Sunday 31 January 2010

Photos: Delivering Food To The Villagers Of Rudiskes











Please, see Barbara's update about food drive and delivering food to Rudiskes here .

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Food Drive Update

Photo from Flickr.com by D3 San Francisco

Dear Ladies,

Did you know that 5 am on Monday morning the temperature was minus 35. No wonder our cars would not start!

For our monthly social evening we went to Daiva Archipovaite's lingerie shop as Erin has already mentioned. I would like to say that the items I bought there are wonderful and I will certainly be going back for more. Other ladies that bought things at the same time are also extremely pleased. Well worth a visit Ladies.

After the Prisma food drive I was going to write and thank everyone including the embassies that also took part, for all the good work and time and effort that was put into the event. Then I thought I would wait and write to you after I had delivered the food to the homes in the Rudiskes area where I live so that I could tell you about that at the same time.

None of you will be able to imagine the conditions that these families live in, and I mean that with the greatest respect to all of you.

I came back so depressed and almost in tears.

My neighbour Wim helped. We loaded the food into the van and set off. He told me that it was not a good idea to divide the food into bags as the majority of the men in the homes were alcoholics and would sell the excess food to get some vodka. We went to each home and assessed the situation, how many children etc and then gave them food. Wim will go back again to give them more.

They live in cardboard houses with bits of carpet tacked to the walls inside to keep out the cold - wonder how it worked in minus 35!!

They have no running water, no room for a fire. One house had three families living in separate rooms. When we asked if anyone else was in another room they said no. As we drove away, an old man with a walking stick was hobbling towards us carrying a small container of water he had collected from somewhere. He told us that he lived in another room in the same house on his own.. His face as he clutched a bag of food to his chest will stay with me for ever.

In another house the four small children were so beautiful and clean but there was nothing else in there. One tiny 5/6 year old had learned a few words of english and we coaxed ' how are you' out of him.

Another house we went to had a HUGE pool of frozen blood outside the house. The woman's husband was alcoholic and she was crying so much that she found it difficult to tell us that he had been fighting, hence the blood. Who he had been fighting with or where he was at that time, we couldn't find out.

These were just a few of the homes I went to.

This is the REAL Lithuania and this is Europe.

Ladies, this food was a life-saver and I do not use that term lightly. Thank you so much again for everything that was done by everybody. You have certainly improved the lives of some families even though it is only for a short time.

If anyone would like to visit some of these homes then let me know.

Coffee morning on Friday Ladies.

Come along and catch up with all the ongoing events.

Barbara

(posted from an email)

Monday 18 January 2010

A Long Walk In The Snow


Look at this photo! Doesn’t it look terribly cold?! Brrrrrrr! And it looks so different from what we see in the streets of Vilnius… so white and snowy. Yesterday, Barbara with some ladies from IWAV and hash members had a 1 1/2 hour walk in the snow at her house.

In the photo from left to right: Terry Amos, Liliana, Mike, Eva Amos and their son Stuart, Barbara, Francoise and Mauricette. Three more people enjoyed this adventure but are not in the pic as they joined in later because they got lost trying to find the house.

Looks like fun!