After the war in Ukraine started, Dianne Roth started worrying about the many friends she had made during the eight years she spent in the country helping medical teams, beginning in the late 1990's.
The nurse reached out to Christian Aid Ministries and was soon on a plane to Romania after taking a leave of absence from Knollcrest Lodge, a long-term care facility in Milverton. She took a hockey bag full of medical supplies with her, provided by Stratford Mission Depot, a local not-for-profit that accepts medical supplies, packages them and works with partners to ship them to countries around the world.
"They said you can come and administer to the refugees, they were swarming the borders in Moldova, Romania and Poland," Roth told StratfordToday.
When Roth arrived, however, most had dispersed from the border areas. She joined up with an aid group, initially working at a pharmacy in Romania translating medications. She is fluent in English and Russian and conversational in Ukrainian.
"We had to translate every medication or at least put instructions on them. You have to, or it will sit on a shelf if people don’t know what it is. That’s what I did for the first two weeks, translated from Romanian to Ukrainian using Google translate."
That relatively mundane task was soon replaced by trips into Ukraine when the aid team secured a van and drivers.
"Our first big trip was into Ukraine to help refugees, we did some clinics there then moved on to other communities."
Along the way, Roth saw the effects of war - on people most of all but also the physical damages to towns and villages that were bombed, impacting infrastructure. Some villages were without electricity and relying on wood fires. Some roads were still "hot", a term aid groups used after spotting tank tracks.
On one occasion, a man was shining a flashlight at a spot on the road while the aid group were approaching. As they got closer, they realized the man was alerting them to a missile that got stuck in the muddy road and had not yet exploded.
The aid team worked with three vans and brought medications, blankets, candles and matches - whatever villagers could use. Roth administered small dressings and checked blood pressure and blood sugars, among other medical tasks.
"We were not on the front lines and didn't go into the bigger cities because most of the humanitarian aid goes there," she said.
Roth remembered a trip near Kharkiv, when guards questioned them at a checkpoint. They were weary of letting the aid group in because they were not wearing bullet proof vests. They continued on, dropped off supplies and were saluted by the checkpoint guards on their way out.
"They were clapping for us," she said.
Some of the villages had lost their younger residents long before the war, as they headed to bigger centres. The older generation appreciated the aid team remembering them.
Roth met a lady who had planted her potatoes for a third time, the first two crops were blown up. Many have to deal with a lack of basic resources, including water. Some had crops that could not be harvested because of the fear of landmines. Others could not cut down trees for firewood because of shrapnel stuck in the trunks like "chainsaws", Roth observed.
The nurse keeps a positive outlook despite the daily imagery and suffering she witnessed, sometimes coming up with jokes in her head to lighten the mood. She also tries to keep in touch, through texts, with her friends in the country. Roth bumped into several people from her previous stay who somehow remembered her all these years later.
Roth left last March and only came back for the holidays when she found out the aid drivers were going home at the end of the year. She was stuck in Montreal for a few days but made it home to Milverton for Christmas Day. While at home, she stopped into the Stratford Mission Depot to visit her old friend, Jean Aitcheson, who runs the Mission. The two have worked together over the years in healthcare and are good friends.
With a plan to put in a full-year, Roth leaves again soon, and will stay until at least March.
Aitcheson and her team filled up that exact same hockey bag with medical supplies for the journey.
"These are my friends. I have to help them," Roth said. "There are other wars going on but this one is close to my heart."
