“You will live”

They gathered in Potocki Palace in Lviv to mark the 15th anniversary of Piet Spijkers’s work in Ukraine. It was a low-key but very heartwarming reception, where many words of gratitude were expressed and all kinds of symbolic gifts were presented. But what can a modest doctor in charge of a children’s hospital ward present to a wealthy Dutchman whose ancestors founded a factory and owned buildings? Perhaps he could simply give a part of his heart. The gift ended up being an album containing 300 photographs of all the children who were saved thanks to Piet Spijkers. His work involved selecting and bringing anti-cancer drugs to the children in his care. When Spijkers accepted the album, he pressed it to his heart, and everyone saw that for him this was a priceless gift. Countless times he had sat by the bedside of cancer-afflicted children, together with their mothers, doing his best to comfort those who had benefited from the drugs and those who did not, hiding his tears and sometimes failing.

NOT A MINUTE LATE

Piet Spijkers is not a sentimental man. He is a cordial person but he will blow his top when he is doing renovations somewhere and the director of this institution is a shoddy worker or, worse, an embezzler. There are many people with whom Spijkers has stopped dealing. So those who have worked with him for years are afraid to be even a minute late for a meeting with him, let alone fail to produce financial reports on time.

Oleksandr Mindiuk, director of the regional specialized children’s clinic, is proud of the fact that he has known Spijkers longer than anyone else. Today the doctors in various Ukrainian clinics, including Mindiuk’s, associate Holland with Spijkers, not with the royal family or Dutch tulips.

What did this Dutchman do for the hospital? He computerized it and helped set up an information center, one of only a handful of Ukraine’s medical institutions. He put things in order at the resuscitation and therapy wards and in the playrooms. He purchased various medical appliances and ultrasound equipment. He brought over a unique device for laser surgery, worth $125,000, similar to the one in a Kyiv private clinic. He did all this without unnecessary fanfare and fuss.

I remember journalists fussing a few years ago over a CT scanner that Lviv’s City Council had bought for the emergency hospital. “Funds have almost been raised, the equipment has already been purchased and is on the way here!” journalists blared in almost every new report. That scanner immediately broke down, working when “it felt like it.” Here I want to emphasize the fact that anything can be hyped if somebody stands to gain. On the other hand, you can do your job quietly, if duty, not the waves of an inexistent sea, is on your mind.

“The main thing that Spijkers is doing,” says Mindiuk, “is training the medical staff. After a new doctor comes to work for us, within six months he goes to Holland for professional upgrading. Spijkers also takes care of the doctors’ health: we have protective devices against hazardous radiation not only for the patients but also for the staff. Another thing: he helped us through the hardest times of the early 1990s, when we were grappling with hardship and penury.”

A WALTZ FOR HEARING-IMPAIRED PEOPLE

The staff and patients of the children’s specialized clinic were the first to meet this wonderful Dutchman on that proud day when he arrived in Ukraine. The next to meet him were the doctors and patients of a boarding school for deaf and hearing-impaired children. This institution looked shabby at the time. The leaking roof, as well as everything else, needed a major overhaul. Also in need of radical revision was the educational system for children who find it difficult to adapt to the outside world, which lacks such things as mercy.

On the day Piet Spijkers was honored, two girls danced at Potocki Palace. They expressed the song lyrics through gestures and moved to the rhythm of the loud music. Two other Dutch guests accompanying Spijkers were watching the show attentively, if not coolly and indifferently. When he noticed this, he said something, and the guests’ eyes became more rounded and their faces livened up. Spijkers cannot stand it when somebody does not admire the way his pupils dance. He knows only too well that it is practically impossible to teach the deaf to dance because they can rarely synchronize their steps with the melody.

But these children were doing just that, thanks to their teachers’ concerted efforts and computer programs that helped these girls discover other “musical” colors, which significantly helped them to feel the music.

Bohdana BACHUN, vice-principal of the special boarding school, acknowledged that Spijkers’s arrival breathed new life into their institution. “Everything has changed here — from the facade, the roof, and the shower room, to the computer class, one of the first in Lviv oblast. Although it is very important that the classrooms and bedrooms were renovated, even more important is the new approach to the schooling and upbringing of deaf and hearing- impaired children, as well as understanding the need for early diagnostics and the resulting possibility of social adaptation.”

“The Matra project, which Spijkers launched to change the approaches of teachers who work with deaf children, began at two boarding schools. Now the project embraces six cities: Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Kirovohrad, Luhansk, Khust, and Lviv. The Dutch Institute for the Deaf, a world leader, became our patron, and this opened up new horizons for Ukrainian educators. Now that we have completed a retraining course in Holland, we are not only armed with state-of-the-art techniques but are also able to develop our own, national, experience. This problem-solving center has really helped us adopt modern approaches. Believe me, if it were not for Spijkers, we would not have found out about them for many more years,” Bachun said.

RECREATION, DUTCH STYLE

Similar statements can be made by the staff of an orphanage located in the village of Kornalovychi in Sambir raion, which is home to 50 orphaned children and 50 children whose mothers whose parental rights have been terminated, a children’s perinatal center, and a Lviv-based children’s eco-nature center where street children who are not used to parental care spend their after-school hours. Many of them were saved from harmful pastimes and some from prison. The pupils have had their rooms renovated and been presented with computers and a minibus. They also go vacationing in the Carpathians every summer.

