05
ACTIVISM
W O R D S B Y M O L LY B A K E R A N D P H O T O S B Y A N D R E W B U R R
T H E B R AV E W O M E N O F B O S N I A Activism and the feminine spirit unite to save Europe’s last wild rivers. Mornings in Fojnica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, bring a harmony of Franciscan monastery bells and the broadcast of Fajr prayer, the valley draped in fog and wood smoke. As the fog lifts, hills speckled with the first yellows of fall appear, sloping gently to the creeks and rivers sneaking through the inflowing valleys.
Sumbulka Milićević, known as Sumbe, has lived in her house on the Željeznica River near Fojnica for 33 years. An hour nor thwest of Sarajevo, Fojnica is a couple miles from the village where Sumbe grew up. She moved for love. “In Bosnia we say that good women marry within their village,” says Viktor Bjelic, a founder of Center for the Environment, a Bosnian NGO working to protect the local waterways. Sumbe shakes her head laughing, “Maybe some think we should marry in our villages. Many women marry downstream. I married upstream, like a good, strong fish.” We’re in Sumbe’s backyard on the banks of the Željeznica. Her matronly hair, penciled-in lipstick and floral scarf make her look like the grandmother that she is. In high-heeled sandals with white tube socks, she sashays around the kitchen preparing chicken, rice and cabbage salad before running around the yard serving each of us. Viktor chain-smokes, his dark beard hiding a stern face. He’s mostly quiet as Sumbe happily narrates her life in Fojnica.
“Most of what we need comes from our backyards,” Sumbe says. “As children especially, we never bought fruits or vegetables.” The apple tree in the front of the house is healthy, yielding crisp red fruit. A friend of Sumbe’s enjoys a fallen apple between puffs of a hand-rolled cigarette and a Turkish coffee. “If we don’t have water in the river,” Sumbe says, “we don’t have any water for the fruit trees.” On the drive from Sarajevo to Fojnica, nearly every home—most separated by tidy, abundant green gardens and proud haystacks—remains pockmarked by mortar rounds and bullet holes from the Bosnian war. Though an agreement endorsed by a local Roman Catholic priest and Muslim imam initially kept the peace locally, once the Bosnian Army invaded in 1993, most of Fojnica erupted in fighting. I’d even read a horrific account of about 200 physically and mentally handicapped children who were abandoned for three days in a hospital there. (Canadian troops, on behalf of the United Nations, rescued those who remained.)
The women fighting to preserve the Kruščica River and drinking water for their children, grandchildren, local lynx and bears span multiple generations; many survived the atrocities of the Bosnian war.
