frame 29 August 2022
Where The Sun Doesn’t Reach
by Dr Lisa Searle
Dr Lisa Searle wrote 'Where The Sun Doesn't Reach' in spring 2022, in the city of Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. She works with Médecins Sans Frontières who ran mobile clinics in the 30 metro stations spread across the city over a 3-month period, providing medical and mental health consultations. At the time of writing, the metro had been re-started and most people had been able to leave the metro shelters. However, many of these people lost their homes and family members, the situation continues to be unpredictable and unsafe in many areas in and around Kharkiv. The future for these people remains uncertain.
Dr Lisa Searle has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders; MSF) since 2009 and has completed 9 assignments so far in Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Ukraine. She developed an interest in humanitarian work and a passion for reducing injustice in the world from a very young age, and from the age of 15 Lisa decided to study medicine and to become a humanitarian doctor to help those living in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in precarious situations. Now having spent years of her life working just behind the frontlines, in often very complex and lengthy humanitarian crises bringing emergency medical aid to the people most in need. She had been watching the Ukraine invasion closely since the beginning, and when MSF asked Lisa to join them, in early March 2022, to go to Ukraine to work in one of the most conflict-affected parts of the country, she did not hesitate to say yes.
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Where The Sun Doesn’t Reach by Dr Lisa Searle
Living underground. Not by choice.
For any of us.
Nobody would choose this life.
The smell of urine, cabbage, old food, stale cigarette smoke, every now and then a whiff of perfume, somebody’s attempt to feel normal, to have a moment of pleasure, to feel like themselves, to feel clean.
The air is thick, it sticks to your skin, building up layers of sticky Metro sweat. Unnatural sweating, induced by anxiety and fear, not by the warmth of the sun or the pleasure of running on a beach, hair flying and sand under your feet. I saw a couple one morning, practicing martial arts, in a corridor lit by flickering fluorescent lights, twisting and turning, punching the air, feet scuffing on old tiles, rubbish piled in a corner, an old plastic bottle cut in half, spewing discarded cigarette butts onto the cracked, stained floor. Next to them a man of indeterminate age, prematurely old, crouched, shoulders hunched, and sucked on a cheap cigarette.
Everything is on display, no privacy.
Eating, sleeping, reading, arguing, kissing, hugging, crying in front of hundreds of pairs of eyes. People have learnt to be respectful. Not to stare. The toilets cubicles are separated only by small partitions, the stench overwhelming. One sink for hundreds of bodies, barely enough to wash hands and faces. Bodies and clothes have to stay filthy, nowhere to wash, nowhere to dry, nowhere to deal with the mess of periods, of used diapers, of urinary incontinence.
Only surviving.
This is not a life.
We sleep here too. Bringing medications, support, a listening ear, clean water, a fresh mattress, condoms.
It is too little. I want to do more. I want to give more. I am here for these people. The elderly, the vulnerable, the disabled.
“What do you need most?” I ask one woman.
She laughs.
“Only for the war to end,” she says. Nothing else can really help. I feel so useless.
The only way to support these people is to stay close to them. Hidden underground, below the surface, buried down here. The artificial lights blasting their obnoxious beams day and night. There is no concept of time. Except for the glaring orange numbers at the end of a platform, ticking away the seconds.
When will this end? The shock, the noise, the nightmares, the panic attacks, the fear, the despair.
The children paint pictures of war and hope, their works of art coloring the otherwise stark walls. Tanks, love hearts, the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag. Flames. A tank, trundling along through a field of green, the yellow sun shining brightly in the clear blue sky. We hope for peace. They hope for peace. The children hope for peace, those that are old enough to remember a time before the war.
Cardboard boxes built around inflatable mattresses. Some semblance of privacy. Is it morning? How can we tell down here? The days bleed into nights into days. An endless nightmare, a never-ending cycle.
I know this city only by the Metros.
Peremoha, Oleksivska, 23 Serpnia, Botanychnyi Sad, Naukova, Derzhprom, Universytet, Tsentralnyi Rynok, Pivdennyi Voksal, Kholodna Hora, Traktornyi Zavod, Maselskoho, Armiiska, Palats Sportu, Turboatom, Zavod Imeni Malysheva, Sportyvna, Metrobudyvnikiv, Zakhisnikiv Ukrainy.
I know their names by heart, their characters intimately. Each one different, but all full of people. A strange underground community.
The wifi is still working. Even the escalators in some stations. A bizarre kind of apocalyptic place. Descending into hell. The grumpy Metro station heads, all middle-aged women, like carbon copies of each other, in blue coats and pink lipstick, with jangling bunches of keys and rules and well-groomed hair. Hiding their fear and their pain behind a veneer of arrogance. Sometimes it leaks out; the tears start to spill and they mutter a few words, reluctantly expressing gratitude for our presence. Wishing for this to be over. They are also trapped here.
An announcement over the PA. Dinner is here. Cold processed meat, buckwheat, cabbage. Just enough to survive. People sit on the platform at mealtime, chewing despondently, shoveling food into their mouths with glazed eyes. There is no pleasure in these meals.
Old women, stripped of all dignity, struggle to the squat toilets on walking frames.
Outside, the sun is shining. The birds swoop through the air with delight; they have the city to themselves. The spring tulips are starting to peek through their buds, splashes of colour in the city. A few people here and there, squinting their eyes against the unfamiliar glare of the sun as they stand close to the Metro staircase, sucking on cheap cigarettes, eyes darting back and forth. Listening. Waiting for the next attack.
We hear an explosion close by. We flinch, and descend again.
Into the Underground.