Nivetske, Ukraine – The residents of the little village of Nivetske, located just west of Chornobyl, are literally living on the edge. It’s not just the edge of the so-called “alienation zone,” a 30-kilometer area where people are not supposed to settle.
Somehow, Nivetske is also on the edge of decent living standards: they have regular power blackouts, health care is out of reach, and there is no easy way to commute to the bigger towns nearby. The list of daily challenges for the villagers, whose lives are still affacted by the world’s worst nuclear power accident on April 26, 1986, is long.
“It used to be a nice prosperous village before the Chornobyl explosion. We had a big collective farm and were known for their cattle,” said Anatoliy Oborsky, a Nivetske native. “There used to be more than 100 households and a population of 800 people.”
Most of them left after Chornobyl’s fourth reactor exploded 24 years ago, and they never came back. The accident’s consequences will probably be forever debated – how many died early because of radiation poisoning, and how many are still suffering from consequences to their health.
This village, near the scene of the catastrophe, is a good place to assess its toll.
Initially, villagers were evacuated further away from the epicenter of the disaster. They then moved to Pushcha Vodytsia, a recreation area west of Kyiv. “We were given a free 30-day voucher to one of Odesa resorts, but my son could not stand the hot climate, so we returned back here,” Oborsky said.
About 300 villagers returned after those vacations, but the once buzzing village has lost many of them over the last two decades – to death, or just to the search for better lives elsewhere.
Kateryna Kurchak prepares for spring planting. Her neighbors and Zaichik the horse help her to plow her field in Nivetske.(Oleksiy Boyko)
The classes are long over for this school, built in 1988 to accomodate pupils from four area villages. It was closed in the early 2000s due to a sharp decline in pupils. (Oleksiy Boyko)
“Do you see that house across the street? A family with nine kids used to live there. Six of those kids died in the 1990s, we don’t know why, nobody diagnosed them,” Oborsky says. Now Nivetske has 16 residents, and 14 of them are retirees aged 80 and older.
Oborsky and his neighbors are not afraid to live in the village. They say their last check showed the background radiation level at an acceptable 14-16 microroentgen per hour. The government plans to upgrade the concrete casing, known as the sarcophagus, over the destroyed fourth nuclear reactor. Due to high levels of radiation inside, it’s crumbling sooner than it normally would.
The construction of a new 105-meter tall arch-shaped shelter is an internationally financed multi-million dollar project. So far, the list of donors has 28 names. In 2008, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development agreed to allocate 135 million euro for the construction of the shelter. The European Union chipped in with 60 million euro, and a few weeks ago, the United States committed to contributing $250 million. It is still unclear when construction will commence because the project is still facing many financial and technical challenges.
The locals follow the news of the shelter project closely, but are skeptical. “They’ve built the sarcophagus and some nuclear waste storage facilities, but they keep asking for more money. Chornobyl is a big money guzzler, while the people who still live here are totally forgotten,” claims Oleksandr Oborsky, Anatoliy’s son.
Indeed, the village is left on its own. “What does our life look like? It’s bad, as you can see,” says Kateryna Kurach, as she watches over a horse plowing her allotment. The horse named Zaichik (Bunny) is the only means of transport left in Nivetske. Five years ago there was a small shuttle bus running to the nearest villages, but eventually it was canceled.
“The closest bus stop is 12 kilometers away from the village, who would walk that far?” asks Kurach. “So, we mostly stay at home and wait for our children and grandchildren to visit”.
Her daughter Alla Kuzmenko, who was visiting to help with spring planting, said she tries to come from Kyiv as often as possible. “I do worry about my mother, she’s 89 and she lives alone,” she says. “My husband and I have to drive a car as there is no bus commute. Also there is no landline telephone here. The two younger guys have cell phones, so if I want to check on my mom I call them and ask how she’s doing.”
People in the village have no access to emergency services. Even when they do call for an ambulance from the nearest town of Krasiatychi, there is no guarantee the car will come. Because of chronic fuel shortages, ambulances tend to ignore calls from remote places like Nivetske.
There is no grocery in the village, except for a bread stand of a street vendor who comes there once in a week. So the villagers can only live off what they grow on their land plot. Olga Zaikovetska, who is 81, keeps her vegetable garden in perfect order. Various vegetable patches are separated with ditches to drain the water.
“I grow potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, some greens – not for myself as much as for my grandkids, who often come to visit me, and I like to treat them with fresh veggies,” Zaikovetska said.
Her garden, however, has been repeatedly ravaged by wild boars, who feel pretty comfortable in the alienation zone, as do wolves, deer and other forest animals. Most of the villagers here keep dogs, but they can’t cope with a pack of wolves. “We try to stay indoors after dark, especially in winter time because of wolves,” says Oleksandr Oborsky.
He is one of the two young people living in Nivetske. This year he’s turning 30, and has never lived outside the village. He’s not thinking about leaving as he has to take care of his aging father and paralyzed mother. He works as a social worker, with the main duty of delivering the villagers’ pensions. This job pays him Hr 500 (roughly $60) per month. “I would like to have a better job,” he said. “There is a sawmill here, but it’s owned by businessmen from western Ukraine. They never hire locals, always bringing their own people,” says Oleksandr.
There is little hope that anything is going to change in the villages close to the Chornobyl zone. “What changes are you talking about? Who would make them happen?” exclaims Valentyna Mashkivska, head of the local municipality that stretches over four villages: Potoka, Krasylivka, Stari Sokoly and Novi Sokoly.
“Last year 20 people died here and only one baby was born! We have 324 people living in the aforementioned villages; most of them are retirees, and there are a few kids of course, but I doubt they will stay here,” she said bitterly, as she walked down a corridor of what used to be a secondary school.
The building was finished in 1988, just two years after the nuclear disaster, and even then it was too big for the remaining kids. So, the local authorities decided to close it, and overtime it was looted and fell apart.
“Our kids now have to wake up early to catch a 7:20 bus that will take them to school some 10 kilometers away from here,” Mashkivska complained. “But that’s OK. We don’t have teachers who’d work in our school anyway.”
The residents of Nivetske are sure that their village will eventually disappear from the map: people are dying, houses are collapsing, and a few people who bought land plots never showed up. “I think it’s just a matter of time,” says Alla Kuzmenko, as she watches her mother slowly walking towards the house. “I guess this place will be completely empty in five years or so. Such a shame.”
Chornobyl 24th Anniversary Concert
The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is holding a concert in commemoration of Chornobyl disaster victims to be held in the big hall of the National Music Academy. The accident at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986, is considered the worst nuclear power accident in history. The concert program will be performed by Dutch and Ukrainian musicians.
National Music Academy (1-3/11 Horodetskoho).
April 25, 7 p.m. To book tickets call 38068-706-1177.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olesia Oleshko can be reached at [email protected]
