There hasn’t been time to write in the last few weeks. Emotionally, as almost always in the past few weeks, it was up and down. The meeting with M., the representative of the municipality of Mamayivtsi left a positive feeling. A children’s playground is to be built in a village in this municipality, which we will finance with the funds of the “Bread and Books eV.” can co-finance.
Mamayivtsi, the center of the community, is a place immediately before Chernivtsi, which has always been one of the richest in the region, even in Soviet times. After municipal reform, it merged with several other villages. Not everyone in the smaller, structurally weaker villages was enthusiastic about it. But in this specific case it will be advantageous for Striletskyi Kut. M. says that there was never a playground for children there. I know this very well from my childhood in the country and the holidays with grandma – in the villages there were vegetable gardens, pastures for cows, meadows or similar “playgrounds” for children. Learning to work while playing, that was the motto of the hard-working people in the country. The idea for the playground in Striletskyi Kut, where almost fifty children from refugee families are now living, was enthusiastically received by many parents. There is a small company in the municipality that produces children’s playgrounds of various designs. M. tells me all this while we drive to the bank together, where I make the payment. M. makes a good impression – a dedicated, educated young man who obviously enjoys what he does and moves. We are left with the fact that he will let us know when the playground is set up and S. and I can visit it.
As if one wanted to take not only the joy from the Ukrainians, but also as many lives as possible
Another cause for joy was the long-awaited special permit for three male colleagues, which was issued by the Khmelnytskyi military administration. On Saturday we took the opportunity to go shopping again in Suceava, Romania. Not a particularly pleasant venture in the great heat and the giant snakes at the border in both directions. As a humanitarian transport, we don’t have to wait long, but after fourteen hours of being on the road, loading and unloading, we’re pretty much knocked out. On Monday, S. says he slept for twelve hours afterwards.
There was also cause for celebration at the highest political level, as Ukraine was granted EU candidate status on June 23. Russia, which “has nothing against Ukraine’s accession to the EU”, “welcomes” this decision with massive rocket attacks in many regions of Ukraine. As if one wanted to take not only the joy from the Ukrainians, but also as many lives as possible. In Cherkassy, where it was otherwise relatively quiet, an infrastructure object is hit, my friend M. sends me a photo of her father. There is one dead and several injured. My friend W. writes from Mykolaiv after the night raids, “We’re alive, don’t worry” – she’s written this sentence quite often in recent weeks. However, there are deaths there too. And when the shopping center in Kremenchuk is hit, bursts into flames and dozens of people are killed or injured, the Kremlin boss comments in his usual cynical way: “There was no act of terrorism there, no explosion … I know and we always show it, Guns are often hidden in neighborhoods, but we never shoot into the fields that easily.” The recording, released at the Caspian Summit by the Russian news agency MOW, is best saved if you want to keep your nerve. The man cannot articulate a single complex sentence structure, for whatever reason. I watch the video three times, also out of professional linguistic interest (sounds perverted, I know). I have only one word for this man who is supposed to represent a “world power”: pathetic.
Read more episodes of this column here.
As head of the Ukrainian-German cultural society in Czernowitz and founder of the Thought Roof Center, Oxana Matiychuk will receive the “Bridge Builder” award on July 3 at the 14th reception for expellees and refugees by the Bavarian SPD parliamentary group.