She was wearing two coats against the cold and two woollen balaclavas to ease her earache. She moved unsteadily on her feet. "Are you the Red Cross? Is my friend there?" she said.
Bogdana sees few people. She fled with other Serb villagers in 1995 when Croatian forces overran the region, and, was the first to come back. She has lived alone in the hamlet for four years, cut off for months by snow in the bitter winter. Her survival is a miracle.
The man she calls her friend is Dragan Damjanovic, Red Cross secretary in Glamoc, a municipality that covers one thousand square kilometres of the valley and some 55 rural settlements. He worries about Bogdana and calls from time to time to check her out, ensuring she has food and firewood.
She is no longer alone - in June, a family returned to Vagon. But she remains vulnerable, just like hundreds of other elderly people in remote corners of the region.
Some 908,000 refugees and displaced people - or more than 40 per cent of those expelled in the conflict - are estimated to have returned to their homes in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Dayton Agreement was signed in December 1995. This year alone, almost 81,000 minority returns were registered by the end of September.
Humanitarian agencies believe solutions will be found for most returnees by the end of 2003. Either they will have gone home, it is said, or have been integrated locally. But from Glamoc in the west to Srebrenica in the east, communities across the country show that going home can be a very painful journey. Economic ruin, sky-high unemployment and broken-down health and welfare systems have left tens of thousands of people in jeopardy.
Nowhere is the evidence more poignant than in the hills around Srebrenica, where Muslims who fled or were expelled have returned to the vicinity of Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War, the slaughter of more than 7,000 of them.
Jusuf Oric, 58, lost his son to the violence, but last spring he was one of the first to come home to the village of Gornji Potocari. He had no job, no money and no support.
"Something will happen. It has to," he said at the time. He cleaned and tidied his plot and waited. Seven months later he is still waiting, living in his ground-floor bathroom, the only room of his home to survive the conflict.
He and untold numbers of others have been left to their own devices. It would be bad enough anywhere. But Srebrenica is in deep depression, the economy a fraction of what it was before the conflict.
"Where are the resources?" Dana Petrovic, secretary of the Red Cross regional coordinating committee, asked in the spring. "Has the world forgotten Srebrenica?" The answer today is unequivocal. Funds from international donors are declining, donors are downsizing and phasing out. The full impact is incalculable.
The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2002 warns that the process of return has suffered because of a lack of synergy between refugees and displaced, local authorities and the international community.
"When the international community was providing funds for return, the governments of the entities did everything possible to hinder the process," it says. "Now, as political relations thaw and the powers-that-be are beginning to accept the new realities, it seems, unfortunately, that the international community is drawing back. The international funds that would finally bring the whole process to completion appear to be running out."
More pressure comes from the rule of law. Return depends upon having a home to go to and, as people were displaced, their houses were occupied by others. Today property laws are being enforced right across the country, and homes returned to their rightful owners. Evictions are common. The law is just and necessary but it has humanitarian consequences.
What happens to the evicted? Those whose own homes were destroyed can be left on the street or obliged to live in squalor.
In Glamoc, reality brings sleepless nights for Dragan Damjanovic. All roads lead to the Red Cross door, and the Red Cross cupboard is frequently bare. The plight of the elderly is particularly desperate.
"This is a poor area," Damjanovic says, "and most returnees are older people. The young go elsewhere." They may come to finish some business, or sell property the law has restored to them. Then they move on. Glamoc cannot offer them much of a future.
Donor money might help. There are some signs of recovery. A small textile business has opened thanks to credits. But where the pre-war population topped 12,000, today's does not reach 4,000, and unemployment hovers around 60 per cent.
The primary focus of the Red Cross is on the forgotten people no-one else is assisting - people who returned to settlements that no donor is willing to rebuild and which most likely have no electricity. The network was destroyed in the conflict.
As winter came to the valley, Damjanovic was distributing firewood before the roads and tracks became impassable. He was looking, too, for stoves.
"Needs grow and there are fewer resources. People need shoes, clothes, beds and mattresses," he says. "We provide what we have and try to locate what we haven't. People have to wait, perhaps a few days, perhaps a few weeks, until we are able to find things. There is no regular package for returnees. We are dependent on ad hoc donations."
Up in Vagon, Bogdana would like a cow. "Oh, if I had a cow ... we used to have cows, and sheep, and land, and a tractor. It was wonderful here. I've lived in this hamlet all my life."
There's a pause, and she shrugs. "I know, I am old, I am sick and most likely would be dead if it wasn't for Dragan. But I will not move. Home is home and I am quite prepared to die here."
Related links:
Bosnia and Herzegovina: appeals, updates and reports
Humanitarian values
Make a donation