Sefika lives up a remote dirt track on a hillside near Srebrenica. We met her and her family on a freezing winter day and found her family living in a small breezeblock shared with her husband’s parents. Sefika, is 20, she is married with a 20-month-old son, Adnam, who clings to his mother’s side throughout our chat. Sefika used her loan to buy a cow to help nourish Adnam. It cost her around 900 euros, but she was pleased to tell me that the cow was now pregnant, and she could sell their first calf for 500 euros, adding that ‘breeding was more profitable than milk’. Their home was destroyed in the war, forcing the family to start over again. Many of the houses within sight of their home are bombed out shells that are now empty. While Sefika is too young to remember the war itself, she has grown up surrounded by reminders – her father died in the fighting and her brother shortly afterwards, while her uncle spent time in a concentration camp. Sefika’s husband works six, sometimes seven days a week for a public cleaning company but his income alone would not be enough to support the family. “If you have money, then life could be easy,” she says. “Some families have nothing. Sometimes we have what we need but sometimes we don’t. People in this area have a hard life. Very few people are employed, my friend’s don’t have jobs. I think we will stay here though, we don’t have anywhere else to go.” Sefika and Khaled proudly showed us the cow, which was huge and looked to be in great health. Sefika had a simple message for her lenders. “The loan has helped me a lot, I am really grateful and I would like to say thank you. Maybe one day I will get another loan.” But for now Sefika’s focus is on baby Adnam: “I’d like him to be good in school.”