9/7

Sunday in Odesa. Luba who coordinates the volunteer medical clinics into de-occupied areas invited me to church this morning. She doesn’t speak much English to organised a young lady called Tanya to interpret for me. I’m glad she did as it was fantastic church service and it is clear what is on everyone’s mind. But also it meant getting to meet Tanya who was such a lovely young lady.

After church she invited me to join her in her ‘Sunday afternoon activity’. Feeding the homeless in the poorest suburb of Odesa and running a church for them. She and others do this every Sunday and Thursday. Oleg and Katya are a young couple with a couple of gorgeous kids who started it. Their little boy was adorable – all of about 4 and all he wanted to do was help and without any prompting or instructions would dive into the bag of bread and cakes and hand out packets to the homeless and disabled people. One guy there told me that he does this every week.   It was a pretty seedy part of town and things were tough for people there. Many were elderly or disabled and the pension doesn’t go very far. Some had addictions. Others had lost their jobs largely due to the war. Before the war Odesa was a major port for export, it was also a beachside resort town and playground of rich Russians. All of those things are either gone or reduced. Now you cannot even go to the beach let alone swim in it. The ocean is full of sea mines and the whole foreshore is heavily militarised and cordoned off. This is a highly sought after port by the Russians and of course they don’t want any military landings through this port. That also means lots of port and tourism jobs have been lost. One American guy who had come there to help told me that the building next door is known as a gangster headquarters where they buy and sell gold. He thought it was funny to have God and Gangsters – I suggested he invite them over. (-:  On the drive over Oleg tells me I can preach. I try to tell him I’m not a preacher. He says it doesn’t matter and they will just be happy to hear from someone that has come so far to see them. He tells me five minutes is fine. I point out I don’t speak Ukrainian or Russian (many here speak Russian as a hangover from occupation by the Russian Empire and then the Soviets where Ukrainian language was banned.)  He points out I have an interpreter. So I get the picture that I’m not getting out of this.  Anyway it was lovely and they did appreciate it as I heard them saying in Russian something about thanks for coming here to see us.

Everyone was given a bag of bread and cake and a homecooked meal and soup.  They were so grateful. Probably about half of them stayed behind to join in the church service and singing in the little room, spilling out onto the steps.  We had some interesting conversations including with locals who talked about the flooding from the Russians blowing up the Khahkovka dam and how that had spread contaminated water across arable land that probably won’t be able to be farmed for several years now.

Before leaving Tanya I interviewed her for her story and we popped out the back to an old market area. A middle aged guy came and stood close by watching and listening intently with a troubled look on his face. We weren’t doing anything wrong and so acted cool. He then asked her what we were doing and he got quite grumpy and told us that this was private property ( it wasn’t ) and to move on (which we did).

I headed back through town towards the train station. Something that really struck me about Odesa was that nearly every building in the entire city had a relatively new Ukrainian flag flying out the front and a freshly painted flag on it’s walls. Odesa is largely Russian speaking and Putin has used this to claim it belongs to him and has tried to take it. It is as if each person here wants to make the point that they are Ukraine and will stay Ukraine.

I sat in the park waiting for my train watching the children play in the water fountains that squirted up between the statues of golden dolphins. Squealing with joy like children in any country would. Russians are quite happy to bomb this city and others, hitting children like this – not as collateral damage in a war but as its targets – and the world stands by. And it kidnaps those it doesn’t bomb. If it was up to Putin he’d exterminate all these kids like the rats he often refers to them as in his propaganda.  I watched a young dad tenderly wipe the water sprat off his tiny daughter’s face and wondered how many daughters today will never have their dad around to show them such love and tenderness? And I watched young men with military haircuts kiss their girlfriends like they might never see them again – because they might not. I watched young men in military uniforms sitting on benches and walking past, with the faces of twenty year olds but with eyes aged by the horrors of war.

10/7

Today we returned to the church of a Pastor Elisie that John and Elsie had met the other day. This church was originally in areas that are now occupied and they had to transplant here as refugees themselves and now accept and help refugees from Russian occupied areas. We spoke with one of the young leaders here who himself is a refugee from Kherson who found refuge here and were shown around their premises. He told of how more than 60 refugees are currently living in this building. He was previously a sculptor with some carpentry experience and he is now using his skills to oversee the refurbishing of this building to expand the church to house more refugees and provide workshops for them where they can learn new skills.

At dinner we had a visit from an Australian contact of John’s who has been here since the war began. He has Ukrainian roots and has been here trying to do documentary and news footage. He did the piece of footage that was shown in Australia on Anzac Day of the Ukrainian soldiers holding an Australian flag and playing the Last Post in front of a Bushmaster vehicle we have donated. He told us some pretty horrible stories of destroyed and mined villages he had visited in his time here.

11/7

Voice of Children is an NGO in Ukraine that provides psychological help to children traumatised by the war. They are one of the partners that Victor and Tania (from Let’s Help Children) work with. We met with Paulina who told us about their work.  They mostly work with war refugees but also local people, basically anyone who has “been hurt” psychologically. They do group work and individual work and also run special day camps of 2 weeks duration for different age groups. They run a range of activities and excursions during this time. Whilst we were there we saw one of these camps in action and the therapists were doing some therapy based games and play with them. It was terrific to watch how they worked with the kids with such skill and love. If you want to help the work they do you can donate HERE.

 

 

After this we caught up with Tatiana from Let’s Help Children again. This was very kind of her to give  us her time as her little 15 month old was sick with a fever so she was keen to get back to her of course. We heard more about the work they’re doing with the orphans and vulnerable teens and their desire to expand the camps they do with the kids. She told us they welcome volunteers so if that is something that interests you or you would like to donate to you can do so HERE.

We got back to the flat to have a bit of a rest and do some work only for an air raid siren to go off again! As per our plan we went downstairs to the basement tunnel but we popped our head outside and noticed no one seemed too worried. Shortly afterwards the siren was called off as the missiles ended up elsewhere. I later learned that the main reason many people didn’t respond is that in these last 500 plus days of war there have been so many sirens that they are fatigued and life would be way too disrupted if they ran to a shelter every time a siren went off. I was assured that it was clearer that the missiles were headed to us that there would be more concerted attempts to contact us through SMS and telegram groups to urge us to shelters. Of course that didn’t work for everyone killed in the missile attack near us  the week before…

Now that we were out and about anyway we figured we could go and have a bit of look around. We popped into the Apothecary Museum and also into the Peter and Paul underground church museum.  This was very interesting not only as such an old underground catacomb style church built in the 1600’s but there was a lot of historical information in there including some of the amazing things happening in Ukraine as far back as the 8^th century – contrary to the propaganda that Ukraine didn’t even exist let alone that long ago.