The last bus

Pinega region of Northern Russia is a place where anything has the potential to become “the last” in retrospect. Here’s a bus that suffered this fate.

A simple and bleak offspring of Pavlovo bus factory (PAZ), for decades it served as a key player in the fragile eco-system of villages, giving the people a semblance of freedom of movement. It operated several days a week and connected the district center with a dozen of villages located down the river. It allowed people to travel for such essential necessities as visiting a doctor, buying houseware and clothing, seeing a bank clerk or a lawyer, coming for a summer festival.

Not always the bus was able to reach the village itself. On this picture the passengers get off and walk over 2 km across the river and then up the hill to get home.

March 2009. Pirinem, 41 km from the district center Karpogory

A large timber enterprise was built in the area a few years ago. Instead of bringing improvement to the region, it only sucked out the last resources. The bus company that was in charge of public transportation, began providing services for the enterprise. Obviously, the timber magnate pays better than a bunch of starving seniors from the villages.

There is no bus for the villagers anymore. The public transportation is halted altogether. The majority of those who live in the villages don’t own a car, and their last resort when they need to go see a doctor is booking a taxi, but the prices are outrageous. For most people it takes 2-3 round trips to the district center to run out of monthly pension which is their only source of income.

Warming up after a chilling night

December, 2010. Kusogora, the final stop of the bus, 52 km away from the district center Karpogory

In my first several trips to Pinega I traveled by this bus a lot. Nikolay, the driver, recognized me a year after my previous trip and remembered where I need to get off. People often asked Nikolay to deliver something. On this picture he’s delivering from the district center a spare part for someone whose car broke down. Charging money for this service was out of question for Nikolay, of course. Nikolay was everyone’s friend.

March, 2009. Shotogorka, 33 km away from the district center Karpogory

December, 2010. Kusogora village, the final stop of the bus, 52 km away from the district center Karpogory

October, 2011. Near Shasta village, 45 km away from the district center Karpogory

March, 2009. Pirinem, 41 km away from the district center Karpogory

October, 2011. Near Shasta village, 45 km away from the district center Karpogory

October, 2011. Cheshegora village, 38 km away from the district center Karpogory

Nursed and being nursed

Among all the amazing people who get help from the JDC in the former Soviet Union there is an extraordinary category: nurses. They spent their lives helping others and then found themselves in need of nursing.

When I was a kid, I was under the impression that all healthcare workers are protected from any diseases by virtue of their miraculous profession. Later I realized that they are as vulnerable as anyone else. The ongoing COVID crisis showed that they are way more vulnerable, risking their lives on the front lines of their peaceful job.

I want to share with you several stories of the nurses that are currently under the JDC’s protection. These stories simply must be told to honor the heroes.

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Sonya

Kazakhstan, Almaty

On this picture from 2014 Sonya is 90 years old

“I experienced famine before the war, including Ukrainian Holodomor in 1930s, then the starvation of war, then famine again. During the war I was working as a diesel generator technician. I was the only woman there, but I could gear the generator although it required a lot of physical power. I was constantly hungry and weak. One day when I already felt like I gonna die of hunger, one woman who barely knew me, shared with me her potato. Just a half potato, but who knows, maybe it saved my life!

After the war I began working as a nurse. I had about ten addresses to visit all over the district each morning. When I saw a patient that beyond a medical procedure needed lighting a fire in a stove or bringing a bucket of water from a well, I didn’t think twice and always helped.”

Up to now Sonya, as well as many others from her generation, has special relations with food. She tries to eat as little as possible, always saving something for the future and for the others. “Bring me just a cup of boiling water, please” she asks a helper during the lunch at the JDC charity canteen.

Sonya lives alone in a tiny and shabby private house. She needs help all the time now. “Without a homecare worker, I’d already be dead”, she says. Even essential tasks such as opening a tin-can turn into a challenge for her.

Sonya has just one daughter who is also JDC client with a whole bunch of health issues. Sonya would love to have more kids but due to her husband’s injury they couldn’t have more children. “I didn’t leave my spouse although I was dreaming all the time about having more children. I don’t betray my friends.”

This resonates with a global idea behind JDC organization: not leaving friends behind.

