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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Children Like Poppies! A unique family from a unique village

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Well, there is no another village in Ukraine like Karpylivka in the Volyn region. It is a unique settlement with only large families. In Soviet times, the village had 27 mother-heroines, now there are only five, each having more than ten school-age children. And there is not a single family with less than three children. The one exception is Village Council Chairwoman Hanna Veremy. She has only two.

The streets of Karpylivka are full of children. The children here are as numerous as poppies. There are about a thousand of them, half of them school-age. But it might as well be said that there is no school, because what passes for one is housed in seven run-down hovels. Once then Deputy Premier Viktor Pynzenyk promised to help, and a foundation was laid but nothing on it. Zero. And where will this thousand children be educated in a few years when the hovels finally fall down?

There is one unique family living in this unique village. Sofiya Musiyivna and Yosyp Tykhonovych Fens have eighteen children. For such numerous family even housing is a problem. Five years ago the then President Leonid Kravchuk helped them, and they were given a new spacious house. But they are having a hard time now. The situation with the social guarantees needs no comments. Every day the children eat from eight to ten loaves of bread alone. And how much else they need!

“We couldn’t survive without humanitarka (humanitarian aid),” says Sofiya Fen. “They wear out clothes and footwear like they were on fire.”

Aware of the hardships of this family, the Ministry of the Family and Youth took care of the Fens and presented them with wheels, a Volkswagen automobile and RAF van, confiscated from smugglers at the Ivano-Frankivsk customs. But this is just crumbs. With real government help this extraordinary village could fit out a new school and found some sort of productive enterprise so that those who do not want to leave their native village need not live in poverty.

Photo by Mykola Zinchuk:

The Fens family with their autos

 

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