Delivered-To: temirose@mail.utexas.edu
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 11:31:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nataliya Yaroshenko
Subject: from Natasha


Chapter 6

My first morning was full of new impressions. During the breakfast I saw so many refugee people there, so many children and even a few old people. It seemed to me that they feel there like home. They talked, laughed, felt free in everything.

Last night I hoped to see sad and almost killed with the grief people. I felt better seeing them. My first breakfast will never become blurred out of my memory. They gave so much meal for breakfast! Being hungry almost three days I couldn't cope with it. So I understood that people living in the camp didn't have problems with lack of meal. But later after getting my dinner and the bag of meal for supper I was again surprised with the amount of food. And some of it I had never bought or seen in Ukraine. Especially canned food. They often gave us yogurt. To tell you the truth I had never bought yogurt in Ukraine though that new food (for our country) already was there. Only a few times my daughter bought it to me as a present.

Even now it is one of my favorite food though I have it often. Here in this camp in Bialystok they give us yogurt every second or third day. In my first morning I had to pass through some more procedures as all the newcomers did - checking my skin and hair by the medical nurse, getting the personal card, some more papers and documents. After everything was behind I felt some emptiness inside me. What next? What to do? I wanted to be alone for a while to put all my thoughts in order.

I went out, walked around the camp and thought a lot. I was saved, I had where to live, I had what to eat. But my busy life was interrupted so suddenly... Teaching my private students of different ages, translating and sending e-mail letters for people (my second little business), practicing the piano and accordion, Internet, writing a methodic book, working at my first own piano album for little kids, cooking, cleaning, washing...

It frightened me that I didn't have what to do. No one needed me. I was a teacher. What I am now? Nothing. I realized that if I wanted to be a person, to be a teacher, to find myself here, in Poland but I have a huge and almost insurmountable barrier - the Polish language. What I could do in that camp that was like a Russian island where everyone talked to me in Russian? In the camp's library I found only one book that I could begin my studying. It was Ukrainian - Polish Phrase Book. And there was one lesson of Polish language a week for adult refugees.

So my first purpose was to find a good way for learning the language. I realized that I had to be ready to work after the process would be finished. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by crying of a little boy. Crying he rushed to his mother. I even didn't pay attention to the airplane above me. But that kid was trembling and trying to hid himself ...from bombing.

Later I noticed that not only kids and adult people were looking at the sky with the apprehension. It was the result of the horrible war. Now living in the Bialystokís refugee camp I perhaps understand more. I have met a lot of people from Chechnya. Sometimes after talking with them I am very upset. You know, the young boys who are serving the regular military army don't want to kill and to torture innocent people in Chechnya.

But the Russian Government released a lot of criminals from the Russian prisons for that war despite of their terrible crimes. Now those criminals are mercenaries. For big money they clean the Chechen land. They are afraid of the Chechen fighters who fight only in the mountains and other places far from the localities so as to save civil people from killing. But Russian mercenaries are afraid of those fighters who protect their land.

They kill innocent people - kids, women, old people, young people. The seconds aim of the mercenaries is to be rich due to Chechnya. They arrest men, young men or boys (this year even girls and women, too), put them into prisons and wait for the money that relatives bring to save dear for them people.

But being in the prison they don't hide that they torture the prisoners so as people found the faster way to find money. They kill all the rest people who were not ransomed. But those whom relatives took from the prisons mostly are disabled. The mercenary soldiers torture them in different ways - let through the body the electricity, beat them, cut ears, noses.... keep prisoners in icy water up to the waist for many hours, let dogs into the cells, and the most pleasure the mercenaries get when they damage reproductive organs to the prisoners.

On the whole very few people can have children after arresting if they survived. Mercenary officers and soldiers openly rob Chechen people taking away everything that people have. And the Russian mercenary soldiers have no problems with their beast's willing. If anyone feels that he would like to satisfy himself, he bursts into any apartment or house, or just catch any girl or woman in the streets and do what he or they want. Very seldom they let her go after that. They just kill those poor girls and women.

Oh, goodness, how many dirt we still have on our planet...

============== to be continued... chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

 

children's war pictures One girl brought me a picture where a soldier is seen from the tank and smiles. And in front of him is the house in the fire. I asked her why the soldier is smiling. She answered that when Russian soldiers killed their people and fired - they smiled or laughed. This girl is 8 years old. And one girl brought me a picture of a girl watering the flowers and above her flies the plane and throws the bombs. A lot of bombs but the girl doesn't see... The bombs are above her falling down. And the sun is shining, the flowers are so beautiful. One girl draws some dead people and little children among them.