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Katya

Ukraine, Odessa

Katya with her husband and daughter in 2016

One freezing night in December 2013 a kitchen in Katya’s tiny old flat caught fire. Her husband woke up to the heavy smell of smoke. He rushed into the kitchen and tried to extinguish the fire but failed. He managed to get his family out of the house, but got severe burns which took months to treat.

The morning came. Katya’s flat was destroyed, her family couldn’t live there anymore, her husband was in the hospital. Everything suddenly fell apart. What Katya did in this situation? She just headed to work! She is a nurse at a hospital, people were waiting for her there and she had to be there for them.

Katya didn’t tell her colleagues about the disaster. It was only after they noticed the smell of smoke coming from her that she told about the fire in her house. The hospital where she was working offered a shelter for Katya and her family, and they lived there for weeks.

Katya’s burnt out kitchen. Yes, this is a kitchen, there’s no mistake. This 6 sq.m. unit had kitchen, bathroom and toilet squeezed into it.

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Tatiana

Moldova, Chisinau

On this picture from 2016 Tatiana is 98 years old

It takes a while for Tatiana to notice me shouting her name from her backyard: she barely hears. It takes quite a while for her to get to the front door: she can barely walk. It takes a few more minutes to figure out how to light up her completely dark house: Tatiana is blind and never switches the lights on.

Her tiny private house is now her only friend, her only reminder of difficult but happy young years. She built it herself with her late husband. They put money aside for years to finish the house, but all they could afford were the cheapest materials, and now the house is falling apart. The floors are full of huge cracks, the roof leaks.

Tatiana is someone who dedicated herself to saving lives. She took part in two wars – with Finland in 1939 and World War II. She was a nurse who dragged under the fire countless wounded soldiers from the battlefields. After the war she was working as a nurse at a hospital, and kept saving lives until her retirement. All she got from the country for her heroic efforts and hard work is a pension of 66 USD a month. Without JDC financial support and home care she wouldn’t be able to survive.

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Perel

Ukraine, Zhitomir

On this picture from 2016 Perel is 86 years old

Everyone knows Perel in her town of Zhitomir: all her life she was working as a delivery nurse and these hands helped bringing thousands of people into this world.

This didn’t stop her anti-Semitic neighbors from cutting the old lonely lady off water communications. One day Perel found herself without running water and even toilet. This was a result of a renovation of the neighbors’ part of the house.

For Perel the absence of immediate access to water is not only humiliating, it’s a disaster: as a hereditary medical worker she’s used to keep everything perfectly clean. Now even visiting a toilet turns into a nightmare: she has to use another neighbor’s restroom, every time asking permission to enter. She has to go to the JDC office to take a shower.

Ironically, in exactly same part of the house where Perel lives, used to live famous Jewish poet Khaim Byalik in his childhood. His memorial plaque had to be taken off the building’s wall and put for storage in the local Jewish museum out of fears of anti-Semitic vandalism coming from Perel’s neighbors.

The lifeline for her is home care service that she gets from JDC. Perel has a great, dedicated homecare worker who readily helps with everything. Most importantly, this woman every single day brings her water in buckets. "The nearest stand-pipe is some 300-400 meters away" tells homecare worker, “Usually I go there 5-10 times a day: Perel needs water to wash herself at least a little bit, to cook, to clean the floor, to make some laundry. I'm lucky if the nearest stand-pipe is functioning but often it’s broken, and then I have to go to the next one which is a kilometre away."

The only source of water is the bucket filled for Perel by a homecare worker.

As Perel tells about her life, she often gets back to the topic of JDC: this organization is now nursing her just the way she used to nurse her patients, providing support, confidence and loving care.

"It begins with a security guard who opens the front door of the office. He is so nice! I remember, I’d been sick for a while. After I recovered and came over to JDC, this young man asked me if I were feeling better! Turned out, he was aware of my illness! Now you understand the degree of attention we receive there? It's big deal! When I come there, I feel that I'm welcomed. I'm very sensitive to such matters. JDC is my real second home, and very cozy one."

A woman that saved lives

"I stay strong when I tell my wartime story. But afterwards, as I stay on my own, I lay down and cry for hours."

