Five years ago, on April 26,1986, one of the four reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded. Silence blanketed the world for three days while radioactive particles fell to the earth from the deadly cloud. Geiger counters and dosimeters (hand-held geiger counters) throughout Eastern Europe began to register the horrifying increase in radioactivity as the winds spread the invisible isotopes far and wide.
The Soviet Union could no longer keep this disaster quiet and the news wires began to clatter -- our worst nightmare had come true. The explosion produced 90 times more radioactive fallout than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, altering the world's biosphere forever.
Other news soon replaced Chernobyl in U.S. headlines, but for the people of Byelorussia, the Soviet republic just across the Pripyat River, the Chernobyl disaster remains a current event. The 2.2 million people who live in contaminated regions have altered their daily lives to deal with radiation. Digital clocks atop official buildings in Minsk -- the capital city of Byelorussia -- flash the time, temperature, and radiation level every few seconds.
70 percent of all the radioactive fallout fell on this region of 14 million people (20 percent fell on the Ukraine and 10 percent on other parts of the Soviet Union and Europe). Today, 173,000 Byelorussians, including 37,000 children, are being monitored for radiation sickness. The occurrence of thyroid, kidney, and general diseases has dramatically increased. Doctors report higher miscarriage rates in pregnant women and more birth defects in children born to parents living in contaminated areas. Exposure to high levels of radiation especially suppresses the immune systems of growing children. Even common colds can readily lead to chronic respiratory problems.
Early this year, I traveled to Byelorussia as part of a relief delegation bringing three tons of medicine. Our journey took us into the contaminated regions where the people continue to work, learn, and love; yet the Chernobyl catastrophe lurks just below the surface of their everyday lives.
Vitaliy Zheleznyak, a jowly man with bushy brows, is chair of the collective farm in the village of Vu Pokalybichi -- once an enviable model of communal agrarian life. Vitaliy flashed his gold-capped smile as he boasted of the proud 60-year history of the 3,000-acre farm.
Today, this industrious collective continues to plant grain, potatoes, and wheat as well as roast Colombian-grown coffee beans. The problem is that nobody wants to buy the produce anymore. Soviet food shortages render the 1,200 cows too valuable to refuse. Scientists insist the milk and meat register an "acceptable" level of radiation. The dairy products are shipped to various republics in the Soviet Union, the attitude being that a little radiation spread among many is a lesser evil than hunger. The economic survival of the collective farm, as well as the entire region, requires that trade continue.
"Ideally," Vitaliy says, with the determination of one who is responsible for the welfare of 430 workers, "it would be better not to plant anything here ... but taking into consideration our very poor economic situation, we must grow what we can with precautions and evaluations."
Vitaliy admits, "We don't feed our children with the food we grow because it is contaminated. We buy uncontaminated food from other regions. Still, 68 of our own children have been diagnosed with expanded thyroids and have experienced headaches and nose bleeds, the first signs of radiation sickness." The farm leaders coordinate an effort to send many of the area's 600 children away for the summers in hopes of restoring their immune systems.
Vitaliy remembers how it used to be -- until April 26,1986. "It was a beautiful, sunny, wonderful day until noon. About 4 p.m. my grandson and I saw a black cloud raining down what we didn't understand. So in such a way, in silence, being unaware of this accident, we were walking, enjoying our lives, not knowing of what was happening." Vitaliy is convinced that the forebears who named Chernobyl chose a prophetic name, for it means "black bitterness" -- and that is what smolders beneath this thriving farm community.
70 kilometers from the Chernobyl reactor, Nikolai Markovski, a wiry, organized man in his mid-40s, sits at his desk beneath a portrait of Lenin and governs the Narovlia district, an area with triple the radiation level of the collective farm. Areas that register more than 15 curies of radiation are considered uninhabitable. On the day I visited Narovlia, the air registered 37 curies. An old tree towers outside of Nikolai's office and spidery growths adorn the old limbs. "What kind of tree has limbs like that?" I asked, only to be told that what I saw were mutations caused by the radioactivity.
