Rural survival prescription: rely on yourself!
An old joke has it that a peasant annually encounters four obstacles: winter, spring, summer, and fall. But, judging by the intensity of debates on rural problems at various levels of government, the crisis comes precisely in the spring, as does the period of common illnesses. After studying the gloomy statistics (over the past decade, 335 villages have been left without schools; 2,500 without daycare facilities; 2,000 without leisure and entertainment facilities; 287 without hospitals; and 8,000 are no longer able to develop further), The Day’s journalists decided to see this with their own eyes and have an informal chat with villagers. The more so that the outskirts of the eternally improved capital far from always take top place in rating the quality of rural life.
However, instead of seeing people bearing the seal of pathological pessimism on their faces, padlocks on such “strategically- important facilities” as kindergartens, schools, stores, and hospitals, and total ruin, we came across smiling and energetic working people. No, please don’t think that we saw neat cottages with lawns and fountains in courtyards in the villages of Rudnia- Talske, Leonivka and Blydcha, Ivankiv district. These places know only too well what survival is: even if you sum up the positive aspects of all the four villages, you will not see a picture of complete social prosperity. Yet, the villagers have approached Western standards at least in that almost all of them are convinced that their well-being is in their own hands.
On Easter eve, we met Rudnia Talske resident Hryhory Leshchenko, who was working, in his words, like a honeybee. “No time for chat now,” he said curtly, “There’s a holiday coming, so I won’t be able to work — and you see how much I still have to do.” Hryhory is sure that bread should be eaten with fatback. To have the latter, you must not lose even a minute: if you want your pigs to feel good, you must allow them drink ten buckets of water every day. If you don’t want to get laid up with springtime vitamin deficiency, move around and place some vessels under the birch trees to collect their sap. If you want to eat good meals and keep your house warm, go and cut some firewood... “You can’t just imagine how long we’ve been demanding that gas be supplied to the village,” Hryhory says in a burst of emotion, trying at the same time to calm the horses before harrowing the soil. “There are also problems with water. We take it from a well. Thank God, there have been no outbreaks of disease, but still, when you hear all the time about what could happen, you’re frightened. But it’s OK, we’re alive and happy. You know the saying: knock and they’ll open the door. That’s how to do things — work and you’ll get everything.”
Hryhory was not the only one who shunned longwinded talks on the eve of the feast. Nadiya Parkhomenko, 61, was briskly planting potatoes at the adjacent plot of land. By contrast, her womanly tale sounded far more pessimistic. “Look,” she said without stopping her work, “I’ve been given 50 acres. Can I possibly work them by myself alone, when my bones and heart ache? And there’s nobody to help me: my mother’s bedridden, and my sons are dead.” Seeing my photo camera, a neighbor of hers buried her face in her hands and turned away. “The point is that I’m a teacher,” she says, “and you know what my pupils will think of me if they see me doing this.”
Residents of neighboring Leonivka showed no enthusiasm, either, about the visitors’ interest in their life. “Going to write something bad?” they kept asking suspiciously. “Don’t you see we’re working, living well, and don’t complain?”
Natalia Kononenko, in charge of the first-aid and obstetrics facility, began to moan, “Why on earth have you come here? Our new medical room is still under construction... (as we learned, for five years on end — Author). And, in general, there’s nothing to look at: people die, leaving their houses desolate and eventually ruined.”
The statistics the medic showed are literally stunning: the demographic crisis emerged in its true colors. Out of Leonivka’s 163 residents, only 12 are children. The question, “When did you last deliver a baby here?” clearly puzzled Natalia.
“Maybe three years ago or even before...,” she hesitated to reply. Otherwise, there is a lot work to do here. Almost every resident suffers from a host of ailments from old age. Naturally, Natalia is only supposed to offer first aid if necessary; in other cases she calls an ambulance by the village’s only telephone installed at the forestry office or refers the patient to the district hospital. “But getting there is quite a problem,” the patients cut in. “The buses — well, minibuses — go to Ivankiv very seldom and cannot take in all those who wish to go, i.e., almost the whole village.”
When we came to Talske, we naturally found a guide, a repository of local information and a real local patriot. In a matter of a few minutes, Anton told us that his lady neighbors had twice stolen his moonshine distilling apparatus, that a purebred gypsy Borys Mykolayovych lives here, that some actors had recently come here but found no place to perform, so people put tables right on the street, and the touring Thespians had to give a concert then and there. Incidentally, local infrastructure is a sore point for Talske residents: the library had to be closed (there is nobody to keep it), the village club building was literally cannibalized. “Of course, you can go on a binge,” Anton says, “but you can also draw birch-tree sap, help the foresters and, if you have a cow, sell milk and get an additional 100- 200 hryvnias a month. Look, in some villages, all the young people leave in search of jobs, but what’s the use of taking such a risk? It’s far better and reliable to work here — then the villages will stop dying out. You just go to Blydcha and see the result of mismanagement: a gigantic farm turned into a dump.”
Indeed, Blydcha at first gave a really disheartening impression. Local residents said that what once was the district’s largest farming business began to crumble with the onset of independence. What is now left of that business is a heap of metal and bricks. On the other hand, the villagers look enthusiastic and can boast of certain comforts. First, they enjoy the unheard-of luxury of telephone in every other home; secondly, there is a school well manned and furnished with all teaching aids.
By contrast to Leonivka (only white spots on the walls, where the blackboard once hung, and the floor strewn with fragments of a school timetable to remind you that there was once a school here), the Blydcha people are indeed proud of their educational institution. Many of its graduates have received a higher education in Kyiv and have now gone places. Yet, it would be wrong to say that the current generation of pupils is successful. Classes are attended by five or six children, with the number of first- graders on a steady decline with each passing year. “But the main thing is not to fall into despair!” we heard again from the villagers. “For the point is not in whether or not you’re lucky,” says Nina Yakovenko, “but in whether or not you have hands to work with... Everything will come in time.”
