More sadness, craziness and aid to Kherson

First of all, thank you for recent donations, which nearly covered the cost of today's aid run to Kherson, including cleaning/hygiene products, tinned meat and sardines, juice, long life milk and coffee.
Your donations mean that, as well as delivering fruit and vegetables on the weekend again, we should be able to afford a final aid run next week, to the apartment community we have grown to love. It seems an almost unbearable sadness to leave our friends, to constant daily and nightly shelling, amidst the coldness and bleakness of winter, and the likelihood of strikes on energy infrastructure and increased missile attacks.


Anastasiia, the community leader, above, joked that she is completely dressed in humanitarian aid! How crazy is it that an intelligent, capable, once businesswoman, and her funny, energetic child, spend their days running around, trying to find aid to distribute to their community?

When we drove past the apartment blocks, I noticed how rundown they look, many windows smashed and walls pockmarked by shelling. As usual, the streets were almost deserted, the people and cars that were out, moving hurriedly...so many buildings destroyed or damaged by shelling, the parks so overgrown they're almost back to their natural state.
Although the autumn colours are beautiful, somehow, the fallen leaves blowing around Kherson streets made it seem even more desolate.

Amongst the aid, purchased yesterday at Odesa Metro, was a quantity of dried food for dogs and cats, including strays, using a donation for that purpose...



More craziness: soldiers warming their hands at checkpoints (blokposts) in the cold, early morning air. Soon they'll need to light the wood burning stoves in their shelters. Why do people need to be checked, going in and out of their own cities? Only because a power-crazed, delusional dictator decided to invade his neighbour and start a vicious, seemingly never-ending war.
Many of the soldiers at the blokposts know us now and usually wave us through.

There are many, many more crazinesses and sadnesses of this war. But the relationships that people have with one another, with their families, with their communities, with soldiers on the frontline, and with us, will help keep them (and us) strong. 

We have been sent the usual wonderful portraits of the people who have already received the products we took today...

It will really help us to have some final donations to cover some of the cost of a last, really good, aid run to Kherson next week.
If you are able to donate, however small an amount, please:
1. Open PayPal and, when asked for name of payee or email, enter trawden4ukraine@hotmail.com

Or, if you live in/near Trawden:
2. Use the Ukraine collection box in Trawden community shop.

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