The guitar is one of the most popular “toys” at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. Even though our guitar only has two strings still intact, kids love to carry it around the safe space, strumming rythmically. I’ve figured out how to play the “Do-ri-mi” song on one of the strings and I’ve tried to show some of the kids, but so far I haven’t encountered a single child who could fret with their left hand. Invariably, they just use one hand (right or left) to hold onto the neck and strum the two strings rythmically with the other hand. Even though the kids have no art yet, some of them do seem to have a passion for music and musical expression. Sometimes they will even sing songs or little ditties they make up as they strum.
Even though the kids seem perfectly content with just 2 strings, and none of the kids have attempted to fret the strings, we had a very quiet time at the center today — only two visitors for the entire day, two brothers aged 3 and 5 who stayed with us for about an hour while their mother had a shower — so I decided to see if I could find a music store in Przemyśl where I could get a set of new guitar strings.

Lo and belold, a quick google search surfaced a single music shop in Przemyśl, which happens to be within a 15 minute walk from our apartment and a five minute walk from our favorite cafe. I left the center half an hour early to allow time to walk to the shop before it closed at 5:00 p.m. Sure enough, they had a set of strings for about USD 6.00 and a set of tuning machine heads for about USD 7.00 (a couple of the gear wheels on our guitar are stripped, so the tuning heads will need to be replaced in order to tighten up the new strings). Tomorrow I’ll try my hand at repairing and restringing a guitar.