Posted on Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Classic notions of volunteering relate to teaching poor or under privileged children, building wells in drought-stricken lands, or perhaps working on engineering projects to improve a nation's infrastructure.

None of these lofty aims applied to my first experience of volunteering.

I had been planning to do a voluntary project for years, then finally, after a lot of encouragement from a volunteer veteran friend of mine, decided to try it.

I scoured the International Voluntary Service (IVS) brochure for the perfect project. You could work with disabled people in Germany, help out on an organic farm in Sweden, even pick up litter on Mount Fuji, Japan. There were dozens of projects to choose from.

But in the end I decided to use the skills I possessed – which at the time were chiefly painting and drawing. And so I found a project in the Serbian town of Novi Becej.

My task, together with several other volunteers, was to paint a mural designed to promote international understanding, which would form part of the Novi Becej Festival.

It wasn't the world-changing project I may have envisaged, but it sounded interesting.

Umbrella Street in Belgrade, Serbia (efesenko/Bigstock.com)

Belgrade

I arrived in Belgrade Airport and was taken by a big, loud Serbian taxi driver to the centre of town. He offered me a cigarette in the car – something that would never happen in the UK – and I decided to accept on sheer novelty value alone. As I inhaled the rough tobacco, the man talked of the Kosovo War, then, as we entered the centre of the city, he pointed out some dark, bombed-out buildings that had been consumed by weeds and wild shrubs.

"A reminder for us," he said.

He told me they were once military buildings, but had been bombed by NATO in 1999 – a measure designed to slow President Milosevic's military ambitions. While the campaign achieved its objective of lessening the violence and ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo War, it also resulted in around 2,000 civilian deaths. It was all coming back now; it dawned on me that only eight years before, this country had been torn apart by war.

I thought of the mural: perhaps fostering international understanding wasn't so silly after all.

I found my pre-booked guest house and checked in before taking a look around the city. Grey clouds and a swirly wind gave this austere-looking capital an unfriendly edge. I wondered what lay ahead of me as explored the streets in search of an evening meal. I found a strange cheese pastry in a bakery – it was delicious, but did little to reduce my building anxiety about the forthcoming project.

June sunshine, unfettered by cloud, gave Belgrade a far more cheery look in the morning. My sense of anxiousness about the project had lessened somewhat, so I lugged my backpack down to the bus station in search of transport north.

The stern old woman behind the ticket kiosk spoke no English and didn't seem to understand my pronunciation of 'Novi Becej'. But a friendly English-speaking Serbian lady in the queue behind me came to my assistance and helped me purchase the right ticket, before showing me to the correct bus stand.

Leaving the outskirts of Belgrade, the bus entered gently rolling rural lands to the north. There was one crop that seemed to dominate almost every field we passed: the sunflower. I had never seen such tall, beautiful examples of this bright yellow flower before.

Novi Becej

As the sun descended Earthwards we arrived in Novi Becej; a warm orange light bathed the pleasant looking town. Only myself and two other girls got off the bus. They had backpacks and didn't look like they knew the place.

"Are you doing the mural painting project?" I asked.

"Yes!" they said, just as a black-haired Serbian man drew up in a battered white hatchback.

"Me Igor!" said the man, who looked quite large, "You come for project yes?"

We all nodded, then, with difficulty, the man shifted his corpulent bulk out of the car and exchanged pleasantries with the two girls. He nodded briefly to me, but was clearly far more enamoured with the females, who, he quickly established, were from Russia.

Igor valiantly slung their backpacks over his shoulder and waddled over to the boot of the car, while I trailed behind.

I wondered what my time in this strange Serbian town would hold for me: it might be an interesting two weeks.

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