Day 7 Kyiv (Brovary)-Chernihiv-Kropyvnytskyi
7:00am Met up with Alex to hand off the drone that he will deliver to Yuliia. Loaded the 4 boxes from Jason Stout into Sasha’s car. Two vans arrived to our hotel to pick up ovens, mixers and a mobile kitchen. One van was loaded with an oven and a mixer to be delivered to Sumy. The second van was taking an oven, mixer and the mobile kitchen to Kharkiv. We started our journey to Chernihiv and found out that the temporary bridge was removed so the longer detour was required. Eventually we made it to Chernihiv to meet up with our partner to distribute bread. They bring bread baked in Kyiv. We discussed giving them ovens and a mixer so they could start baking bread locally. Each loaf of bread had the word “Victory” baked on to it. A group of young volunteers sang to the people waiting in the bread line. Lyubomir introduced me to a large group of grandmothers (babushkas). One of them asked, “why would God allow this to happen to Ukraine?” I told her: “I don’t have the answer, but what I do have was a Hug for each one of you. I spent the next few minutes giving hugs to sweet Babushkas. Andriy, with the falcons, whose family was one of the first we helped last year, stopped by for a short visit. One Babushka, Nadia, invited us to her apartment for tea. I told her we needed to go, but she insisted we wait because she had a gift for me. Nadia returned with a pair of thick socks she had knitted. She got another hug! We then visited a neighborhood that was heavily bombed in the early days of the war. We pulled up to a bombed out house. A lady was out front working on cleaning things up. Her name was Tatianna. She told us about how drones flew around surveying the area and later that night 6 bombs destroyed her neighborhood. During the bombing, her mother-in-law ran out of the house and was never seen again. I asked Tatianna: “how are doing?” Unexpectedly, she answered optimistically: “I am well, I stay busy and I look forward to a bright future.” We also visited the hardware store that was bombed and burned for 5 days straight. Remnants of destroyed mattresses, tiles, ovens, toilets and bicycles. Before we left town we stopped by one of the schools that was bombed! Neighborhoods?, Apartments?, Stores?, Schools?….this isn’t war… this is Terrorism! It was a long drive from Chernihiv to Kropyvnytskyi, but we stopped for a midnight gas station snack and arrived our hotel at 3:45am. We will sleep on another day!
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