A slow trundle back to Lviv

....given that we are trying to ensure no further damage to the van, we are taking it very slowly until we get it to the garage tomorrow. Which means a lot of hours in the van. 

Still, we were able to drop some aid to a town on our route back. A pastor and his wife organise a small warehouse and then distribute aid to the local community. They kindly invited us to have lunch at their home. We discussed how we can best help, but unfortunately there is a level of bureaucracy that they have to overcome to be able to access aid stored in a large warehouse in Lviv.

We also realised how many of the small organisations who help to deliver aid in Ukraine lead a hand to mouth existence themselves. One of our colleagues spent time on Facebook and Twitter in order to buy his next tank of diesel. 

And what's truly dispiriting, you never see on the road the big organisations who get all the donations - Red Cross.... UN....never seen a van. And yet they get the big donations.

And this is but an observation. There seem to be far fewer aid vans on the road now. We have never met or passed another English van on our travels. 

On another sad note are the number of stray dogs here and how many we see, dead at the side of the road, run over. There's nothing much we can do, but one of the things often asked is if we could bring pet food on the next aid run. We will try to do that.

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