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A
Young Ukrainian Girl's Holiday in France.
his summer, my partner, Valérie, and I
decided to give a holiday to a child from the Ukraine.
You will recall that the Ukraine is a poor
country in eastern Europe where, 20 years ago now, there was the
frightful nuclear disaster in Chernobyl. Everyone in the
vicinity of this accident was contaminated by radioactivity,
resulting in many diseases and other serious physical problems.
20 years later, the children of Chernobyl
continue to suffer in various ways and need to go to an
unpolluted environment every year in order to breathe clean air
and consume uncontaminated food, so we offered a month’s
holiday in France to one little girl.
We contacted an association which helps these
children to come to France. This year, 200 Ukrainian children
were given an opportunity to stay for either a month or two
months in our country.
| The young girl
who was allotted to us was Yevgenia, who was eight years
old. She settled in very quickly as she is a very lively
little soul and is very happy to be with us. She had no
difficulty adapting herself to our way of life and adores
eating in MacDonalds and drinking Coca Cola, these items
being considered capitalist products in her home country.
We immediately encountered a language
problem. You see, neither Valérie nor I speak or write
Russian, and Yevgenia spoke neither French nor English. To
begin with, it was very difficult, despite a small
dictionary of about 100 words and expressions which we had
been given by the association. It gave such things as,
"It is now time to eat," and "It’s time
to go to bed," but that was about all, so we had to
do the best we could. However, the association gave us the
phone number of an interpreter, whom we called from time
to time when things got particularly difficult and we
couldn’t understand for the lives of us what our little
guest wanted. |
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Yevgenia Kuzmiko |
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Yevgenia was absolutely fascinated by
everything she saw about her, finding our country and our way of
life completely different from what she was accustomed to. We
discovered that her parents, between them, earn less in a month
than a similar worker in our country earns in a day.
| Valérie and I
did our best to provide Yevgenia with a happy holiday, and
it was beautiful indeed to behold the uninhibited joy in
her sparkling eyes as she saw things she had never
experienced before. And there were so many things for her
to discover! You see, she’d scarcely been out of her
village before, and these country people had never been to
the sea. So we took her to amusement parks, the local
swimming pool, the sea, the woods, the theater... It was
all such a breathtaking experience for her and she never
wanted to leave the swimming pool. I can assure you that
this month is a period in our lives that we’ll never
forget. And we are sure that the young Yevgenia will
remember her holiday in France for the rest of her life. |
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Yevgenia Kuzmiko |
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But, of course, the day for her to leave us
came round with the inevitability of time. I have to admit that
we both cried a little when the bus left and we could see
Yevgenia’s radiant face no longer. We couldn’t do anything
about it, of course, but at the back of our minds was the fact
that she would be returning to a poor country where she would
have no opportunity to see the sights that we had shown her in
France. However, we were happy because we knew she would soon be
with her own parents who loved her so much again, and we knew
she was looking forward to that reunion.
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Franck Thilliez
Yevgenia Kuzmiko
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To help remember
us and her stay in France, we bought her a lot of presents
including a Barbie school bag, of which she was very
proud. We were struck that this present, whilst being
virtually insignificant to the average French child was of
great value to this little Ukrainian girl.
Of course, we continue to keep in
contact with Yevgenia and her parents. She calls us her
'French parents', and she writes to tell us that she has
the nicest school bag in her school, and that all her
classmates are very envious. She is very keen to come back
to France again next year. If she does, we will do our
level best to give her the best possible time. We are so
happy to be able to give such happiness to another young
human being. |
- Franck Thilliez
Lens, Pas-de-Calais, France.
http://emeeting.free.fr
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