We walked from the flat of Sasha Krygin, Victor’s cousin, his wife Yelena and his daughters Irina and Julia to Hoscha District Hospital, a grey dreary group of two floor buildings. We gathered in the simple administrative office which had the cheerless atmosphere of a railway waiting room and sat down at the vertical limb of a T-shaped desk. At the horizontal limb, the main desk, sat a cheerful strong-looking man in a white coat and tall hat., Dr. Alexei Chernyak, senior physician and administrator. He stood up and joined us at the bottom of the vertical limb, a gentlemanly gesture. In came Dr. Vladimir M. Rudyuk whom we met in April. Out came the Odessa champaign, coffee and chocolates. It’s only 8.45 am. It was explained that the Red Cross shipment from Canada had passed smoothly through all the customs except the local rayon customs who made a great fuss but it was passed in the end. One of the features of Ukraine which Victor and I observed was the large number of militia which patrol the streets and even isolated roads. Combined with the obstructive attitude of the Customs, the atmosphere of control of people at all costs is created. Control for the sake of control.

I asked why some doctors wear taller hats than others. They said that administrators wear taller hats than clinicians—it’s the same all over the world! The well-used ash tray had a human skeleton molded into its edge with the words "ashes to ashes." Even though there is a dearth of medications in the hospital, we have to push aid through the resistant officialdom and customs. Pharmacology officers inspect hospitals and nit pick and dump drugs for the slightest excuse. The doctor said that it is better to ship a large quantity of fewer drugs than smaller quantity of a large number of drugs, because the former are cases easier to inpsect and more likely to get through customs quicker. They continued that donated electrical equipment should be 220 volts because they cannot afford conversion from 110 volts. They needed white coats, they said. "What about taller hats?," I said. We can do that, they laughed. They need children’s blankets, bandages, computers, typewriters and ECG paper, operating table sheets, surgeons’ gloves, sutures. An anesthetic medicine and two computers would be a help. The urologist needs a transurethral resection instrument.

The two doctors confirmed that patients with cancer of the thyroid, lung and skin were increasing in adults as well as leukaemia and a fall in the white cell count. Alcoholism and drug addiction is increasing but the suicide rate is stable. There is no AIDS or HIV positive patients in Hoscha rayon.

The annual cost per head for health in Ukraine is $29, the USA $700. The average age of death in Ukraine is 65 years, women 72 years. Hoscha rayon has a population of 42,000 of whom 13,000 are pensioners. In 1995 480 were born, but 680 people died, not all necessarily due to radiation. The principle causes of death are cardiac disease and cancer, and then there is much tuberculosis.

We toured the obstetric and neonatal wards. The same doctors were there as in April—Dr. Tatyana Siomako, obstetrician; Dr. Tatyana Polischuk, neonatal and Dr. Irina Protsishina, neuropathology. We were shown a twelve day old baby weighing 1.8 kilograms in an incubator and abandoned by her mother. The baby was fed on cows milk only. The hospital had no infant feeds and these were urgently requested. There were only two old incubators. We were introduced to the mothers, some of whom were breast feeding their babies. We made our farewell and returned to the flat, passing first through the market largely of a few clothes laid out on trestles or on the snow. Here there was a shivering cowering mongrel with back sores looking intently at a bucket containing a few fish and not daring to get closer than three feet away. It was starving. I bought the mongrel a fish but it was told not it feed to the dog—the people were hungry also.

The afternoon was to be of deep significance to Victor. At 2.0 pm we arrived at the village of Uhorsk, 40 kilometers from Dubno, in the outermost eastern foothills of the Carpathian mountains.

Victor had come to meet his Grandmother, Hannah Ivanovna Kubik. Of five children living in America, only Victor and his younger sister by fifteen years, Lydia, had visited their Grandmother. Standing in the snow, her joy was inexpressible, as she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. The small figure with a lined face leant on her crooked walking stick beaming up at Victor, the American giant. It was a moment that they should have had alone. Eighty years old, alert and without glasses, they walked arm in arm over the uneven snow to the cemetery 50 yards away.

Victor’s first act was to pay respects to his Grandfather David’s grave. Two miles back along the country road Victor had passed the site of the first village of Stizhok where his Father Igor was born. It was a flat field, not a stone was left. Surrounded by Germans, the villagers were herded into a house and burnt alive. His father and family had previously moved to the neighboring village of Uhorsk where we were now. Stizhok has been rebuilt adjacent to where it had earlier been after World War II. Victor wandered into the fields treading where his Father had trod. No one knows his thoughts. What joy there would been if all five had been able to be here.

My problem with these people is that they are so real. They suffer in silence, they rejoice together. Their homes are so simple, their lives so close to the land, that I can only be a stranger from another planet. The paradox arises time and time again—with so very little they have everything, with everything it is we who have so little. Boy, I need that Vodka!

We sat around a table of food prepared for days by Aunt Valentina Davidovna Masurik, her son Victor 20 years, daughter Natalka nine years and Vasia Kubik, cousin who had all gathered for this reunion. Then in came Trofim Philopovich Harber, a warm personality and built like a bull. An agronomist, he was the head of the collective in Uhorsk which still runs a collective farm because here it works.

