Not a village… a museum

There is sand up to one’s knees in the streets, ancient wooden houses, cattlesheds and cellars that are still thatched. One can get there along a twisted, unchartered forest road. In Svalovychi time seems to have stopped somewhere before the last century. Perhaps there are no more villages like this in Ukraine: being inhabited, it is a sort of open-air museum. People still live here. If six years ago there were 65 of them, at present there are less than forty.

Before us a glacier, the plague, Germans, Gypsies, red partisans, and numerous tourists from Europe and Ukraine visited Svalovychi. My old acquaintance from Svalovychi, 75-year old Sofia Trush, has been persistently inviting me to rest at her place for seven and a half years already, but I’m somehow scared by the famous Svalovychi mosquitoes. She told me that this year the employees of the National Natural Park “Prypyat-Stokhid” went around the village but didn’t find anyone who would cook a real Ukrainian borshch for the Poles. Since her son works in this structure, Sofia had to help him and go to the stove herself, despite her suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which has plagued her in recent years.

Given that there were many Poles, she had to cook two big saucepans. Yet they finished everything.

“How they were eating my borshch!” she is still wagging her head remembering it with amazement.

When the guests left, the woman found a 100-hryvnia bill on the table. She says the Poles put the money and quickly left the house.

“I just wanted to treat them with borshch so they have fond memories of Volyn!”

After the tourists from the neighboring country came, enjoyed Svalovychi, and left, Zosia treated another group of Poles for the whole week: with borshch and mushrooms, pampushky [a donut-like pastry – Ed.] and potato pancakes. At present the National Natural Park “Prypyat-Stokhid” has its mansion in Svalovychi as well — they bought one of the village houses on the Prypyat riverside for this. The problem of feeding tourists is still topical. There are no young hostesses here — the age of Svalovychi residents currently living here is 70 and more.

Svalovychi inherited its unique relief from a glacier. It also left sand dunes, which buried numerous people’s vegetable gardens long ago, and at present threaten to seize the village entirely, occupying new territories every year. During the World War I the plague destroyed the village, and in the World War II it was burnt by Germans who suspected the locals of connections with red partisans, who also visited these backwoods. The appearance of Gypsies, who several times impudently robbed trustful Svalovychi residents, was a shock. Galoshes [big rubber boots – Ed.] are considered one of the major civilizational achievements, because before that they wore only bast shoes. In my opinion, the last statement is just a cruel joke because “that government,” as Svalovychi residents now call the Soviet government, tried to destroy the quaint Volhynian nature of village. Electricity lines run through the fo­rest, about 10 kilometers from the crossroads: on the right hand there is Khotsun, a village with a village council, and to the left lies Svalovychi. There was also a primary school, a good club, and a first-aid station. A collective farm brigade functioned here. They caught fish for “the reserves of the nation,” both the Prypyat and Stokhid were abundant in it.

The director of the Volyn Regional State Archives Volodymyr Hyka and a worker of the regional department of education Tetiana Cherednychenko (one of Zosia’s daughters) are natives of Svalovychi. Hyka’s sister and her husband also live in the village; he tries to spend every vacation in Svalovychi. Just like Tetiana, he believes the reason for the village’s decline lies in the absence of a good road to get here. He remembers that during bad weather a tractor had to pull a truck full of people, so it took half a day to get to the raion center, which is not so far.

“People used to build houses here,” remembers Tetiana. “Before the war there were three hundred houses in the village! When I went to school, there were 18 students, and there were years when 40 students studied in the primary school. But after the fourth grade we had to attend a school in Buchyn.”

Buchyn is 5 kilometers by boat one way, and 5 kilometers back. Tetiana herself twice fell out of the boat and almost drowned. In winter they went to school on foot over the ice. When it got very difficult, they settled in a boarding school, and soon parents sent her to study to a boarding school in Lutsk together with her brother, just like the parents of many Svalovychi students.

Several years ago one of the heads of the Liubeshiv raion (now deceased) organized an excursion for journalists. We were shown the tourist attractions of the district, from which, as our guide explained, Ukraine begins. We were at the famous Bile Ozero (White Lake), we were amazed by the harvest of potatoes of high quality in Sedlyshche, and we saw that in the raion center itself there are many interesting things, even for highly sophisticated tourists. And then we were taken by motorboat down the Stokhid and Prypyat, which meet there, from the Lubiaz Lake to Svalovychi. We returned in the evening. The bus driver was not familiar with the peculiarities of the local roads (entirely covered by sand) and got stuck. We got out of the bus onto this sand and were buried to the knees. And we froze seeing the moon, which seemed to be larger than in Lutsk and much closer to us. And stars were really brighter.

The magic of this remote Volhynian village certainly exists, because the so-called Svalovychi dachas, a forest area near the village, is a “Promised Land” for botanists and zoologists, with ancient plants growing there. It is a good ground to fish and hunt. But Svalovychi is hardly suitable for permanent residence. So the last locals will live out their days, and that will be it.

Zosia is leading me to her house, which stands just on the riverside of the Prypyat. Actually, the only street of Svalovychi stretches along the river, only some houses “ran away” to the side. In the past she was a prominent… fisher. I remember her saying that after the stroke she could not hold a paddle in her hands, but the wish to catch fish (not for food, but for the very process) made her go anyway from time to time. The big pictures she embroidered, bright embroidered towels and curtains, decorate a lonely but tidy and thoroughly cleaned woman’s dwelling. In a small bedroom there is a surprising portrait on the wall. The Gioconda, so unexpected in these backwoods.

At present, foreign tourists from Germany or Poland visit this area the most. Near Zosia’s house, an entrepreneur bought the building of a former school with a well covered by birch bark in the yard. The atmosphere enchants foreigners, they like to sit nearby at the long wooden table the owner made. But the river is overgrown, because with “that government” boats were going from Svalovychi to as far as Pinsk, where a lot of natives of this Volyn area live. Perhaps Svalovychi is called so because there was a dump of timber there? Volyn wood was transported to Pinsk by barge, at the same time cleaning the river bed, which now is overgrown with reeds. At present there is only one state institution in the village, a first-aid station. But the physician comes from the neighboring village of Khotsun, which is far beyond the woods. The village council has recently sold another good building, which should be replaced by a dacha. People willingly buy houses in the village, there was a time when they cost a lot even in dollars. It is difficult to find such a pristine corner of wild nature in Ukraine. So not bast shoes but satellite antennas became signs of civilization, which children living in Kyiv, Moscow or Saint Petersburg buy for their lonely mothers.