Today, Ms. Olena from the village of Afanasiivka in the Mykolaiv region is smiling and finally in high spirits. The mobile complex has finally arrived in their village. This means only one thing: the clothes that the woman has been collecting for washing for more than a day will be clean, and she will not have to wash them by hand.
“This time, I collected quite a lot of things. First of all, I washed the bed linen. I have already taken it home to dry. Now I’ve come to pick up the rest of the washed items. Most of it is children’s clothing, and I want it to be washed thoroughly, which is impossible to achieve by hand, no matter how hard you try,” — says Olena.
Ms. Olena does not have a washing machine. And her family does not have the funds to buy one. She is a single mother, unemployed, currently on maternity leave. She has two children — a 12-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. The children’s father is missing. So the woman takes care of the children herself. She is trying to get them on their feet.
“It is challenging with children, especially on my own. There is no one to assist me. I do everything myself. I also manage the household on my own. When my older daughter is at school and my younger son is at kindergarten for half a day, I try to get everything done. So that when the children come home, I can spend at least a little time with them. I also help my grandmother. Because after the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station was blown up and flooded, her house was flooded. She lives a little lower down and water from the river entered her house. Almost everything in the house floated away. It was scary then. The houses disappeared under the water right before our eyes. After that flooding, the village had a very difficult time with water. It all became murky, and there was no drinking water at all,” — says Olena.
There have always been water problems in Afanasiivka. There is no centralized water supply in the village. The only way to wash or do laundry properly is to drill a well. However, this is not cheap, so not every family can afford it. For those who do not have a well in their yard, it is very difficult to keep their family clean.
“To wash clothes, you have to bring water, heat it on the stove, and quickly wash everything by hand. But in the mobile complex, they have everything — water, laundry detergent, you don’t need to bring anything, they give you everything here. It has made our lives much easier. Now, at least we can be sure that the children will be bathed and the clothes will be washed,” — emphasizes Ms. Olena.
The mobile complex operates as part of a project implemented by the charitable organization Stabilization Support Services Charitable Foundation and the German humanitarian organization Sign of Hope with financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO).