After two days behind the wheel, we anchored again in Chernihiv region.
We will visit the kindergartens and schools where we and our partners have completed the replacement of windows and roofs, and we will carry out a professional assessment of the result in order to report back to our donors from the Pontis Foundation and the Taipei Representative Office in Bratislava.
Of course, we can't come empty-handed, so we've fully loaded our Help Team Bus and two vans.
Yesterday we made a „little trip“ from Chernihiv to the town of Novhorod-Siverskyj and the surrounding villages. Father Mikhail - as he is called here - said it was not far, only about 180 km to the northeast into an area that borders the Russian Federation and where fighting is still going on. The town is very quiet despite its location, which is why so many people move here from the surrounding villages, which have been really busy lately.
At the local hospital we handed over medical supplies provided by our friends from Germany. The director and her team have a lot of work to do, few staff and limited resources. Therefore, she has gratefully accepted every help and would like to continue to cooperate. What they need most is sterile supplies, infusion sets, patient pads, dressing materials, wheelchairs, etc. They are grateful for anything, as really few people bring help to this area.
Mikhail, who is a pastor, military chaplain and ADRA volunteer, led us to a small Adventist church that also serves as a humanitarian warehouse and aid center. Large families gathered there to personally receive packages of food aid, clothes and small backpacks with gifts for the children. They were very shy at first, but the gifts and the ball broke the barriers and soon they were dancing along with our volunteers. After all, that's what childhood is all about, taken away from them by war... Schools are closed due to the daily alarms and shelling, and the children mostly sit at home and learn online.
The local believers prepared us a modest refreshment and with a short prayer entrusted us under the protection of the Lord God for the journey to the villages near the front line. The villages of Mamekine and Smiač are literally cut off from the world. We pass through checkpoints and checkpoints, Mikhail deals with permission to enter, there are mine warnings everywhere. Mikhail knows every house here and knows where the families live with the children that are left behind. The houses are wooden, very modest and everything looks as if time has stopped here. First the children run out of the yard, then the mothers - worried at first, but after a while they have a smile on their face. The children are frolicking as if nothing is happening. They don't go to school, they study online on their mom's cell phone because they don't have computers. Our Adriana was in her element when she was able to speak to them, cheer them up and give them presents. Kinder chocolates from a donor in Slovakia arrived here and were a great success. We rejoiced with them and saved our tears for the journey back as the reality of families and children whose childhoods had been taken from them by the war hit us.
And the most powerful experience? When we were handing over a food parcel in one of the really poor families, a mother surrounded by a flock of children told us: „Thank you so much. Give it to the neighbors instead. They need it more. We still have potatoes and wheat and corn, we can make do with that...!“
We are trudging the broken road back to Chernihiv and our heads are full of the happy and sad stories that this life has written... And we already know that we will continue doing what we are doing because it makes sense to us.
From Chernihiv region, ADRA Slovakia team.
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