LocationsThe preciousness of water
Retired music teacher Hanna Borozniak knows how hard it is to live where drinking water is scarce
Ordó-Vasylivka is an old Cossack village in the Devladivska community in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. For a long time, the village has struggled with a lack of drinking water. Only a few wells in the entire village provide water that’s safe to drink. Construction of a centralized water supply system for the community stalled with the start of the full-scale invasion. Then, after the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was blown up, the water quality in these areas (home to nearly 7,000 residents across 34 villages) worsened even more.
But in April 2024, the Devladivska community received three modern water filtration stations and a water truck as part of a project from the EU and UNDP. This was the first time residents in these areas had been provided with consistent, safe access to drinking water.
Hanna Borozniak is one of the people who comes to the station in Ordó-Vasylivka every day to get water. The station is located in the very school where she worked for nearly 38 years. Borozniak has spent most of her life in Ordó-Vasylivka, having moved here from Zakarpattia Oblast to work at the school. She spent her career as a music teacher and artistic director at the Culture Centre, where she founded a women’s singing ensemble that won awards and was known far beyond the village.
“My whole school sang, my whole village sang,” she proudly recalls.
Hanna saw the difficulties with drinking water in these communities as soon as she settled in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The water from the well near her house was not suitable for drinking, cooking, washing, or even watering her garden. Because of the unique landscape, it has a bitter and salty taste. To get good water, she and her husband used to walk to a well with potable water on the other side of the village. There are only a few such wells in the whole village, and they are far away.
“We always got our water from that well on the other side,” Borozniak explains. “But you can’t walk that far every day, and I don’t have the strength for it anymore. We could also buy and get clean water delivered, but since our income is minimal – just two small pensions – we cannot afford it. Most of that money goes toward medicines, so there’s nothing left for water.”
When a modern water filtration station was installed in the building of her former school, Hanna breathed a sigh of relief.
“What is water? Water is life, a luxury,” Borozniak says. “Maybe people elsewhere don’t understand this, but we feel it constantly. So, every day I take my bottles and the trolley my children gave me for my birthday and go to my school to get water. It’s close to us, just past our garden.”
For the pensioner, the arrival of the filtration station and a continuous supply of clean water means a lot. She and her husband live alone; their children left the village long ago and visit only rarely. They need water every day. Borozniak’s husband suffered a stroke and has been bedridden for four years. She is an older woman who cares for him diligently, and that care requires clean water every day.
What is a basic necessity for most people became a daily challenge for Borozniak. Important partnership projects, aimed at supporting Ukrainians during the war, help people like her cope.
Photo credit: Dmytro Smolenko / Reporters / UNDP in Ukraine
