We have moved the narrative up to Cherkasy. We arrived after a 6 hour drive. It is a fairly large city with about a half million inhabitants located in the center of Ukraine. In many ways it is a lot like Kansas City. It has a strong agricultural base with additional industry.. It has universities, fine restaurants, sports stadiums and refugees (well, Kansas City used to have at least some refugees). It is also missing one thing we have in Kansas City, regular electricity. The last several days, Cherkasy has only had power for ½ of the time due to Russian attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure. It is not something that the citizens of Cherkasy hadn’t seen before. They are well equipped with generators and experience in managing without lights or electricity. Fortunately, it hasn’t been as cold as last winter, and the thermal heating plants have avoided most of the destruction. The people are handling it pretty well. Even without power, people go to the mall. Many malls and free standing stores and most restaurants have generator power. In some malls, only some of the stores have generator power, but people make do with portable lamps. Even without power, people still sit in coffee shops and catch on their email.
The patients that we see are internally displaced persons (IDP’s) which are refugees within their own country. They have many of the same problems as the villagers that we saw. Indeed, they are the same people except that they were driven from their homes by Russia’s invasion. We have had a long relationship with these IDP sites, and it is again fun to see my own handwriting from prior visits.
We only have three clinics in Cherkasy and then we will end our clinic time and move back to Kyiv before moving on. Thanks for following on with me.
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