Food Aid Warms Flood Victims' Winter

By Laura Sheahen

The blue-painted cottage nestled by a river—with blooming rosebushes, a large vegetable garden, and nine chickens pecking around—probably looked idyllic during the summer of 2008. Rima Litvinova, a 70-year-old widow living in an Eastern European region called Transnistria, had very little money, but she loved her house and plants. Despite a heart condition and the fact that her two grown sons lived far away, Rima was able to run her household in the small village of Rashkov. She raised carrots, onions and potatoes; cared for her roses and lilies; and sang in the choir at her village's Catholic church. Part of her house's charm was its proximity to a bend in the Dniester River, where the water's span gets narrower.

In late July, the river started rising.

Pushing through its narrower channels with more force, the river soon overran Rima's low-lying garden and house. "The water came up past my knees," she says, gesturing. Her neighbors' homes and crops suffered the same fate. Elderly residents of the village splashed through the water, trying to save early potatoes; villagers who lived on higher ground helped them move some of their furniture (and Rima's chickens) uphill.

"It was our first experience with a flood," says the local Catholic priest. "We'd never had one before."

For days the villagers watched helplessly as their food and possessions were washed away. When the waters receded, their cottages' floors—some of them dirt—were soggy, and their walls were damaged. The water in their wells was unsafe, and the crops they had counted on to see them through the winter were gone.

Living on the Edge

The breakaway province of Transnistria is a disputed region in the eastern part of Moldova, a former Soviet republic and one of Europe's poorest countries. Because of the region's staggeringly high unemployment rate, working-age adults have left Moldova in droves, getting jobs abroad and sending money back to their children and elderly parents. But poor people—often subsisting on less than $65 a month—are still at the mercy of food, utility and medical costs. Some are even vulnerable to being sold into slavery in other countries, with elderly or disabled people forced into begging.

So helping impoverished Rashkov villagers get through the winter was a priority for Catholic Relief Services Moldova and its partners. With funding from CRS, Caritas Moldova worked with the village's Catholic church to identify the neediest flood victims and provide food parcels.

Father Janus Marchin, the pastor of St. Kaetan's parish, had already become a hero during the flood. "He came to check on us, making sure we had bread and water," says Raisa Yenina, Rima's neighbor. Father Marchin also helped clean water sources: "He pumped some of the water out of our well with his own hands," Raisa continues.

The Polish priest notes how great the needs of the elderly are in the village: "We've been taking care of them for years." St. Kaetan's runs a home health care program for bedridden villagers, a clinic, and a soup kitchen for children.

Help From Family—and Mother Church

With advice from Father Marchin and others, CRS and Caritas distributed parcels containing sunflower oil, canned meat and fish, pasta, rice, condensed milk, and more. Because Transnistria does not recognize itself as being part of Moldova, charities had to contend with more logistical difficulties than usual to help the flood victims. One charity that collected used clothes for the victims almost had to smuggle them over the border into Transnistria. CRS was able to purchase food within the province, with help from St. Kaetan's.

The food means one less worry for elderly villagers like Rima, who are coping with the flood's aftereffects. For the time being, Rima has crammed herself into a 6-by-10-foot room for the winter, leaving her small house's more severely damaged main room—about 12 by 12 feet—nearly empty as it awaits repairs. In the spring, she says, her son should be able to visit from Ukraine and help her fix the damage. She'll replant her vegetable garden and hopes again to see the "paradise of flowers" she had before.

And she's not in danger of going hungry. "The food parcels really helped, because we lost everything in our gardens," says Rima. "Thank you to everyone who helped us in our hour of need."

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.