Before and After

In a small town in eastern Bosnia called Foca, my friends Elias and Owusu wait for the hunchbacked lady to approach. Traveling with Owusu can be an eye-opening experience -- people are constantly staring and pointing, especially children. It seems rural Bosnians have never seen a black man, much less a black man on crutches. Owusu takes all this in stride, waving and joking that he is their returned prophet.

Before the war (1991):

Name: Foca
Population: 40,513
51.6% Bosniak (Muslim)
45.3% Serb
3.1% other
Number of mosques: 14

After the war (1998):

Name: Srbinje ( "Place of the Serbs") *
Population: 24,000
Estimated fewer than 100 non-Serbs
Number of mosques: 0

No data is available since 1998 from this "closed, dark place", site of some of the war's worst crimes against humanity.

* In 2004, a Bosnian court ruled that the name change to Srbinje was unconstitutional, and so it is now officially Foca once again. I'm not sure what the locals call it.