The "New Three Musketeers"


Today was one of those days when the morning seemed very distant by the end of the day. This was probably more so for Bob as he got up early to teach English at the local school for a few hours.
The same three boys chattering at the back could not escape their turn at the front, discussing why Bob should visit Lviv rather than Paris! Because, if not for this war, we would never have thought to visit Lviv, which is a truly wonderful city...
I trekked around to find an optician that was open. One of the problems of being an aging volunteer is that, after more than a year away from home, things deteriorate, like eyesight. So I ended up having an eye test in Ukrainian, which was interesting! It's lucky I know the Ukrainian alphabet, even if I don't know what most of the words mean.

Tomasz had an even earlier start from Krakow, with another van load of medical aid for us to take onwards to Dnipro, starting tomorrow. It was a long journey for him due to road closures on the Polish side, but eventually we congregated at a petrol station on the outskirts of Lviv. Mo came along to do the heavy lifting with Tomasz, as all the aid had to be transferred from one van to another.
We then drove back into town, Bob and I to have another COVID booster, our 6th. The vaccines still didn't stop us from getting COVID but prevented it from being too serious.

Finally, we stopped by the student warehouse to pick up some children's toys that they had stored for us, plus a cot and pushchairs that we'll take to Kherson next week. 
It was an interesting van load of aid in the end, including 3 large bags of dried dog food that the students kindly donated. We had intended to use our donations to buy dog food but now we can save them for the next phase of our aid journey here in Ukraine.
We're having lots of thoughts about this: how we support a community of women and children who have remained in Kherson, amidst constant shelling. The children in this community haven't attended school for over 2 years, due to COVID, and then invasion, occupation and ongoing shelling by the Russians. So we're considering a summer playscheme, which we're discussing with A, who is a 'mover and shaker' in this community.

At the end of the day we collected our Trawden4Ukraine T-shirts that we have had made. After over a year of being independent volunteers, supported by our home community, we thought it was time - photos of the models to follow...




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