Teenagers – and Nero Fiddling

Life is a little bit different  here from the life of teenagers in NZ. Recimo, families have a big lunch (rucak – with a ‘ch’), maybe a sleep and then something light in the evening, with the family heading out to walk on the riva (promenade) with a coffee or an icecream. Mediterranean style. It’s very safe (I feel completely safe walking around at midnight through the dark little streets) so kids are free range.

There are some rules though. Up to the age of 16, you are not allowed out after midnight.

My friend’s daughter is 12 and she was picked up by the police the other night at 11.07. The ramifications are a conversation with the parents and a counsellor. The conversation went along the lines of ‘do you understand that there are rules, and if you break the rules, then we think that you have a mother/father who isn’t doing their job properly. If this happens again, we will need to get a social worker to work with your family to make sure that everything is ok..”.

First reaction from our perspective is ‘wow, that age wandering around town alone at that time??’ and then the next one is the community/police having more clout than a good bollocking from the parents? That the community pressure is considered to be the boundary imposer?

It’s interesting isn’t it.

As I’m sitting here, there is the sound of helicopters /planes overhead – there is a huge fire burning on Biokovo. Yesterday when we were on the beach you could see the smoke, by evening, you could see the flames coming down the mountain toward Veliko Brdo. The pine cones were exploding in the heat and sending out sparks of seeds to ignite more fires. It has taken this long for something to be done about the fire because the firemen from here were all in Zadar fighting other fires. The helicopters will scoop up water to dump on the fire. It isn’t just a matter of a fire  destroying pine trees – no houses were lost in the huge fires last month, but people in this town lost all of their olive trees.

I was reading something this morning about rumours and accusations that it is the Serbs lighting the fires – to date, where the fire starters have been captured, the culprits have been mainly Croats. The firemen are trying to put out the rumours as well as the fires so that this underbelly of anti serb is also put out.

 the fire up on Biokovo-