Olya's eyes flashed with resentment. "You simply don't understand how tough things can be here, Nigel. You think that everything in Belarus is so much better than in your country. But in Vetka there are families who cannot afford to buy clothes and food for their children. That is life for us. In the West you have everything; here we have nothing. It is not as you think it is." We were facing each other across a rickety table in the kitchen of a flat far from Vetka. All that separated us in that small room were two bottles of beer and a plate of bread and cheese, but in terms of upbringing and experience, the gulf was vast. She from a town in rural Belarus, I from England. Two very different Europes.
But this is not Olya's story, which remains to be told another day. And I shall certainly tell it, one day. Instead, this is the story of Tanya, Olya's mother. Tanya's tale is one of hardship, personal tragedy and resilience against the odds.
Vetka
Vetka is the sort of place you could easily miss. It sits on the east bank of the River Sozh, amid a wilderness of forest and marshland. Across the centuries, it has shared the fate of many communities in this part of Europe and witnessed great conflict and misery. It was twice burned to the ground by troops of the imperial Russian army, and between August 1941 and September 1943, it was occupied by the Nazis, who murdered over six hundred of its citizens. And as if all this wasn't enough human misery for one small town, in 1986 the prevailing wind blew the deadly Chernobyl radiation cloud over Vetka and its outlying villages. The stricken reactor was only 160 kilometres away to the southwest.