I arrived late on the Thursday afternoon and the people who had arrived the day before, in particular to help with the unloading of the lorry, had already loaded up their vans and were out delivering to two of the larger refugee camps and the children's home at Gornje Bistra.

The lorry contained about eighteen tonnes of aid, with a further nine tonnes being dispatched directly to a village in the north eastern part of Croatia which we would unload on the Friday.

There were six people in two vans already there, and a further four, including me, to arrive on the Thursday. The first group were delivering aid to Bundek and Spansko refugee camps. Each camp housed approximately 250 people, many of whom had been living there for eight years. Some had been moved from camps which were now closed down.

(Strangely enough, with this being my tenth visit to Croatia, I have yet to visit Spansko. Something always conspires to prevent me from doing so.)

I was sorry not to visit Gornje Bistra, although I was given an update as to how they were faring, and the progress made by everyone's favourite, Nina. Apparently, on this visit, she actually recognised our Croatian coordinator Ljubica. She has only been going there for six or seven years! Nina is typical of the children in the home. Mentally and physically disabled she has no relatives who visit her, only a large number of foreign well wishers plus, I am pleased to say, an increasing number of Croatians.

This still left us with enough aid to distribute during the week or so I was to remain in Croatia!

On the Friday everyone had arrived and we waited to hear whether the lorry driver of the vehicle carrying the nine tonnes had received customs clearance. We loaded up the vans with some more aid and then waited. It took a long time to receive the clearance but eventually, three hours later than we had hoped, we were able to leave for the village of Kursanec.

As you drive towards Kursanec an outcrop of buildings, hovels, begin to appear. In the distance, most are no more than brick huts. It is like a desolate oasis surrounded by green fields. As we moved closer children began to appear, dancing in front of the lorry and vans in anticipation of the goods we were carrying. There are many children here.

In fact, out of a population of 1,300, over five hundred of them are children under the age of fifteen. Later, as I glanced around I realised that some of the young girls, whom I assumed were carrying their younger brother or sister, were in fact carrying their own babies on their hips, suckling them as they walked. The main reason for the visit was based around the need of the children.

Although there has always been a large Romany population in this makeshift village, since the war the numbers have grown dramatically placing great pressure on an infrastructure which is fragile, to say the least. Some would argue there is no infrastructure.

This was the first time help had been given to these people and the happiness they exuded was plain for all to see. The local town dignatories arrived to thank us for the help and to have further discussions with Bob, an aid worker who had been visiting Croatia for seven years, who wants to help this village on an ongoing basis through the building of a small community centre and shower block.

At the moment there is no running water, except for a well.

We unloaded the lorry and vans so that the goods could be shared out. This is simple when you are handing out prepacked boxes of food and toiletries, but more difficult when it comes to other items such as clothes or bedding. We continued handing out goods into the evening.

A walk around the village was disturbing. The buildings in which these people live are similar in type to those in which we would house cattle. There is no sanitation as such, and the shortage of running water makes for a difficult life. Most of the people are dressed in rags and food is mainly very basic, where it exists at all. There is little work in the area, and most of the women have poorly paid cleaning jobs, the men find unskilled labouring tasks.

It was comforting to hear some young girls say they were not going to have a boyfriend until they finished their education. Unfortunately they were the exception.

Most of the children are enrolled in the local school which is three kilometres away. They have to walk there and back every day and some of them have no shoes. They were all asking for shoes.

Once we had finished unloading the vehicles in the village we took bulk food and other items suitable for education purposes to the school, where they could make sure they were distributed to the children fairly.

We arrived back in Zagreb late, but pleased with our day's work.

After a good night's rest when we all caught up on some badly needed sleep, we returned to the railway carriages where we sorted out the aid before starting our usual rounds of the refugee camps. We store the aid in the railway carriages at a local goods depot.

We were to visit Savska, Kosniza and Pisarovina, followed by a short visit to the wonderful Father Bradica in Lasinje.

At the railway carriages we moved the aid around to make the remainder of our trips a little easier before we loaded the goods into the vans. This is an important aspect of our visit as when the lorry arrives much of the aid is piled in a less than perfect way, although this time there was definitely less sorting than usual.

We stopped in the small camp in Savska, in the centre of Zagreb and left carefully sorted aid for the forty families who inhabit the two barracks. We have to make sure it is divided equally between the two barracks or difficulties may arise.

Our second visit of the day was to Kosniza, which houses people from Vukovar. This time last year I was saying goodbye to people who expected to be on their way home in the Summer. They were still here, this time saying they expected to be home this Summer. Hope springs eternal.

Some, I am sure, will find their way back to rebuilt or partially rebuilt houses and flats, but many will still be here when we visit next time.

There are over two hundred people here and like most other camps they are barrack style with people occupying one or two rooms. Most have now taken over another room in the barrack as people do return home. One room for living and another for sleeping.

This is one of the few camps where many of the people actually help us to unload. In many camps the men stand and watch or go missing when the unloading is taking place. Here everyone seems to help.

We were treated to the usual fruit tea and cakes. A little mention of this.

Whenever we go to Croatia the hospitality is excellent and we receive tea, coffee and local alcoholic drinks (where applicable!), together with enormous amounts of home made cakes and/or biscuits. People who have nothing give us something in return for the aid we leave them.

On this trip we were there at Easter when even more cakes were made than usual, so wherever we went there were what appeared to be mountains of cakes for us to indulge ourselves on. It is not a good place to be if you want to lose weight.

