THE BABUSHKA WOMEN OF CHERNOBYL
THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER
April 26, 1986
The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge. When operators attempted an emergency shutdown, a much larger spike in power output occurred.
This second spike led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of steam explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.
For the next week, the resulting fire sent long plumes of highly radioactive dust into the atmosphere which caused radioactive fallout over an extensive geographical area. The plumes drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe.
Now Chernobyl is a ghost city in the restricted Chernobyl Exclusion Zone situated in Ukraine, near Ukraine’s border with Belarus.
Today it is still illegal to live inside the exclusion zone. Despite this, about 130 to 150 people do. Many are women in their 70–80s still farming their ancestral land.per Google research.
My Reaction
My son introduced me to a documentary about these women — the Babushkas. It is more gripping than any movie that I’ve ever seen. My eyes were riveted to the screen as I saw elderly women in their 70–80s with deeply wrinkled faces in their babushkas (head scarves) living out their lives in the surrounding rural areas of Chernobyl and its devastation. The air, ground and water are still contaminated.
These dear and courageous women tend their gardens, visit with one another, light candles and sing songs. They have dirt roads which connect each other’s homes which, to us, look like unpainted rough wood garden shacks with picket fences in which to keep the chickens.
They have such joy yet live in, to us, primitive ways. I saw no men nor children or grandchildren there — and they refused to leave HOME.
One reason they stay, I discovered, is that they’d rather stay and die of radiation poisoning than to move away and die of a broken heart as have many because they miss home. They chose bravely and stay where they love to be. I want to learn to be BRAVE like this.
I applaud them. I want to learn from them. They are happy in their run-down houses in the bone-chilling cold of Ukraine. They are happy in their very existence. I want to learn such JOY.
I honor them in their courage to face the unknown, stand up to it and keep on living. I want that kind of COURAGE.
My heart is amazed at the meaningfulness of their lives. They aren’t just existing until they die, they are LIVING.
I’ve moved many times, coast to coast.
My little home by The Cove is HOME to me and I want to stay here until life is no more.
Thus, I empathize with those Babushka Women of Chernobyl.
If this happened to me, would I stay or would I leave?