Twenty thousand people live in the Narovlia district. During the last five years, 8,000 people have been evacuated or moved to non-contaminated regions. Recent studies have shown that Narovlia is more contaminated than first thought. 80 percent of those that now remain will be evacuated in the next year.
All families with children under the age of 14 must leave. Families with older children can decide for themselves. Only eight of the original 40 villages in the district will be inhabited; the others will be deserted, left to decay.
Nikolai took me beyond the barbed wire where armed guards patrol the roads leading to the villages evacuated within weeks of the disaster. (Only four villages were actually bulldozed and buried.) We drove to the border of Byelorussia and the Ukraine just six kilometers from the nuclear reactor. Our dosimeter registered 366 curies in the air.
In the village of Dyornovichi, once home to 100 families, we walked through a kindergarten where toys, dolls, cots, and slippers had been strewn haphazardly around the room. Children played here for three full months after the disaster. Even after five years, hot spots around the facility registered 1,000 curies -- one full rad -- which is a lethal level of radiation when consistently exposed.
On the way back to Narovlia, Nikolai guided our driver past an abandoned village where several families have ignored governmental restrictions and moved back to their ancestral farms. An old, hunched woman walked out of her clapboard cottage to offer us fresh bread. She assured us that all of those who returned were well and happy. A couple of school-age girls ran across the road at her bidding.
Nikolai told us when we were back on the bus that many of the peasant farmers don't believe the radiation exists because it is invisible. Others acknowledge the presence of radiation, yet they could not adjust to life in the huge apartment complexes built for the refugees of the contaminated regions. They chose to return, knowing they might die young.
Nikolai is the father of an 11-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son. When asked, "Will you leave?" he firmly shook his head and said, "The captain goes down with the ship." "What about your children?" I asked. He shrugged sadly, "They know this is my job."
Back in Minsk, the sickest children of the contaminated regions are gathered in sparse, ill-equipped hospitals. Dozens of bald-headed chemotherapy patients line the wards. The youngest ones posed eagerly for Polaroid pictures, which they then gave to their mothers who live at the hospital with them.
4-year-old Andre Cochan and his mother have been at the Hematological Center in Minsk for four months. Andre, a bald bundle of energy dressed in a red and purple plaid shirt and blue wool pants, eagerly describes his life at home in the Borisov, 80 kilometers from Minsk. "I like to play with my dog and my cat; fish too. I have many small cars and in the summer there are flowers around my house." With a wide, expansive gesture, Andre, who longs to go home, declared, "Summer is coming -- I can almost feel it on the tip of my nose."
Andre's father and grandfather care for Andre's baby brother in Borisov. Andre's greatest wish is that his papa would not have to work so that he could come to Minsk to play with him.
When we bid him farewell, Andre nodded goodbye and wished us "good health and many years to live." Emotion choked in my throat as the leader of our delegation bent down and hugged him, saying, "You too, dear little one." I know my chances of a long life are so much greater than his.
"What do your people need most?" we asked the Minister of Health, Vaselli Karakov, when we met with him to determine priorities for the next shipment of medicine. "What we need most is help with the moral fortitude of the people. Their peace of mind has been destroyed. Souls are sick with despair. They need hope as well as medicines."
Minister Karakov went on to produce a long list of medical equipment and stressed the need for specialized training for the doctors. The medical professionals we met passionately care for the children yet they know that Western oncological medicines and treatments could prolong the lives of 85 percent of the children.
Without training for the medical professionals and expensive medicines, most of the children will die simply because they played outside, ate the food of their land, and breathed the air. Such a price to pay for nuclear power.
Helen, one of the mothers at the collective farm, speaks for all of the Byelorussian people: "I lived earlier in the place of radiation. I love my motherland. Of course, I can go far away from this place, but I do not want to abandon the place of my birth. I'm not alone in this, so I stay ... We must not play with nuclear energy. Everybody wants a safe place to live."
Sadly, parts of Byelorussia will not be safe for generations to come.
Rebecca Laird was a free-lance writer and editor based in San Francisco when this article appeared. She traveled to Byelorussia with a delegation from the San Francisco-based Citihope, a private, religious charity that works in conjunction with the Byelorussian Children's Fund.
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