New Year’s holidays in Artsakh have been announced until January 9th, but Hanganak cannot afford to sit still for so long, leaving its beneficiaries , who are in the blockade, without attention. So we continued our visits after a short holiday break.
Today is the 23rd day of the blockade. The humanitarian crisis because of the blockade of the Lachin corridor is aggravated day by day, the shortage of essential goods, food and medicine is becoming more and more noticeable. We tried to find out how our elderly people cope with this tense situation by visiting Lyudmila, who was displaced from Shushi.
Lyudmila has been a beneficiary of Hanganak since 2016, when the Elderly Project was launched in Shushi. She has a very dramatic biography. Back in 1990, during the massacres in Baku, where she lived for many years, she miraculously managed to escape death and return to her homeland Stepanakert, to her father’s house. However, that house was in disrepair, and Lyudmila was offered to move to Shushi, where she, as a refugee from Baku, was given an apartment. All those years she lived and worked in Shushi. And then another war happened, after which she lost her home and property for the second time. Returning to Stepanakert after the end of the war, she had to settle in her father’s house, which was in a half-ruined state. Now she lives in that house and tries to make it habitable. Some furniture was already in that house, some things were given to her by neighbors. In short, Lyudmila has improved it a bit.
She applied several times for help to the Ministry of Social Development and Migration, and our visit coincided with good news. On the occasion of the New Year, Lyudmila received a refrigerator from the Ministry of Social Development and Migration of the Republic of Artsakh, which she had been waiting for 2 years. It was a very encouraging fact for us that the state institutions of Artsakh, regardless of all the restrictions related to the blockade, properly carry out their activities in full.
We provided Lyudmila with her medicines and inquired how the blockade affected her. Like the rest of our beneficiaries, Lyudmila also answered that it is psychologically very difficult to be in the blockade, as for food security, she still has food and vegetables. In the summer months, as usual, she canned a large amount of vegetables, prepared homemade jams, and even made pickles before the blockade.
At the same time, she noted that she can withstand all the restrictions and hardships, but we must take the ownership of our homeland.