A couple of weeks ago I wrote this blog post about the Chasiv Yar assisted living home for the elderly relocated to a mothballed school building in a remote rural village outside Khmelnytskyi.  After I wrote it, I asked the director of the home, Gennadiy,  if he would take a look at it and give me any suggestions.  We began chatting, one thing led to another, and when he politely invited me to come back to visit them again, I didn’t miss a beat in accepting.

So I am spending this weekend at the assisted living home. The August Mission team was making another delivery yesterday, so they brought me out from Khmelnytskyi. 

I am helping the Chasiv Yar staff do some chores while I am here.  Top of mind is the huge mountain of firewood logs piled behind the building. Those logs need to be cut up into short rounds and the rounds need to be split into stove wood and then the wood needs to be stacked in the basement of the building, all before cold weather sets in. 

Last night I helped the staff serve the evening meal to the 35 residents.  All the food was donated by August Mission and other charitable organizations. We had a big pot of buckwheat hash, generously garnished with canned peppers and mushrooms from Poland. There were thick slices of bread slathered with a pate spread. For dessert there was a big pot of coffee with milk and chocolate covered granola bars. I was delighted to see that every one of these elderly residents seemed to enjoy the granola bars, dunked in the coffee to soften as necessary. We served most of the residents at tables in the lounge area. However there were several who the staff assisted at bedside because they are too frail to venture out to the lounge area.  After supper the residents went back to their preferred hobbies,  some watching television, others playing dominoes at a table in the lounge.

This morning I was up before dawn and when the chef, Oleg, and his wife, Ludmila, started working in the kitchen I wandered in and they put me right to work peeling carrots and potatoes and slicing cabbage.  I was pleased to be handling some of the food August Mission had just delivered, as I helped Oleg and Ludmila prepare the day’s meals.  

I didn’t help serve breakfast to the residents this morning because I was busy in the kitchen. But after everyone had breakfast I helped with showering.  There are five or six men who are unable to walk by themselves, so Gennadiy and I lifted each of them in turn into a wheelchair and rolled them into the shower room, where we transferred them to a shower chair.

After we finished with showering, we took a short break and then Gennadiy and I and the facilities manager Sasha all went out to the back of the building where the wood is piled and started cutting and splitting. We worked at that until early afternoon, when we went inside and helped serve lunch for the residents. 

The nurse showed me how to spoon-feed one of the older men who can’t feed himself, and asked me to take special care of him.  

After lunch Oleg invited me to go for a bit of a hike in the countryside near the home.  We had partly cloudy skies with some nice sunlight this afternoon, so the scenery was very picturesque, so we took some photographs.

Oleg is not just an artist in the kitchen, he is  also a skilled photographer.

After we returned from our hike, Gennadiy, Sasha and I continued cutting and splitting wood until dark.  

At dinner, I helped the same man with his meal.  He lies deeply reclined on his bed with a towel under his chin.  He is able to use his right arm and hand flexibly, so he holds a slice of bread in that  hand and eats it by himself.  I hold his bowl of stew or soup and spoon feed him from that bowl. He opens his mouth wide whenever he’s ready for another spoonful.  after the meal he usually drinks a cup of tea by himself. He can hold the cup with both hands, and rests it on his chest between sips.