An eighty year old grandmother from the small mountain village of Strellc above Peje has been hiding in the mountains for five months with her grandchildren and her daughter in laws, one of whom is caring for a newborn.
The Serbs came through in April and drove these villagers into the mountains.
There they have survived on loaves of bread, some milk, occassionally receiving supplies of flour and oil.
But their real method of survival is their cell phone.

And now, in September, the Serb army has returned to the region, driving thousands of terrified women and children before it, shelling and burning any remaining houses, burning crops, killing any livestock that is still alive.

This time, the exhausted villagers are in total panic. Four thousand tried to reach Montenegro the day before and were turned back under sniper fire. Hordes of Displaced People (IDPs), who had been living near streams and in narrow valleys, have poured into the village area. They have been living on rumors, fleeing panicstricken from place to place in a search for safety. They are in absolute confusion about what to do.

Should they flee to the Albanian border and risk land mines and sniper fire and expose the already weakened children to more danger? Should they stay where they are?

Finally a frantic phone call to an older brother in New York goes through.
They beg this brother desperately for information. Where should they go? But there is no information for him to give them. No observers are there. No humanitarian agencies. No journalists. And there is no leadership to guide the people in the United States or in Pristhine.
So he doesn't know either, and worse of all, the battery on the cell phone is growing noticeably weaker as they talk. Their fading, desperate voices are an agony for him to listen to. He felt completely helpless as he hung up.

At the end of August, Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck and former Senator Bob Dole visited the devastated countryside of Kosova.
In an editorial to the Washignton Post, Dole wrote, "The situation in Kosova could not be clearer. This is a war against children."