The farmers have sent their produce to the government market but have not been paid since May. The 153 workers on the collective farm supported the system because Trofim Harber was a considerate and good manager. Each worker also has a their own garden and they did not want to change. The collective farm was spread over two villages, Uhorsk and Stizhok and was comprised of 1190 hectares of cereal, 1500 hectares of pasture, 530 hectares of forest and an indefinite area of rough land. Trofim Harber took over the management in 1988 and after the dissolution of the Communist Party the workers built two mills for rye and wheat. We were assured that there was no radiation in Uhorsk.

It was typical of the courtesy of these people to have the taxi driver, Vasyl, sit at table as one of the family. The sweets (candies) were delicious—they were poppy seeds wrapped in a pastry. The atmosphere around the table was totally non-competitive, everyone listening and contributing in turn. Like the collective farm, they all cooperated together. After the laughter and chatter came the deep thoughts about similarities between their collective farm and Christianity. The farm is responsible for 300 pensioners who are anxious about what will happen to them if the collective farm is dissolved. If this happened, they would prefer to die.

Trofim Harber is an impressive man and spoke as a leader. He was the Secretary of the Communist Party in Rivne. He studied his Bible as the Secretary of The Communist party and he studies it now.

There are 240 homesteads in Uhorsk and 217 in Stizhok. When there is a funeral, everyone attends. I told him that the British Ambassador described Ukraine as the potentially richest country in Europe. Trofim Harber replied that he was held back by politics—he cannot get even one ton of fertilizer because the whole local factory production goes to Slovakia. Contrary to their temperament, the Ukrainians are being forced into a revolution. Time for a joke. Two Jews. I have a car and you have car, let’s help another Jew get a car. Two Ukrainians. I am sitting down and you are sitting down, let’s get a third Ukrainian to sit down. I said that the country was like a gold field and no one as picking up the nuggets. They are picked, they replied, but going out of Ukraine. Cattle are going out or Ukraine for almost nothing.

The major reason that Ukrainians cannot reconstruct their economy is due to fear. Anglo-Americans have not been subject this century to revolution and ravaging armies on their own soil. They remember their village being surrounded and burned first by one army, then another. Then there were bands of opposing guerrillas, the intellectual Melnikivtsy and the proletariat Banderivsty. Even to this day there is chaos in the government and factional infighting. The village of Stizhok was destroyed because the Banderivtisy had assassinated a few German occupying soldiers. The people have been under brutal control of the KGB (Committee of the Government for Security), the name now being changed to the SBO. They easily recall relatives and friends disappearing. Add to all this the Mafia and rackets—the result is something we do not perhaps understand with our Magna Carta and Constitution—a deep fear of their vulnerability. They are still under the influence of the horrors of the past. They need an incorruptible leader and the governments of the West must give them time to heal.

At 6.0 pm we arrived at the Kubik home in Dubno. They all gathered to meet Victor who was joyously greeted by the gentle twins, Ivanka and Tanya and their sister Alyona, children of Vasya and Olga Kubik, and grandmother Vera Kubik.

The toasting glasses were filled with Cognac, the coffee was filled with Cognac, rounded off with Soviet Champagne, huge chocolates, lemons and sugar. The newspapers have just reported that there was a major accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1982 also and that children in the area were given the privilege of free transport to the sanitorium with a small benefit up to 18 years old Family reminisces were exchanged. There was home-grown food in the villages but many prefer to live in the cities because when a factory closes the mother receives 16 hryvnas per child and does not lose control of the apartment.

Victor sat up until 1.30 am talking to the family as they came in and out. Alla, married daughter of Volodya and Lydia Kisil (Vasya Kubik and Lydia are brother and sister),—all came to see Victor. There is a structure to Ukrainian conversations. They start off with pleasantries and gradually develop to reveal the deep personal attitudes to each other and life, about relationships, not a word about things. Then they resurface through pleasantries and depart without fuss. The whole process is restarted with the next family member. Each person focuses their mind on the other lubricated with cognac in the coffee, Cognac or Vodka in the glass for toasts and speeches, not to mention the Champagne. Vasia is the most persistent glass filler of all time.

We had left Victor’s Grandmother Hannah after a meal, a feast, only to have to face a second feast at the Kubiks. To not eat the meal which has been prepared for days, two roosters specially killed and now in aspic, is painful to our hostess, but it was not anatomically possible. We cannot, therefore, add a further insult by not toasting.

The bathroom facilities are non-existent by Anglo-American standards. I live a British style of life. I have the latest facilities in everything but our British stultified conversations are pathetic in comparison. Good morning. Did you have a good journey? Pause. How’s the car? Good bye. Few talk about their hopes, fears, feelings or attitudes, or their marriage, the new baby, or a dead relative, or the illness of a neighbor as do the Ukrainians because that would be an intrusion.

There will come a time when nation will learn from nation.