January 2023 Update
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January 30, 2023
Alexander Smirnov and Alexander Zharov arrived in the USA. We are going back on the 21st of February 2023.
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January 28, 2023
Went to Lviv early in the morning. Finished some staff, met with Norwegian volunteers and picked up refugees to take across the border. Brought refugees to the shelter of our friend Jay, who will put them on the train to Hanover tonight. Also, he told us that the family of circus performers, whom we brought to him a couple of days ago, put up a show in his shelter yesterday. Everybody was very impressed.
Tomorrow we will pack our stuff and start on the way home late at night. The plan is to spend about three weeks there, doing taxes and other organizational paperwork, and return after we are done.
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January 26, 2023
And today, on “Juno”, we took a family with a circus group of teenagers. Their mother and a disabled man.
In 2014, they fled from the Donbas to now flee from Zaporizhzhia....
We put them in the shelter of a good man, Jay, who will send them by train further to Germany.
We entered Ukraine before the raid across the empty border. And the wait at the exit was less than four hours.
It was a smooth ride and a good day.
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January 24, 2023
The first shipment of New 2023rd Year.
7 boxes (235 lbs, Shipment cost $671.18) went to Rivne.
And one huge box of supplies for the Children's Hospital in Kherson is on the way with a friendly volunteer group. Also, I added some toys from my teacher's shelves and medicines from your parcels that were received after Christmas to Kherson's boxes.
Yulia Orlova
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January 19, 2023
Alexandra Sasha Sakurets was one of the “original five” who went on the first deployment with the Global Disaster Relief Team in March 2022. It was a very bold decision on her part. We had no clear understanding of where we were going, what we would do, and what kind of environment we would operate in. She is one of the bravest people I have met in my life. She is truly an “Iron Lady,” a great professional, and a great friend.
After returning home, she started to work with Protez Foundation, which provides prosthetics and rehabilitation free of charge for Ukrainians who lost limbs as a result of the war.
On my last transport, we took a wounded Ukrainian soldier to the Netherlands for further surgical treatment and rehab. When he discovered I was from the USA, he told me: “O! My buddy is there now. He went there to get a prosthesis. He lost his right arm and leg.” – “Do you know if he is in Minnesota?” – “Yes, he is. How did you know?” – “Because my friend is working with this program.”
We took our picture together, and I sent it to Sasha, asking her to show this picture to her patient and say “Hi!” from his friend. After several hours (time difference), we got a response from her with a picture of her with my patient’s friend.
The volunteer world is very small!
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January 19 -January 21, 2023 (three days)
Lviv – Hellevoetsluis (Netherlands)
Total Distance: 3500+ km
Total cost: ~ $2100
Each mission requires a lot of planning and coordination with the other NGOs. You need to know whom and where you are going to pick up, where to bring them, and who is going to meet this person at the destination. You need to calculate how long it is going to take, what kind of weather and road conditions it is going to be, how many stops you will require to make, whether can you do it in one continuous run or you will have to stop for the night. If yes, where are you going to stop? Does this place have guaranteed outside parking accessible for the ambulance? Do you need handicap access and so on?
This one was a joint effort of Monkey Jump, Save People Worldwide, and the Netherlands for Ukraine.
When we left the base, it was already snowing. Our client was Vadim, a wounded Ukrainian soldier who was going to the Netherlands for more surgery and rehabilitation. At this point, he misses a good part of his femora, has sciatic nerve damage, and can’t bend his knee. He can stand, walk with crouches, and sit for a very short time. Despite the severe injury, he is in very good spirits. We picked him up in a Lviv’s hospital and started to the border.
On the border, it was a short delay on the Ukrainian side. Computers were down, and border guards could not access Vadim’s legal permission to leave the country. I called the coordinators; they sent us a copy, and we were on our way.
The weather was not cooperating – rain or snow (or mix).
Around 4 PM Alexander Zharov booked the hotel. The tricky part was that most of the European hotels do not have rooms on the ground floor, and we needed something with handicapped access. It is hard for Vadim to climb the stairs, and it would be very hard to carry him on the stairchair because he can’t bend his knee.
We checked in at the hotel around 9 PM and went to find some food. It turns out that even if it is said on the restaurant’s website, “open till 11 PM,” it means “no food orders after nine – only beer.” So, again, we went to “Doner Kebab.” The sign on the door said “Open”. When we opened the door and ask, “Are you open?” the owner said: “No. Do you want to eat?” – “Yes” – “Ok, come on in, I’ll cook for you.” Everything was already packed, and the kitchen cleaned, but he made us shawarma, and it was delicious.
The next day we left early morning and noticed that we had two problems: we didn’t have heat in the patient’s compartment, and the electronics there were not working. For the rest of our way, we had to drive with the window between the cabin and the patient’s compartment open and heat in the front all the way up. 30 degrees in front and around 17 degrees at the back (Celsius). Not very comfortable for the driver but not bad for the patient.
We arrived at our destination around 3 PM and were escorted by local volunteer Desire Bambacht whom we recognized by the Ukrainian flag. We dropped our patient and spent about three hours fixing our ambulance with no results. We were planning to have dinner in Rotterdam but instead got an invitation from the owner of the local restaurant. The place is called "Steakcafé de Buren" we were greeted by Natasha Reva, who is working there and also volunteering for Ukraine. In my opinion, this was the most delicious dinner I had in all my travel to Europe.
