Stories that you confided to us
Olena Tsybulnyk is a resident of Mariinka. Here you can see coal mine slag heaps that are a symbol of the region where hardworking people live. The war forced them to look for work wherever possible in order to feed their families. Olena’s husband changed the profession of a lawyer to a builder. The family survived far more than one shelling. They still have to make repairs in their house. Because of the war, an ambulance could not come on time to Olena’s younger daughter. Now, the girl has to fight for her health.
Mariinka used to be a very nice and beautiful town with ponds and children’s playgrounds. It was always tidy and attractive. Many people came from Donetsk and bought houses here. Prices for houses were very high here because the town is not big, but clean, modest and quiet, and it is close to the border with Donetsk. We used to have many jobs here – seven production plants on the territory of Mariinka. Now all of them are destroyed and there are no jobs at all. So, people really live on a shoestring here.
People lost their jobs and there is nothing left. Even all the shops were closed down and did not work. Some shops in the centre began to re-open only in the last year and a half.
People even cannot come back and visit a shop where they used to work because it is mined there. There is no possibility until it is demined. It is prohibited to go there.
We only have technical/process water in our water pipelines, while the drinking water is delivered to us on a paid basis. There are problems with water supply, as well as with power supply, which is interrupted from time to time. There has been no gas supply in the town since 2014, and so the heating in our houses works from the stoves or coal boilers, and electric ovens are used for cooking.
It is very difficult for our family during the heating season because it is very problematic to find money to buy fuel – coal and firewood. All the money that my husband earns and that we get from humanitarian foundations is used for the treatment of our younger daughter. We find rescue in my husband`s helping some neighbours to cut firewood and thus getting some firewood for us too.
My husband does not have a permanent job, so we manage by him taking some odd jobs. Heating in winter and treatment of our daughter are always in the foreground for us. These are our two key problems.
During the war time, our family changed three houses. The first house where my husband and I lived when we just got married was completely destroyed. There are just bare walls and we cannot return there. Then we moved to my grandmother’s house. She has two houses in one yard. The grandmother lived in one house and we lived in the other one. But since it is located closer to Donetsk, to the border, we had to leave it because a check-point was set up there.
This is our third house. We have been living here since 2015. Here, we also saw some hard times. We just moved in here and literally in a couple of months a very strong shelling began, which lasted almost a day.
It was on 3 July 2015. We had severe destructions. The window was blown out, and the window in the corridor was also shattered. We do not have a cellar so there is nowhere to hide. We were all lying on the floor. My eldest child was frightened and he did not speak for almost half a year. We had to work with a psychologist to somehow restore his speaking ability.
I am more worried about the children. We have lived our lives, albeit not long ones, but still. But for the kids, of course we want them not to see, not to hear and not to experience this. For me as a mother it is very hard. Such a time fell to their lot. It is very scary.
It will not pass without consequences. It will leave its trace. They say that time heals, but I think that it still will not heal up. You can forget some moments to some extent, but you will still have a trace inside your soul. You will never forget it. The one who really went through this, will never forget it. I feared it that the child could stay dumb.
We are afraid even to take a child to the kindergarten. I feel worried every morning. It was 2016. Things settled down more or less and there was no heavy shelling. I took him to the kindergarten and literally in half an hour heavy shelling began. It is good that my parents live close to the kindergarten. I asked them and they took him from the kindergarten.
Sometimes my husband repairs the roof on the house after shelling. Sometimes, the windowpanes are shattered. They need to be replaced because we have small children. In winter time, it is the primary necessity.
My husband is a builder. There is currently a demand for this as people repair the roofs and set up the stoves. That is why he changed the profession of a lawyer to builder.
My daughter was born healthy, but after a month she had a spontaneous cerebral haemorrhage. It happened at night. An ambulance does not come at night in our place, so we had to call an ambulance only in the morning. The kid lay with haemorrhage all night and we got to the hospital only in the morning.
She had a strong spasm, her arms were bent like this all the time, while her legs were straight. You could not bend her legs and straighten her arms. There was a strong spasm. This was her condition when she was taken to Kurakhove hospital, to the intensive care unit. We were registered, but they told us at once that they would not be able to take care of us and immediately redirected us to Kramatorsk.
In Kramatorsk, we spent two weeks in the intensive care unit. Those were two also very hard weeks for me. She was resuscitated twice as she had cardiac arrest.
We have overcome it all. She is our brave girl, a real fighter. Now, we are trying very hard for her to be able to stand on her own feet.
Emotionally, I am completely exhausted and cannot recover in any way. I don’t have any rest at all. Household chores, routine is one thing, but constant shelling and worries about your children is other thing. And thirdly, that my kid is always with me, I am with her in my arms, I cannot leave her, even cannot put her to the playpen and do something, some cleaning or cooking in the meantime. It is very difficult for me. She needs attention all the time, I have to be with her all the time.
We live for a day. We do not build any plans because with our lifestyle it is very difficult to build plans. My husband and I got married, then we made some plans, renovated the house, but found ourselves without a house and without a corner of our own. This house is not ours; it is rented.
We hope that it will all end soon and a peaceful life will come. Then we will have our plans. Then it will be possible to put one child on his feet, to provide education for the other one. The main thing is to have a peaceful life, to have this constant shelling stopped, so that not to flinch in the middle of the night, not to wake up from shellfire, not to check if the children are sleeping peacefully or woke up, are scared, are hiding under the blanket. This is scary.
I would like everything to get better as soon as possible, and, God willing, that a peaceful life would come. People are emotionally exhausted. The fact that I see progress helps to hold on, the daughter shows very good results. I see that my son is growing up cheerful, lively, that he does not pay [attention] to what is happening around him. This is what keeps me going. My husband supports me, my family supports me. This is the foothold I hinge on.
When quoting a story, a reference to the source – the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation – is mandatory, as follows:
The Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/
