Date:
01/2009
Country:
Today we are taken to a tower block on the outskirts of Crimea's capital Simferopol to deliver the next batch of boxes with Operation Christmas Child. Children play outside in the snow as we are led up a stairwell into a cramped, two-room apartment that is home to a family of seven.
Inside the flat, crouched in the corner of a bed, is six-year-old Eva. Eva shares her bedroom, which doubles up as the family's main living area, with her parents, two brothers and 75-year-old grandmother.
Her eight-year-old brother Paval, who is unable to walk or talk following a fall as a baby, has his own bed in the hallway. As Paval's condition requires round the clock care, the family exist on father Ivan's salary of 1,0000 Hryvnia - around £75 a month. "Even though we do not have enough room for everybody we try to be good to each other," said Eva's mother Svetlana. "Sometimes I want to shout at my son Dima if he does not want to do his homework, but I can't as Paval reacts badly to noise."
One of the volunteers hands Eva a gift-wrapped shoe box, which is a gift from a
primary school child in the UK. Eva breaks into a smile as she winds a pink scarf around her neck, and cradles a small doll she finds in the bottom of the shoe box. She pulls out the other gifts, including hat, gloves, crayons and toothpaste, before carefully placing them back in the box.
primary school child in the UK. Eva breaks into a smile as she winds a pink scarf around her neck, and cradles a small doll she finds in the bottom of the shoe box. She pulls out the other gifts, including hat, gloves, crayons and toothpaste, before carefully placing them back in the box. As Svetlana stands back to admire her daughter's gifts, I remark on the bookcase behind her, which houses books by Dostoevsky,Tolstoy and Chekhov. "I read them all before I got married and had a family," She said. "But I don't have the time to look at them now."
Author: Kat Keogh, Birmingham Mail
Photo: Gordon McCann