We left and made our way to Pisarovina to the south of Zagreb, which at one time only housed the village people of Lasinje but now that they have returned to their rebuilt houses, is a more general purpose camp. In fact, last year a camp in Novo Cice, to the west of Zagreb, was closed and some of the occupants were transferred to Pisarovina. The camp coordinator confided in us that she had a lot of trouble with her new charges, which didn't surprise us as we used to have a lot of trouble with them when we visited their previous barracks. Novo Cice was a watch word for caution! There were frequent fights and disagreements when we left aid and none of us used to look forward to a trip there.

We handed out the aid individually to the eighty plus families in Pisarovina and gorged ourselves on more cake. It was fine and sunny and we sat talking to the inhabitants. One, a young girl of eighteen who spoke excellent English explained how she had been here for four years, and before that she was in a refugee camp in Hungary. The sunshine doesn't disguise the bleak surroundings of the camp or the despair of some of the inhabitants..

Off we went once more and over the new bridge across the river for the short drive to the village of Lasinje. This village had largely been rebuilt due to the excellent efforts of the local priest, Father Bradica. He has a fine new church, again built largely because of his efforts, and he was looking forward to celebrating Easter within it. He is a true wonder and gets everything done despite a weak heart and diabetes. Faith is a great healer. We like to leave something for the Father and the nuns, plus some of his parishioners, as many of them live below the bread line despite being able to move back to their rebuilt houses.

We left and headed back to Zagreb. As we drove into the evening we could see the celebratory Easter bonfires lighting up the countryside.

The next day was Easter Sunday, and we couldn't do very much as most people would be visiting friends and relatives. However, two places you can be certain of finding someone at home are HZ and Radnic Novska.

These two camps are adjacent to each other and have been without electricity and running water for over eighteen months. Although there are very few people left here now, most have moved to other camps or been able to return to their original homes. Those that are left are the ones whom have the worst future. The old, infirm, the ones who have trouble finding work, or for whom work is not a possibility.

We arrived and unloaded for the people there that morning, and left other aid for those that would return later. We sat playing with the few children who were around (the HZ youngsters are always popular), and enjoyed our first batch of cake of the day.

Then we drove around to the other camp and followed the same procedure. We had the Sunday afternoon off.

On the Monday there would be one major event, so we went to the railway carriages and loaded for the next day, before heading off to a hall where we would be fed along with eight poor families. Although we would also do a little work as well in order to earn our cake!

The families are all chosen by a separate organisation and are very poor. In fact, during the meal we discovered one woman crying. She stated that the day before she had been unable to feed her family, and without the lunch she would not have been able to feed them today either. I sat opposite one family and the eldest daughter told me she was studying hard so that she might one day become a solicitor. She wanted to get herself and her family out of their poverty.

After the meal everyone was handed presents which had been brought down by Bob. I took a photograph to be sent to the families later and everyone left satisfied with their food and gifts.

The group that arrived before us was leaving after the lunch and we all walked down to the street to wave goodbye.

Later on that day the remaining aid workers visited an old people's home which is always in desperate need of clothes, bedding and toiletries. They entertained us with a poem and some young people provided us all with some songs. This visit was a real treat because we also managed to eat some savoury items along with the cake.

The next day we had a couple of visits to make, the first to the Summer Camp at Grad Mladich. The people here all come from Vukovar and are waiting to return to their homes. We have become very friendly with them and they always say that we have an open invitation to visit them in Vukovar, without the need to bring anything. We left them, among other things, a number of cookers for their new homes which had been given by St Monica's Home in Bristol.

Our next stop was Racici, which I still think is the worst camp we visit. It is adjacent to the cement works and houses many of the workers from the factory. Everything seems to have a layer of cement dust.

We handed out the food, toiletries, clothes, bedding and other items to the people who were entitled. While this was happening I heard Ljubica saying "this is for Martina" on several occasions. I couldn't work out why, so later I asked her about it. She told me that Martina's mother was dead and she lived with her father. She is a gangly, nine year old and always has a smile on her lips, and a smattering of English along with it. We all like her. Ten trips and this was the first time I had found out about her mother. I have asked for clothes and shoe sizes and I know that on the next trip Martina will become one of the best dressed refugees in the whole of Croatia!

My final day was spent visiting old friends. First at the camp within a school at Kenedev Turk, where we had our early morning cake fix. Then we were to travel to a nearby town where we leave some aid for an incredibly hard working Bosnian family who are placed within an apartment instead of a barrack.

From there we visited two families who have moved from camps into their own houses. The first is a family with a severely disabled child. When they fled from Bosnia the child became ill after being separated from his mother. He cried for days and eventually blood would pour from his nose. His situation deteriorated and even when he was reunited with his mother several weeks later, the damage was done, the trauma had taken its toll and Euro will never be the same again. There are always a few presents for Euro.

From there we moved on to the family whose house we had helped to buy.

It was good to see the main body of the house completely renovated, with the small kitchen and living/bed room in such good condition. The long garden at the back is now filling up with vegetables and this year should really see the family back on its feet. There is still a lot of work to do, but it is a nice feeling to know that you have helped a family in such a way. I can still remember the day when I handed over the money to complete the purchase. It is, without doubt, one of the best things I have ever done.

This brought an end to my visit and we headed back to Zagreb for me to have a good night's sleep ready for the 1,200 mile journey home.

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