The long trestle tables were set out under the hot midday sun on the narrow mountain field. The smell of barbecued lamb wafted across the steep, wooded valley's slopes. This was a day the village would long remember, a celebration of what Richard Lewartowski called its rebirth.
Six years ago, the majority Muslim people of the tiny village of Grevici had fled into the mountains, ahead of the advancing Croat army which then systematically destroyed their homes. Today they are returning to homes rebuilt by the Danish Refugee Council with funds from the EU's humanitarian office, ECHO.
A visit by Lewartowski, the chief ECHO representative in Bosnia, to inspect the 32 partially restored homes is an occasion for families to help in the work and meet old friends again.
Grevici, in central Bosnia, is 7 km from the nearest tarmacadamed road, 800 m up precipitous valleys so steep that farming is all but impossible. It is remarkable that an army ever reached this place of no strategic significance where the mountains meet the sky, and that these sturdy people want to come back to their beautiful but precarious existence.
Sacir Musarovic is 62. Two of his sons were lost in the war, two severely crippled. He hopes to bring the latter back, despite the difficulties, not least of which will be making ends meet for his extended family of 13. "It is worth it just to come home," he says.
Their home is a shell but the roof is on and the house will be habitable within a month.
Tomo Sudic (70) is one of the few Croats who intends to come back to the village. He is sitting on a pile of bricks with his old friend and neighbour, Ziuria Subic (67), a Muslim. There is no enmity, nothing to forgive, neighbours here had not burnt each other out.
The incursion of visitors dealt with good-humouredly, they catch up on family news after six years.
Work prospects are slim. Before the war most of the men went down the mountain to work in the granite company in the valley, its hydroelectric station, or even in Jablanica. Produce from the fruit trees, cattle and sheep was a bonus - today, apart from a few remittances from family abroad it is all they have.
The war and its massive dislocation has compounded the problems of transition from the planned economy and the natural flight of the young to cities. But they want to return to this extraordinarily remote home; young and old are here, talking of the need for a school.
And the success of Grevici, a Muslim community, within a Croat-controlled municipality, has a further significance. It shows that reversing ethnic cleansing is possible with the help of co-operative municipalities. The returning villagers are vacating Croat homes in Neretvica - the return of whose owners will free homes of Muslims in Prozor.
Through a domino effect typical of much of the return process, the restoration of 32 homes can allow the return of over 90 families and up to 500 people. But it is slow. "House by house," says David Lythgoe, ECHO's head of return programmes. "The international community must have patience."
Even in sensitive, front-line areas progress is being made.
Looking down from Jusici at the gentler valleys west of Zvorvnik in north-east Bosnia, it is difficult to see the dividing lines between communities. But as the night falls and the cicada chorus becomes almost deafening, the lights of distant homes mark out clearly the "Inter-entity Boundary Line" that divides Bosnia's Republika Srpska from the Muslim-Croat Federation.
"And Jusici is bang in the middle," says Muaz Latifovic.
Under the Dayton agreement the Muslim hillside village, surrounded by Serb communities, became the administrative responsibility of the hardline nationalist Serb authorities of Zvornik, traditionally opposed to minority returns. Today ECHO is marking the beginnings of a project to restore 50 homes here, as well as some local Serb houses which Lewartowski sees as a crucial precedent for strategically crucial minority returns to Republika Srpska - in nearby Tuzla tens of thousands of others wait in internal exile on success here.
Abandoned because of fighting during the war and then substantially destroyed, the 120-house village saw an attempted return by a hundred of its inhabitants in 1996, which prompted the destruction of several homes by local Serbs. Since then, 70 families have lived on here in squalor, without water or electricity, in the shells of destroyed homes under the protection of SFOR.
Eventually, the Zvornik authorities agreed to co-operate with the returnees and relations with the local police and people are steadily improving. There is still considerable fear, however, as many remember the 48 men from the village who were taken away for interrogation as the war started and simply never returned. One villager was also killed recently by one of the thousands of mines littering the countryside.
Rifat Hassanovic is delighted to be back but describes his existence as that of a "refugee in my own village". Like his neighbours he can not afford materials to repair his home without outside help. His family's return will free a Serb refugee's home elsewhere.
Despite all, Latifovic is optimistic about the future. What about the possibility of the electoral defeat next week of the moderate Serb administration of Milorad Dodik? "I don't believe we will go back to the black politics of the past," he says. "There are expectations in both parts of Bosnia of democratic advance, as most of those involved in starting the 1991-1992 war are out of politics."
Who will the people of the village vote for? He laughs. "We have not had a good experience with politicians," he says. "We need practical people. We will all vote ECHO!"