When the guns fall silent
When the conflict first came to her hometown of Yasynuvata in the summer of 2014, 31-year-old Taisiia thought it would be all over in a few days. More than five years later, she’s still waiting.
Taisiia though hasn’t been just waiting. She is a lab technician at the Donetsk Filtration Station (DFS), vital civilian infrastructure located in the middle of an area that has been regularly the scene of some of the most intense fighting over the years. Firing positions are within a couple of hundred metres of the station, placing it and its workers, including Taisiia, at the epicentre of exchanges of fire that have sometimes seen bullets and mortars directly impacting on the plant. She has lost count of the days and nights spent under shelling at her workplace. But she has never even thought about packing up and finding another job far away from the contact line.
Taisiia confesses that her mother has begged her several times to quit her job. But even when her young daughter would cry on the doorstep as she was leaving for work, she still went, feeling duty bound, knowing, as a graduate of the National University of Water and Environmental Engineering in Rivne, that someone had to step up to the plate. She knows the potential catastrophic humanitarian consequences a prolonged disruption or closure of the station could entail for her, her family and neighbours, and the hundreds of thousands of others living in the wider Yasynuvata-Avdiivka-Donetsk city area. The prospect of some 380,000 mostly urban dwellers without fresh drinking water was too much for Taisiia; she went to work.
Taisiia, who is a single mother, dismisses any thought or mention of bravery or dedication, pointing instead to the fact that she is one of eight other women out of the 10 or 11 employees who work the night shift at the plant, when shelling usually intensifies. Her dismissiveness inadvertently highlights an often-unrecognized reality, in which ordinary women like her in villages, towns and cities all along the contact line are playing a critical, and often heroic role in mitigating the effects of the conflict by keeping vital civilian institutions and infrastructure running.
Taisiia is far from oblivious to the danger. With her piercing brown eyes focused on her interviewer, she speaks of how her heart is pounding whenever the green bus transporting her and her co-workers makes its way to the plant, knowing that guns hidden in nearby trenches are pointed and poised, and mines and unexploded ordnance are everywhere. She recalls an incident in which five colleagues were injured when the bus came under fire.
Like many people living along the contact line, Taisiia is exhausted by the unending conflict. Although the sound of explosions has become an almost normal part of the daily fabric of life, she insists on hoping, especially for her daughter, for a normal life. Taisiia wants the world to know her reality. She wants the world to know that there are people living and working on the contact line, hoping for peace and waiting for the day when the guns finally fall silent.