The summer camps are organized on condition that recreation is combined with useful activities. So the kids not only relax and enjoy hearty meals but also work for a few hours in the national park, pruning trees and shrubs. This was a condition set by Spijkers, and it is being scrupulously observed.

At the children’s picture gallery talented children paint and exhibit their works here, also thanks to Spijkers; they are developing their God-given gifts.

Most people in this situation would be resting on their laurels, thinking proudly that they have already done so much. But Spijkers is not one of them. He has started a new venture, purchasing the former House of Schoolchildren in Hrebeniv to launch a multi-profile project. Aware that children need serious rehabilitation after chemotherapy, he came to the conclusion that they can recover their strength and health here, breathing the clean air of the Carpathians. This health center with an area of 400 sq. m. is a place where medical personnel will be upgrading their skills, because it is impossible to send everyone abroad. It is much more productive to invite experts to Ukraine, where they will be providing expertise and modern technologies. At the same time, the young environmentalists will be able to relax in the summer and do some work in outlying areas.

“I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH BUREAUCRATS”

I interviewed Spijkers at the very beginning of his charitable work in Ukraine. At the time he was a prosperous Dutch businessman, who was combining philanthropy in Lviv and entrepreneurship in Holland. It was not just his own money that he was investing in Ukrainian projects. He also raised funds among his acquaintances and friends. Today, the foundation Help the Children of Ukraine created by Spijkers raises money in the Netherlands and other European countries. He has sold his business. His children, who all have their own businesses that do not eat up all their time and effort, decided that it was too much trouble to run their father’s factory.

After a while, Spijkers could no longer maintain the continuous dichotomy of being in Ukraine, but always worrying about his business in Holland, and vice versa. So he chose Ukraine, with all its problems, pains, and troubles, as well as joys, such as the album of saved children or the deaf girl, who dances to the music of Oksana Bilozir, who sings, “But I didn’t bow, I was reborn from the earth.” Piet claps his hands, repeats her step, and nods with pleasure, as if he understands every word. Sometimes it seems as though he understands more than he lets on. Perhaps that is why he cannot leave Ukraine.

“What brought you to Ukraine?”

“My interests have always included icon painting (I also paint icons) and Byzantine-rite churches. When religion began to revive in Ukraine, I was asked if I would like to go. So I went without even suspecting that I would ‘get stuck here up to my neck.’ One day a priest friend of mine and I decided to visit a hospital (we had no far-reaching plans) — it was called Chornobylska — and I was told that it was not the worst children’s hospital. What impression did it make on me? Please, don’t be offended, but I would not leave my dog there, let alone my own child.

“At first I was helping children with leukemia within the framework of a five-year project. After five years passed, I saw that I had done catastrophically little! So I continued to work for another 10 years. But I wasn’t satisfied with the results even after 10 years. Now I know that I will be working here for as long as I can.”

“Are you still not satisfied?”

“Of course, I see progress, but so much still needs to be done that I have to stay in Ukraine far longer than my family would like me to. My family and I have to make a certain effort and reconcile ourselves to the fact that I must try hard to find time to be in contact with my daughters and grandsons. The result is that my wife waits for me to come home as if I were a guest, and I can only come twice a year for a 10-day rest.”

“What is the approximate amount of the donations you have made to Ukraine?”

“I won’t say this because once I begin to think about this I feel like shouting and stamping my feet. It’s terrible to say how much money simply vanished into thin air. Now I tend to work directly with people. I don’t want to deal with bureaucrats, although sometimes I have to. Let me give you an example: a project for AIDS patients. This was a very serious project. I got in touch with our foreign minister, who contacted yours — it was Tarasiuk at the time. But oddly enough, Mr. Tarasiuk did not show any interest — we will never know why — even though a handsome amount of money — a million euros — had already been remitted. In Lviv, the then chief of the oblast public health department did not even deign to receive me. I still don’t know where these million euros went. And do you think this was an isolated case?

“But the point is not just money. In all these years no mayor has come to see me or invited me to visit him in order to pay tribute to my efforts at least in this way. Look, I am a self-sufficient and successful person, but I can’t understand certain things. When Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna Chumachenko recently visited Holland, the Queen of the Netherlands arranged a reception for all the VIPs in our country. I was also there. We had our pictures taken, and I was wearing a medal that Queen Beatrix awarded me for helping Ukraine. But President Yushchenko did not note any of these efforts (not just mine but also those of a great number of other individuals) either in his speech or in private conversation. No, I can’t understand this at all: was it because the president was not aware of this? If so, then what kind of assistants does he have? Or because there is no value to this aid?”

“Could you explain why you are still doing this?”

“Because I am healthy and happy, and because my children are also happy and healthy. But quite a few people are deprived of health and happiness, and I simply must help them. I do this not for the sake of honors (I have lived too long and seen too much to care about this) but for the sake of my heart. I fully agree with Ray Bradbury, who says: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies: a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden painted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you are there.”