ReliefWeb

Text and pictures by Hayarpi Karapetyan, information officer with the Armenian Red Cross Society

If you were trying to define "the back of beyond" you'd describe Tismenitsa. It's a tiny village in the west of Ukraine, far from the lights of the nearest big town, Ivano Frankivsk, itself only a dot on the map of Europe, on the eastern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. The village is bereft of young people: their elderly parents live alone on pensions of around two euro a day. Extreme poverty is the norm.

The community is located in a flood-prone zone, and when the water comes it does not spare anything. Last July's floods were the worst in generations, taking away everything: food, furniture, chickens and the harvest.

Seventy-five-year-old Ksenia Matsiborko had just got her little house dried out when new floods hit in October. "I woke up in the night and saw my house was full of water. It was going higher and higher and reached up to the windows. I was very scared, too scared," Ksenia recalls, her eyes full of tears.

Survivors can't afford repairs

She surrounded the house with canvas and tried to get on with her life. "Hiring people would cost more that I could have paid from the compensation I got from the government. I would have died of cold in here. "

She is typical of the majority of beneficiaries of a large-scale Federation-funded relief operation which rapidly helped the National Societies of Ukraine and Belarus to bring food parcels, bed linen, blankets and water filters to the hundreds of communities devastated by the floods.

To live up to their roles as genuine community organizations, the Red Cross societies decided to form mobile repair teams to provide physical, social and emotional rehabilitation. Three large vans were purchased and equipped and now three teams are travelling around the most remote parts of Ukraine and Moldova, carrying out small repairs on houses damaged by the floods.

Beneficiaries also receive psychological support from Red Cross nurses who accompany the mobile teams. In addition, 1,350 fan heaters have been purchased to heat and dry out sodden houses and a second round of food parcels has just been distributed, to compensate people for the loss of crops they would normally eat during the winter.

Winter-proofing damaged houses

Igor Ivanitskiy, head of the mobile technical team in Ivano-Frankovsk, says: "We plan to do small-scale repair works in 102 houses in the region. The works include changing doors and windows, closing holes on the walls, and so on. Priority is given to those whose houses are badly damaged and where it's impossible to live during wintertime."

A further 116 houses will be repaired in the flooded communities of Chernivtsi, on the border with Moldova.

When the team arrived at Ksenia's house she was incredulous. "I did not believe them first and did not want to let them in. I was not sure what else would happen to my house. But now I am very happy," she says. "I will meet New Year in my newly repaired, clean house".