Sofia Yarovaya is Righteous among the nations. She went through all the horrors of war, amplified by hiding Jewish neighbors in the very center of Nazi-occupied Kyiv (Ukraine).

Sofia was in her teens during the war. One day her mother took her own kids and the Jewish kids who were hiding in their house and went directly to the Nazi commandant's office. She told the commandant that she was the mother to all these children, and they all are Ukrainian, just some of them lost their documents. "There was a polizei sitting in the corner. He chuckled as my mom was telling this made-up story but didn't say anything, and the commandant issued the documents," remembers Sofia.

Sofia's secret job during the war was to help Soviet war prisoners escape from the trains upon arrival at Kyiv railway station. Apparently, she was risking her life every minute.

It takes several hours for Sofia to tell her story. She remembers vividly every small detail of those distant days, and she feels horrified again. "I'm not gonna tell the story anymore, it's too hard," promises Sofia to herself.

She used to be a teacher all her life and up to now she is full of dignity and strength. 47 former students, among others, attended her 90th anniversary in 2016.

A Man and a Cactus

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Very silent, small flat on the outskirts of Almaty, Kazakhstan. It’s full of daylight pouring through the windows. This is where Viktor lives. The silence reminds him about his solitude, and the light he cannot appreciate due to poor eyesight.

Viktor’s father used to be a “people’s commissar” (minister) of finances of Kazakhstan in the young Soviet Union and in those years that would only mean that he had little chances to survive Stalin’s turmoil and rotations. Most of his colleagues were imprisoned or murdered in Gulag, and suicides were very common among the high-ranked officers who were literally scared to death of being arrested. Moisei, Viktor’s father, was waiting for his turn to hear a knock on his own door. Somehow, it didn’t happen, the family survived, but Moisei’s health was broken, he died young.

Viktor worked hard to excel at the profession of his passion: geology. Most of his life he was researching uranium reserves of USSR. He was discovering what later had to become uranium diggings, highly dangerous places to work at. Viktor was so dedicated to his job that he never paid attention to the danger: “It’s mostly safe to be around uranium if you work properly”. He has met people who didn’t behave well and paid with their lives: “I’ve met workers who would lick uranium just of curiosity, I guess. They died very quickly”.

Viktor contradicts a common belief that radioactive diggings were hiring prisoners: “The conditions at uranium diggings were too good, so the prisoners were not allowed to get jobs there. The workers were receiving decent nutrition and milk every day!”

It was easy to deny any dangers of radiation-related work until they began taking toll on Viktor’s own health.

In 1979 he had to undergo a lung surgery, and that marked the beginning of the most difficult period in his life. His son tragically dies in an accident. After the surgery Viktor’s wife refuses to keep living with him and applies for a divorce. The next 4 years Viktor spends mostly in the hospitals trying to recover his health on his own. In the past few years glaucoma evolved, Viktor has almost lost his eyesight.

Viktor lives alone for over 40 years now. His daughter rarely comes to see him, and there are no other family members to offer him attention and care. Luckily, there is homecare service provided by Hesed, a Jewish charity organization. It plays a huge role in Viktor’s life, especially after his eyesight deteriorated. He can’t be thankful enough for this help.

In a long-standing fight with loneliness Viktor was able to find a way of escaping: he went for cactus breeding. He became an expert in this field and an active member of a national cactus-breeding club. He can talk about cacti for hours. Taking care of them makes him busy day in and day out.

The balcony is full of with cacti of all shapes.

Despite a brilliant career, Viktor is leading an extremely modest life. There’s no furniture in his house younger than 30-40 years old. He spends a lot on medicines in order to support status quo of his health.  

Viktor is a very quiet person who never complains. As much as he can, he tries to get everything done himself. For example, he refuses from help with laundry, making it with his own hands, including hanging it to dry. That’s just how he is used to live: “I was able to do and fix anything in the house. But now it became a catastrophe – I can’t even fit a screwdriver into a screw!”

After visits like this I always imagine how a door gets closed behind me and people like Viktor stay one on one with their solitude, blindness, illnesses. With silence and light that are not bringing joy.