Kulovac was born here in 1958. He lived all his life in Zepa except for six terrible months in a Serbian concentration camp and three months exile in France. He works hard, is prospering as the owner and operator of the village's one cafe and he is an aggressive advocate for the community.

“It was the best life you could imagine (growing up here). The people all know each other here for generations. They are good, honest people,” he says. He is asked about his best memory. “There were too many to point out just one. I was in France for three months and all I ever thought about was this place.”

When he says, “The loan gave my wife back her will to live!” one pretty much knows it did the same for him. His manly pride prevents him from including himself in the statement.

“The children and my wife, we were all so sad. We were dependent on humanitarian aid, not looking after ourselves. Now we provide for ourselves. Then I looked for occasional jobs. There were few. I cut trees for a forestry company before the war. That work was gone,” he says.

“Now this is mine. I possess it. It doesn’t look fabulous but I know I can make something out of it. It is so much better than having to depend on others, to wait for someone to give us things. That was a terrible state to be in.

“With God’s help I will pay this loan and then come to ask for another. With that I can start a business that employs probably two people. I had no source of income after the war. This loan helped put us all to work making money to buy food, etc. I’m thinking about extending the business. I want to start a fish pond.”

World Vision staff confront stiff competition in many communities, people trying to outdo one another with their claims of need, of who is worse off than their neighbours. It’s not like that in Zepa. Here everyone is pitching for the larger community.

Here everybody brings conversations with outsiders around to the village’s future sooner or later. Mostly sooner. Everyone makes a pitch for assistance not to themselves individually but to the village as a whole. They mention roads, transport for goods and people, education, everything. “You can’t see how this place is now. Without good roads there is no future for this place,” says Kulovac.

As a boy Kulovac tended his father’s goats but there was also plenty of time for playing in the orchards, the forests on the steep mountain slopes and the rocky crevices beside the streams and rivers. His cafe has existed as such from his childhood. His uncle ran it then and as a youth he waited tables and learned to cook. He liked those times and was pleased when his uncle bequeathed the place to him.

“It was my uncle’s. He went to Australia with his sons. As a small boy I used to sit out there like my daughter today turning the goat on a spit,” he explains. With his loan of US$2,000, he fixed up the building and bought 15 goats to combine with his meager herd. Now he has a herd of five males and 25 females.

Zepa is located 110 kilometres (68 miles) east of Sarajevo. It is a stunning drive over the Romanija Mountains and through a winding canyon bordering the River Zepa. The village itself sits between two mountains called Sjemec and Devetak.

The cafe is a wooden structure set back about five meters (16 feet) from the hard-packed dirt road. A crumbling picket fence defines the front of the property. In the front yard closest to the road, there is a long table, about five meters (16 feet) with benches on each side. The table and benches are solid as a tree, nailed down tight on posts set firmly in the ground.

At the far end of the table, a giant metal bin holds charcoal and above it a skinned goat carcass is hand turned over large slabs of smoking charcoal, the kind made locally from fallen hardwood trees. This entire idyllic scene is shaded by mature trees. The day is bright and sunny but it’s cool in the shade and everyone is wearing a worn suit coat or sweater.

It is Friday and the men of this Muslim village are out in droves. Friday is the Muslim holy day and everyone turns out to pray, then takes thick Turkish-style coffee and a plate of roasted goat at this cafe. A few diners enter the café where there are about eight tables but most prefer the bonhomie atmosphere at the long outdoor table.

Females are noticeably absent except for two of the owner’s daughters who, by merit of still being girls, can move around the periphery of the social action to serve and to remove empty plates. This is not just a man’s day, it is a man’s place in this deeply traditional world.

In this village the men do the hard labour but this is not constant. The women do the daily slogging, cleaning and milking and feeding the animals. In the past, the local men could work in a nearby tourist hotel and a clothing factory. But these businesses were destroyed or folded during the war (1992-1995). Here the men apply for the loans but the women keep the books and balance the budget.

“I didn’t even know villages like this existed before I began this work,” says Aida Selimic, a World Vision business advisor in the micro-enterprise development program. Aida was born and raised in cosmopolitan Sarajevo and worked in radio and for a trade company. “Now I know. These people had a nice life before the war but they have lost much.”

There are many jokes between Kulovac and World Vision staff about how it took him eight tries to finally sire a son. During the war his family fled to Sarajevo and he became first a prisoner in Serbia and then a refugee in France.

He likes to joke that when the family reunited he had hopes his change in diet in France would produce a son. It wasn’t to be. His wife gave birth to a daughter so he says he tried again and succeeded. But World Vision staff tease him about how he could possibly have thought of another child after having his youngest daughter, a beautiful child named Emina with a wild mane of golden locks.

Emina is five and has only been in school as many days as she has years. She sprouts a magnificent head of curly golden hair and a face that promises her father will be hosting many suitors in years to come. (He had three daughters in Sarajevo but brought them to back to the village. One finished secondary school and returned, the other returned to study for an exam for her secondary diploma.)

Emina loves being at the centre of the Friday hubbub of the café but she has a typical child’s attention span and finally takes to the village roads to visit friends, watch the nanas – the grandmothers in shawls and scarves – gathered at the bus stop and to run home to grab a piece of fruit.

She is playful on her own but shy around adults, typical of traditional cultures like this village society. She loves her mother very much, she says, squirming and laughing at the adult attention. Why? Because her mother gave her shoes. What did your father give you? Oh, a coat, pants, our house. But she still loves her mother most and misses her this Friday because the woman had to go to Sarajevo.

That Emina can talk about so many different things her parents have provided is a testament to the success of her father's business, a success enabled by the loan from World Vision.

Kulovac has traits that lend themselves to success. He is the sort who makes up his mind quickly and then never turns back. He courted a woman in this village for many years, through their youth and adolescence. He says he woke up one morning, proposed and she turned him down. He went for a boat ride.

He has been married 22 years to the woman he spotted from his boat, knew an hour and then proposed to her. He spotted a group of people who looked like they were having fun while on his boat ride on the River Drina. He joined them and immediately zeroed in on his future.

“She said yes right away. She’s sorry now,” he says with a big smile. The next morning he was happier than anyone could imagine, he says. Then, he brought her straight home, three hours in the small boat, and has not looked back for 22 years. They have eight children -- seven daughters and finally a son, a mere baby. He has no regrets.

“This is the best love, the best way to marry, before we could date and she disappointed me,” he says with a laugh.

At mention of the war, Kulovac's expansive mood changes. It is as if a cloud has moved over his face. He says 50 men from this village surrendered and spent six months in a concentration camp. He walks away. He is angry and brooding.

Later he approaches us with heaping plates of goat meat and insists we take a table inside and eat. He joins us and starts to talk about the young man to whom World Vision loaned money to buy a small van. The van is a critical lifeline to this isolated community, moving both goods and people.

He is pitching for money for a larger vehicle, even a bus. The UNHCR ran a bus through this area during the reconstruction period at the war’s end and the community benefited. “The young man who drives the van is serious, responsible and he doesn’t drink,” he says. Once again the individuals are pulling for the community.

It’s 1 p.m. and things have slowed down but our host knows the customers. He expects it is just a momentary lull and he will have to roast another goat. He waits just awhile longer before he decides. He is tired from last night's cafe crowd and today’s work but one must never turn away customers.

He is worried that winter will come early and the slowdown in everything in the village including his trade will make it difficult to make payments. He received a 12-month loan for US$2,000 and then received a six-month grace period. He is paying off US$185 a month.