Searching for an elusive part....

We do seem to have had some bad luck with our experience of aid vans. But we have good luck, too. This morning we decided to take the van to our nearest garage to see if the intermittent, but highly annoying, bleeping sound, and the inside lights coming on and off, could be fixed. The garage was shut; however, just as we were about to leave, a handful of mechanics turned up. None spoke English but the young soldier guarding the building next door did. The garage did not have the required part so one of the mechanics rang a parts place who said that, if they had the component, they would provide it free of charge as we are delivering humanitarian aid. 

To cut a not very interesting story short, we ended up driving for nearly 4 hours, south to north of Lviv, to four further car parts places, until, finally, someone had the component we needed. The amazing thing is that the message about us being volunteer drivers must have, somehow, been communicated down the line of places we visited. Because we were not charged for the component, which Bob thought would cost about £100 in the UK.
 
We are very happy with the news that the city of Kherson has been liberated by the Ukrainian army. After an 8-month occupation by Russia, it's hard to imagine what the remaining residents (70-80,000 out of a pre-war population of 320,000) have gone through and are still going through. Humanitarian aid is beginning to arrive for people who lack the basics of water, medicine, food and electricity.

Our new volunteer acquaintance from Poland, who we only met yesterday, took an important load of medical equipment to a hospital in the east today. We only told him about this aid load yesterday and he was willing to change his plans to take it, rather than have his van inactive for a week. Some people have a lot of words and do nothing....others have few words and just do.

If you can help, please donate in the usual way:

1. Open PayPal and, when asked for name of payee or email, enter trawden4ukraine@hotmail.com. 

2. Use the collection box in Trawden community shop. 

Thank you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Third Christmas of the War.

Image
I remember when we first went to Ukraine, we thought we'd better hurry up and get over there to help before the war finished, and there'd be nothing for us to do. How naïve were we? The situation in Ukraine at present has got even worse, especially in the areas in close contact with the Russian forces, although with the constant Shahed and missile attacks nowhere is safe. Kherson has become particularly difficult, and delivering aid there is a direct threat to life. Any vehicle or person can be targeted by Russian small killer drones. This week, a vehicle that is used to deliver aid that we have sometimes used, was attacked and badly damaged beyond repair. Miraculously, the driver, a person I know survived but suffered injuries.  The occupants of a bus were not so fortunate. It was attacked, 3 people died and several more injured. It's really terrifying.  What's really sick is that the Russian's then post o...
Read more

The killing goes on.

Image
Time diminishes things. News cycles bring new, more pressing concerns. But the war here in Ukraine grinds on, with deaths a daily occurrence. The killing seems to have become more incideous and heartless.This weekend in Kherson, delivering aid, under the fairly constant sound of artillery and drone attacks, I heard and saw the inhumanity of this senseless war. There is now a real tangible fear about going out in your car in Kherson. Over the last few months, individual cars have been targeted by Russian drones. These carry small bombs or grenade type munitions. . A car is targeted. An initial bomb dropped. The man realises he's  being targeted and tries to drive away at high speed. He then stops suddenly, hoping to get away. Opens his door to run away, but about two metres away from the car a small bomb explodes. With the door open, nothing seems to happen, then as in slow motion, a man falls from the driver's seat onto the road. Dead. It...
Read more

Krakow to Lviv

Image
We left Krakow at 3am because we had heard that there have been up to 3 hour waits on the Poland-Ukraine border. The balance has changed to more people returning to Ukraine (to the relatively safe western Lviv region) than leaving Ukraine. As it happened, we drove through the fairly haphazard border controls with no hold up. The first thing we noticed on the Ukrainian side were miles (literally) of lorries lining the side of the highway, which was only 2 lanes so made for fairly scary driving. On the Polish side was an equally long line of parked cars, waiting to be sold. We also noticed more potholes on Ukrainian roads than even East Lancashire! The purpose of our visit to Ukraine is 2-fold: firstly, we drove our friend, Romana, home to Lviv (in her car) with her 4-year-old daughter, as she decided against coming to England in order to be with her husband and family. Secondly, w...
Read more