A MASSAGE therapist has told of her “amazing” volunteering experience in the Balkans, working with men and women affected by the Bosnian War.

Debbie Gadd, from Farnham, visited Bosnia last month after learning about a volunteering opportunity through a course she was on.

The charity, Healing Hands Network, works in the UK with veterans as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina to help “those who are suffering from the mental, physical and emotional after-effects of war”.

On hearing about the opportunity, Debbie explained that it “really rang bells inside my head”.

She said: “I want my massage to help people that really need the help, who are really sick and when I heard about Bosnia I just thought ‘Yep, that is what I need to do’.”

Debbie had to raise £850 to cover her flights, basic accommodation and food, so she “contacted everyone I knew, even private clients that I’d only ever massaged once and a lot of people came forward”.

She received a generous donation of £500 from a gentleman in Farnham, who had set up a charity after his son worked in Bosnia during the war.

Debbie arrived for her two week trip to Bosnia on August 3, staying in a flat with two ladies above the clinic they worked in throughout the week.

Her colleague Sheila, who is 72 and “goes every year and has been going every year for the past 12 years”, specialises in reflexology, while Jenny specialises in reiki.

The ladies worked at the clinic from Monday to Friday, usually seeing seven clients each day.

They were also sent to outreach clinics outside of the area.

These were “not always the best” and “very, very basic”.

Debbie explained: “Depending on where they are, you work with the people who are in that area who were hurt or snipered or in the rape camps.

“Before the people arrive you’ll have their card, stating where they were first registered, their name, any medical history that they’ve got.

“Then if you read through you will find the things that they had gone through during the war and things that they were suffering from.”

Debbie described some of the notes she read as “beyond comprehension”.

On her time in Bosnia, Debbie found she was able to empathise with the survivors of war that she met.

She explained: “I come from South Africa, and okay, we weren’t bombed and we weren’t shot at by snipers, but that constant living in fear, never knowing when your going to be attacked, I related to them quite easily.

“You just think, ‘you know I’m here to help them and if I can help them, that is what I need to do’.”

Throughout her days at the outreach clinics, she “met some amazing people, who had been through the most dreadful stuff”.

One man was in a grenade attack, resulting in his left leg being amputated at the thigh and losing three toes from his other foot, while another woman was shot in the arm by a sniper.

Another lady who visited Debbie for a massage had “internal health issues”, after she was raped at the age of eight.

Many women in Bosnia during the war were victims of “systematic rape” following events such as the Srebrenica Massacre, in which men were “marched off and shot”, while women “were sent off to camps”.

One of the outreach clinics was inside the Women Victims of War building, set up by a rape victim.

“She set up this charity to try and help women because a lot of the women had lost husbands, brothers, sons – they have no one to support them now,” Debbie continued.

“A lot of women are struggling because they still haven’t found the bodies of the men.”

The charity aims to “help them get some kind of financial support”.

Despite some of the hard stories, the experience was very rewarding: “Everybody was just so grateful that you had gone, I don’t think anyone came in empty handed.

“They brought whatever they could, a bag of plums, a bar of chocolate, one lady brought me a cool drink, another knitted bed socks.

“These little bed socks, they are never going to fit my feet, but they sit in my drawer now. I look at them and I remember just how grateful they were because a lot of them feel like they have been forgotten.”

She said: “When you volunteer, you get so much back and they are just the nicest, nicest people.”

For information on the Healing Hands Network visit www.healinghandsnetwork.org.uk

To find out more about Debbie’s massaging, visit www.marulatreemassage.co.uk.