Power rationing is good for improving your own time management. One becomes effective in getting things done like never before. “Not a single time management seminar could teach me skills like the local power company did with their emergency shutdown plan,” is the common joke. Feelings of happiness are generated that arise, for example, in the last few minutes and seconds, when you just manage to wash off that one pot under the running water, or yourself in the shower, or when you have finished writing a last sentence in the e-mail , before it softly “clicks” and all the electrons come to a standstill.
However, in the past few weeks I have had many more reasons to feel happy, and these are mainly thanks to donors from Germany, who make many things possible. Donations in kind and money create moments of light, be it through the Christmas presents that we have purchased from the funds of the aid organization “Schüler Helfen Leben” and given to several children’s homes in the region as well as to more than fifty families who have fled the city, or through a private donation of clothing that goes to Novoselytsia and is distributed there by volunteer A. “Aid goods rarely reach us here, and there are almost five hundred internally displaced people in the small district town, many mothers with children,” says A., who was born in Donetsk and works for the aid organization Rokada.
And sometimes stories come about that work like small miracles and confirm my childish belief that the universe can hear us if we articulate our wishes correctly at the right moment. A new friend of mine, V. from the Donetsk region, now lives with her husband and their nine-year-old son in the village of Velykyj Kuchuriw near Chernivtsi and works as a dermatologist in the outpatient day care center. V. keeps sending photos of her work, which admittedly have a somewhat disturbing effect on me, because various inflammations, pus wounds and other skin changes are visually unattractive. But I can feel that V. is passionate about her job, she also writes short explanations of the symptoms and once also the story of why she became a dermatologist.
V. does not have its own protective equipment, although he works as a fireman
One afternoon she sends me a photo of a dermatoscope and asks if it is possible to get one used in Germany. All her instruments stayed in Wolnowacha, where she used to work, but now the “Russian world” has moved in and ruined everything in her practice. I intend to address this question to the person in Germany who will write to me next – if I intuitively think they are suitable for such a request. Less than an hour later, the request was forwarded to Professor Almut Hille from the Free University of Berlin. And: A few weeks later, two literary scholars, that is us, actually, manage to amaze V. with joy.
Networking shows its effect. In the family or circle of acquaintances there is always someone who knows someone who knows their way around. For V. and her husband it is a double surprise: Another friend from Lübeck, Ewa Buchholz, and her brother from Poland made sure that V’s husband M. got protective clothing for his work with the fire brigade. He doesn’t have one of his own here, although he works as a fireman. This is possible because I talk about the need without knowing that Ewa’s brother is also a firefighter.
The clothing and the instrument along with many other supplies are brought from Germany by colleagues S. and T. The handover takes place in the yard of the student residence, where we accompany the representatives of a Romanian aid organization for a meeting with our “university” internally displaced persons. V. and M. seem quite perplexed, they can’t really believe it. The protective clothing is quickly unpacked and inspected, we think it should fit; V. carefully opens the packaging, the dermatoscope is new, she has never had one like this before. “Ask Google if you don’t know something,” advises S. The son in the car gets a bar of chocolate. Then we have to go. V. later wrote enthusiastically: “It’s a great device.” And the photo of M. in full body armor is proof that it fits him like a glove. “Sometimes small miracles do happen,” I write back to V. in response to her wordy thank-you message.
Read more episodes of this column here.