Saving lives in Hell
 Sarajevo,
BOSNIA, 1994—Now that the shells have
stopped falling and the snipers have retreated from their hideouts
in the mountains that surround
this small town of Bosnia-Herzegovina, life is slowly creeping
back to normality. The three year nightmare of slaughter and
terror left Sarajevo
a scarred graveyard. The Hare Krishna temple was there since
the beginning, offering shelter to anyone who came along and
bread and cookies to
thousands of others who were afraid to leave their bullet-riddled
and blackened apartments. The Food for Life program
continued in Sarajevo for 4 years. Meals
were served daily to residents throughout the city as well as
to undernourished hospital patients.
Right: Food for Life director in Sarajevo, Janukanyaka
Dasi, stayed in Sarajevo throughout the fighting to serve tens
of thousands of bread rolls and cookies.
Many people referred to her as the "Mother Teresa of Sarajevo."
"People were sometimes
making 'bread' out of dried leaves! Can you imagine?"
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Janukanyaka |
Saving lives in Hell  Shevko
(Left), one of the old-time Sarajevo volunteers, recalls: "We
had to go two miles every day just to get water ...but it wasn't
easy pulling those big barrels of water up steep hills, what
to speak of avoiding the snipers
who would pick people off every now and then." "There was no
food, whatsoever," explained Janukanyaka. "People were sometimes
making 'bread' out of dried leaves! Can you imagine?"
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