A day not accordingly to plan ....two...

You really can't plan effectively in a country at war... there are too many variables....so after 9 hours of driving, together with our Polish friends and drivers, we arrived with our 3 vans in a village about 30 miles south of Kharkiv. Kharkiv was a city in darkness. We saw nothing but figures in the darkness, some with torches, some with phones. Some apartments lit by candles.
On the way we dropped off some firemen's fire protection suits, or as our wonderful Polish friend, Tomasz, calls them...sweets. These items of aid came from Sweden. However, along the way we we "lost" one vehicle to human and engine problems. This was to cause a lot of discussion later in the day.

We spent the night in this village south of Kharkiv, with the parents of Anna, a Ukrainian,  who is living in our home in Trawden. It seems really difficult to process this situation!! The kindness and consideration that we were afforded was amazing. We sat round a table with strangers. And then they weren't. They took us into their home. ..,..and literally gave us a feast. Wonderful home-made food. Plenty of discussion.
Exhausted at the end of a day,  still trying to work out where and how best to share out the aid, now that we were a van down.  At midnight we came up with a solution. It would involve part unloading and repacking the van at 6am...

We found ourselves sharing the living room with our Polish friends in 2 sofa beds, acting as the bedroom for the night....a tad cosy...3 snorers and Fiona. Fiona said that this was not the retirement plan she had envisaged.

This blog is from yesterday, as we were too tired to do it yesterday.


Comments

  1. Franklinatsea31 January 2023 at 07:47

    I hope today went better for you, and that you and your vans are staying in good shape.

    ReplyDelete

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