it. The road you came by wasn’t even ‘p’ from the road,” the Bartolovićs state further.
Year after year, when they came for the summer, they found it harder and harder to return to Germany, in recent years even crying.
“In the summer, and again at Christmas, we left here crying. We didn’t like life in Germany anymore, we had two companies, we worked a lot, we would meet on the stairs. Small children, and you see that you no longer have the strength to achieve what you want with them because you are torn. At work, more and more workers, more and more clients, you take more and more work, you are sorry to refuse, and the work is growing more and more. I, a mother with four children, did not go to maternity leave. I gave birth to my third daughter at 5 in the morning, and already at 9 I went to work, to solve problems with workers. The plan to return was long-term, in 5-10 years, until we earn something, because we work honestly, we don’t have millions at our disposal,” Jelena continues. Apart from life’s upheavals and challenges, she says that she personally fell in love with Stolac, with its historical and other heritage.
“Stolac has what no other city in Germany has. They don’t have some beautiful nature given by God, old towns, Daorson, Badanj, Neretva. They don’t have this people, the culture of drinking wine, the Herzegovinian meza and the rest. They don’t have any of that, and they seem to have more than us,” our interlocutor points out. While many returnees and foreign investors struggle with the administration, Jelena claims that she has had no such problems.
“I went, presented my business idea to the mayor, not expecting anything. The mayor was very supportive of it. What we are doing is in the interest of the city and all of us,” she emphasized.
He adds that they did not regret their decision. “We are overjoyed. We are on our own property, we are not under rent, we do the work we love, the animals are grateful to us”, says this hard-working mother. Here, too, there is a lot of work, from morning to tomorrow, but you can still organize your time yourself. The property, they say, is their source of energy.
The Bartolovićs are of the opinion that our country needs as many food producers as possible. At the moment, they receive guests, offer two or three types of food, and every day they earn decent money on their property.
The husband is around the hearth, “turning” a specific meal such as pork or lamb, and Jelena prepares the daily dishes of beans, trout, mezze, pork chops, and game.
Stočani, Neumljani come to them, they also have orders. They are planning to build another business building, which would have a store with local products, not only their own, but from the entire region. They work positively for the community as well, and he says that they chased away seven garbage trucks from the area. They also plan to plant olive trees on an area of 3 hectares. Full of optimism, ideas, they found their peace of mind here, you can see it by the sparkle in their eyes. Under the hill, in the sun, in the lee, in Herzegovina, far from cold Germany.
This media content was created within the project of the Center for Civic Cooperation “Promoting Citizen Participation in Local Government” with the financial support of the National Foundation for Democracy/NED. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of NED or CGS.
The use of the content and its transfer to third parties is possible with the prior consent of the Center for Civic Cooperation, Livno.
Source: cgslivno.org
Share:
