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10 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 2019 A Visit to an Orphanage by Oksana Malanchuk, Ph.D. Oksana Malanchuk in Donetsk Oblast on her way to the Petrovsk orphanage. Photographer: Brian McCormick. As a Fulbrighter living in Lviv, Ukraine , in 2017 – 201 8, I was privileged to be able to travel through- out the country during my stay . As a member of the UNWLA, an organization that has under take n charitable work for Ukraine as part of its mission, I sought to do some good while I was t here and met with our Ukrainian l iaison, Dr. Maria Furtak, who promptly arranged for a visit to a privately run or- phanage in the Dnipro area , a facility that cares for war orphans as well as abandoned children and those from dysfunctional families. The orphanage is located as far E ast as we could safely travel with- out en tering the war zone. The trip there was an eye - opener . We met interesting people on the long train rides , and I dis- covered ( contrary to opinion s I had heard ) that Dnipro is a lovely city. And much to my surprise, the orpha nage was better situated than I had im- agined. Dr. Furtak joined me on the trip , as did Brian McCormick, a fellow American living in Lviv on a fellowship to study Ukrainian. We first tried to fly from Lviv to Dnipro and learned that the route had been canc elled (no reason given). Then we thought we’d take a train to Kyiv and fly from there. Th is route takes an hour but would have cost us $600 (no good reason for th is either), so we opted to tak e two trains: one from Lviv to Kyiv (about 5 hours) and another from Kyiv to Dnipro (5.5 hours). It turned out to be an educational ex- perience . Most of the trains we took (there were four) were InterCity+ trains , which are quite mod - ern ; rather than the coupes one sees in most Euro- pean trains, the se have multiple passenger seating throughout the wagon as in most American trains. Brian found us seats available only at the end of the wagon , seats which faced other passengers across a small table and th us facilitated conve rsations. We met o ne young boy (no more than ten years of age ) who was traveling alone from Kyiv to Dnipro to stay with his grandmother for a week. He and his family were originally from Donetsk but had left because of the war and settled in Kyiv. He spoke Russian to me , and when I told him I only understood Ukrainian, he turned to his neighbors who also spoke Russian. But by the end of the trip, he was making a valiant effort to speak to me in Ukrainian. He also began an earnest attempt to speak English, e mploying a small dictionary he had. The boy’s seatmates were a young couple traveling from Kyiv to Dnipro . T he woman had uterine cancer and did not want to undergo chem- o therapy , and a firm in Dnipro offered a weekend of alternative treatment for cancer with pills and diet and exercise. Dr. Furtak , who is a radiation on- cologist , tried to forewarn the couple that this ther- apy would not really help but would just delay ef- fective treatment . She also gave the m her contact information so they could call for fu rther consulta- tion when they returned home . They were lovely people and spoke Russian with the young boy and Ukrainian with Dr. Furtak and with me , evidence of the bilingual nature of most people in today’s Ukraine, a phenomenon we experienced through- out o ur journey. We arrived in Dnipro in the early after - noon and were greeted by Dr. Furtak’s contact, Serhii, a man of about 45 who wore army camou- flage and called himself a volunteer. Serhii had made our hotel reservations and would be driving us to the orph anage in Donetsk oblast the follow- ing day, on his way to the front to deliver food and supplies to the volunteer fighters supporting the Ukrainian army. He offered to take us to the front
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