The next morning we went back to base around 7 AM. The original plan was to stop for the night at some point, but at the gas station in Germany, we noticed that our ambulance was leaking fuel. No mechanical shop is working in Germany or Poland on weekends, so we decided to drive all the way back rather than risk not being able to start the engine in the morning. At least at the base, we can tow it to the local mechanic we know and not be stacked in the middle of nowhere for God knows how long (nothing is done fast in Germany or Poland ever).
The weather was not cooperating again. It was snowing heavily, and we got stuck behind snowplows for more than an hour. We got home around one o’clock in the morning.
The next day (Sunday) we spent fixing electrical problems, and we took our ambulance to the shop this morning. I hope we will get it back soon.
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January 18, 2023
Went to Lviv again. Brought some medical supplies for the Dnipro regions and, after it took some refugees to Poland.
Also received photos from the medics on the frontline to whom we donated suction. They are very grateful and have already installed it in the medevac truck.
And tomorrow at 6:00 AM, we are embarking on the four days mission again.
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January 17, 2023
We got another letter of commendation!
I think we did something good!
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January 16, 2023
We returned from Ukraine with two small kids and two women. The third small one in the development - seventh month.
To my constant assurances that now everything would be fine, the girls replied with optimism: - 'Of course, they don't bomb here.'
They are from near Donetsk. Cannon artillery area.
Our Nika has not yet got her lights. We are standing in line for installation, and we miss them in Ukraine. But we still cross the border quickly, in a diplomatic lane and with little to no screening. The dream came true.
Border patrol knows our vehicle and treats us very humanely.
Beautiful!
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January 10 -January 13, 2023 (four days)
Total distance: 3100+ km
Total cost for the mission: $2476
This mission was extremely hard. It was two elderly patients (husband and wife) who were going from Dnipro to Trier (Germany). For several days we worked with coordinators to create an evacuation plan. This is a very long run that takes four days and is very hard even for healthy people. Our clients were not healthy at all. In the end, the plan was created; we coordinated with another ambulance provider, who would bring them first to Kyiv and then to Lviv. We would pick them up in Lviv the next morning, get them through the border, and make a stop for the night in Poland halfway from the destination.
January 10th, we left base at 6 AM and arrived in Lviv. It turned out our patients were not there. We made several phone calls and discovered their location was changed last night, but nobody notified us. We found them, loaded them in the ambulance, and were on the way.
We passed the border checkpoint very fast. I could see on the officer on the Poland border patrol's face an expression, “O, shit! I don’t want them to die here on my shift!”.
It was raining most of the way. We arrived at the place we were supposed to spend the night (reserved by our coordinator) around 7:30 PM and were like, “Are you kidding?!”
1) We can’t stay in most hotels because we need a parking space for our BIG ambulance. This place had parking … on the grass field. You need to drive uphill on an unpaved grassy road to get there. It has been raining for the last three days. Even if our ambulance could get there (not possible), we would be stuck in the mud.
2) The house was about 150 meters away from the parking. Over the grassy, muddy field, not passable by the ambulance stretcher.
3) the place had three beds instead of the four declared in the booking.
We had to find and book something else on the fly, and we did.
When we arrived at the new place, everything was perfect except that rooms were on the second floor, there was no elevator, and the staircase was long and steep. But at this point – whatever. We pretty much carried our clients to their room and called it a day.
On the following day, we were on the way to Trier. We were supposed to drop our patients at their daughter’s apartment (third floor, no elevator), but it became apparent they needed to go to a hospital.
We coordinated over the phone with a local volunteer and went to Trier’s hospital. On arrival, we parked in front of the ambulance bay and were greeted by the nurse (who spoke Russian) and the doctor (who spoke English). The conversation started with, “Why the hell you come here? We don’t have beds!” but after three minutes, when I gave my report, the doctor said: “I am going to open the ambulance bay for you; bring them in.”
We were completely mentally and physically drained, spent the night at the hotel in the suburbs, and the next morning started on the way back. We knew we were too tired to drive all the way to the base (almost seventeen hours), so we stopped for the night in Prague.
On the way home, we passed the mechanic shop that was supposed to be already closed but saw the owner who was about to leave and could pick up our beloved Juna, which we left him for repair four days ago.
Today I received an update from the daughter of our patients. They are feeling much better.
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January 6, 2023
The mission turned out to be predictable but tiresome - transporting Mrs. Irina from the previous post through half of Europe. Calm her down, connect with local volunteers to arrange accommodation for her, and drive for a long time.
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January 3, 2023
We are immensely proud of this mission:
Anyone can solve problems with a solution, but problems that do not have solutions in principle are much more challenging.
A woman lived in Ukraine. She was born there, lived half her life, married, and moved to Russia, but quickly divorced and returned. With Russian citizenship. She started to do the paperwork for Ukrainian citizenship, but then she had diabetes, a leg amputation, then the war. And she went to her relatives in Germany in a wheelchair... And with a Russian passport.
It is hard to leave Ukraine with a Russian passport and even harder to enter Poland. Without a visa, which Poland does not give is not realistic at all.
And her condition, after traveling through half of the country in today's realities, surprisingly did not improve, but quite to the contrary.
In general, after two hours of bargaining at the border, with the help of Uncle Sam and the God all Mighty, having hyped the issue to Warsaw, we brought her to Poland. And it is very cool.
Pani Irina will get some rest for a couple of days, and then someone, perhaps us, will take her to Germany.
