Traditional Villagers

Many still work their fields in traditional, heavy clothing.
Without shampoo or showers/tubs, keeping their hair covered has not only a traditional, but a very practical purpose in helping reduce the amount of dirt they are exposed to.

The woman on the right spent 7 years in a Soviet prison many years ago, when the Communist government removed Ukrainian students from universities and replaced them with Russian students. She said they arrested those who were studying anything to do with the outside world - she was studying foreign languages. Her parents offered all they had to have her released, to no avail. When I met her in the late 1990's, she had never seen things like shampoo, disposable pens, candy or gum. She had to walk on two canes because of the damage done to her hips in the prison from sleeping on cement floors for so long. She said she saw many fellow students die there. Stalin's holocaust in Russia killed millions more of his own people than the famous holocaust in Germany.

FAST FORWARD TO THE FUTURE

The following are photos from a university in Ternopil, Western Ukraine - compare to our modern universities in Canada and the States - shocking! Blackboards that old crusted chalk is barely visible on, burned out lights in classrooms and hallways, desks and chairs that look like they came from a dump decades ago, and bathrooms with no running water in the sinks, no toilet paper, no soap and just a hole in the ground on the basement level.