‘We had famine in the first year of the war’

My kid is scared. When especially heavy shellfire begins, it is scary, of course. She sticks to me and does not leave me anywhere then. She is afraid both for me and for herself. She grasps me [by the hand] so that I would be sitting near her. And the elder daughter is also near me all the time. My son is more courageous, he behaves like a man.

Our younger daughter developed psoriasis due to a nervous stress. Now we are fighting it. It appeared in 2015, in March. We are trying to get rid of this psoriasis. Although they say that it is incurable. Vitamins and ointments are needed. Ultraviolet light is needed, but there is nowhere to find this light bulb.

Our elder daughter has a cataract in her right eye since birth. She loses 2% of her eyesight every year. And wherever I turned, no one agrees to make her a surgical operation.

This is our third house. I agreed with people, they let me in to live here. I only pay the utility bills.

We moved here with the kids in September 2016, and in October the place was hit. The roof was hit too. Well, at least it was not a shell, but just a blank casing from a shell. It damaged the roof and the chimney. We had to make some repairs. There are no windowpanes. There was a hit under the fence. There is no windowpane in the kitchen either. Every window is closed up with a plastic film. Everything is covered up with some materials, wooden boards etc...

We have been left without our home and without all our plans for the future. In the first year of the war, the children did not study anywhere at all because the shelling was very strong. We lost one year of studies. Now our kid is catching up, but still, these are not their schools. I take the little one to school to the other side of the town.

I lost my job in Donetsk. It is a challenge. When I worked, I used to receive an advance payment and a salary. I somehow managed to survive together with the kids. I always had a sausage for them and could make a sandwich, that’s it. Now, this would be a rare case, for sure. This can be once a month when we get our social allowance as low-income family. I then can buy something tasty for them. Well, and then I feed them with what I have. Flour and butter are needed all the time because I bake some pies or something else. Well, that’s how I feed them.

The help from Rinat Akhmetov saves me. This is flour, butter and sugar. Cereals too. We cook porridges all the time. Pate for sandwiches. The kids would do some sandwiches in the morning and would have a snack with tea. So, they could have a bite.

We are thankful that there is such an organization. It means a lot. You can live in some way. We survive thanks to this help. Otherwise, I don’t know what would have happened. We had famine in the first year of the war.

We hope that the war will end soon. Every time you wait, you wait for it to end soon, in order to be able to settle down properly. To be able to live in one place, to make repairs, to get a job. So that the kids could study without any obstacles, as they used to before the war, to go to school. So that at least it would calm down and the shelling would end.