The Other Side of Life

Another of the women we visited, Evdokiya, had a small single floor house, with walls hand painted with exquisite flowers. She was very jolly in welcoming us into her neat home, offering apples and a taste of some honey which she kept in vast vats inside an old fridge which didn’t work anymore. Even though she was so poor, she showed us proudly her clear plastic tzadakah charity box in which she tried hard to put a little money every now and then. When we left, she insisted on giving us some delicious toasted sun flower seeds for our journey. This home visit showed me that even though this woman has so little, she still wanted to give something back and not just receive.

The atmosphere in Ukraine was very different from London. For a start, there were a lot less health and safety rules, with no seatbelts in cars and people just driving and walking across railway tracks. Also, some of the cars were ancient and the streets looked like a scene out of a film in the 1960s, apart from a few ridiculously lavish cars and Porsche showrooms which sell to the few very wealthy people in the city. The contrast is extreme. Another thing which was different from London was the thick layer of smoke smothering nearby Dnepropetrovsk which you could feel in your eyes, making them sting slightly. It is a very industrial area with iron mining and giant chimneys.

Before we visited the home of 83 year old Ninel who lived alone in a two room flat, we went to the local supermarket to buy her some food as she was not very mobile. She had written a very specific list of what she wanted us to buy, together with her limited budget. Our job was to buy these items in a task rather like The Apprentice, but for real. The supermarket was massive, and even had a fish tank where you chose your fish which they then kill for you on demand.

When we had finished the shopping, we drove together to her home. As we walked up the four flights of cold stone stairs, with dangerous wiring creeping out of the walls, a musty stench overcame me. The woman immediately put on the lights and the ancient gas cooker for us, so that her chilly dark flat was more comfortable. She had not been able to leave her flat for five years, so when we entered she gave us hugs and she even cried because she hasn't seen any kids for five years during that time. Her sadness made me feel hollow inside, appreciating more what I had in my life, with easily enough food, lots of friends and so much money compared to her. It will make me think twice about complaining about small things because there are other people in the world that live in such bad conditions and just carry on living life with a positive attitude and hope. As we left, she started crying again, worried that she would now be left alone for two weeks.

That evening back in our hotel, when our dinner took hours to arrive, I just thought what the woman was feeling all by herself without anyone there to talk to her. I will always remember that visit with her and I will remember her for the rest of my life.

This trip brought to home to me life beyond our North London Jewish bubble. I had always, of course, known about less fortunate people in other countries, but to actually go there and to meet some of them showed me the reality. I just didn’t know that any Jewish people really lived like this. This trip really gave me a reason to give to charity, as it was no longer just an abstract idea, but I could now relate it to real people in need of help.