The Black Sea is a source of health for all Ukrainians, especially children. The United Ukrainian American Relief Committee’s (UUARC) project for healing orphans had (as it did previously) an educational goal along with its healing program – to form a Ukrainian national awareness in the children.
Sixty children from the Luhansk and Vinnytsya regions of Ukraine, all orphans from poor families with many children, received a hospitable welcome at the healing camps – health resort type complexes in the city of Ochakiv.
The Ochakiv estuary (Dnipro-Southern Buh-Black Sea) possesses unique medicative characteristics. The air is saturated steam of iodine and bromine, produced in large quantities by water-plants located in the water of the estuary.
Nowhere along the Black Sea coast is there such a natural inhalation of iodine and bromine and such a natural iodide-bromide vapor bath as in Ochakiv.
Since the unfortunate children as a rule have a weakened immunity and live in ecologically inauspicious conditions, their health is undermined.
Iodine has a beneficial effect on the thyroid gland and iodide inhalations exhibit an anti-inflammatory effect during diseases of the upper respiratory pathways and lungs. Bromine normalizes the function of the nervous system, improves and renews the function of the liver cell and removes radio-nuclides from the organism. That is why the camps were chosen in this area at the meetings managed by the UUARC.
The children were examined by a doctor and each was assigned appropriate treatment – massage, phytotherapy, inhalations, therapeutic gymnastics, and physiotherapy. The best doctors were the sun, the sea and the fresh air.
Living quarters were in comfortable rooms with all conveniences.
Meals were four times daily. The menu was varied. Fruits, vegetables and juices were served each day. The sickest children received vitamin and medicinal cocktails.
While traveling by train to Odesa, then by bus from Odesa to Ochakiv, it was impossible not to enjoy the southern shoreline land that used to be inhabited by Scythians and Sarmatians, Goths, Polovtsians and Pechenigs. The Tartars-Mongols, Lithuanians and Turks did not avoid this land. The ancient Greeks lived, rejoiced and wept here for a full millennium.
Happiness and satisfaction resulted from various excursions: to the city of Mykolayiv, the cradle and pride of Ukrainian shipbuilding; to the city of Odesa, one of the strangest cities in the world; to the archeological preserve Olviya, the largest center of ancient Greek civilization on the lands of the northern Black Sea coast; to the Kinbursk spit, Ukraine’s natural reservation; and to the city of Ochakiv.
The cheered up children returned home tanned, healthy and buoyant. They shall long remember their trip to the sea and throughout their whole life the Ukrainian orphans will recall the wonderful vacation on the Black Sea shoreline. Without you, dear UUARC contributors, without your generosity and care, without your understanding of orphaned life, the paradise in which the Ukrainian children lived though the beautiful summer days would have been impossible.
So accept the sincere gratitude of the children for your good heart, the magnanimity and beauty of your soul. May your generosity be returned to you and your families through God’s great graces.
Vira Prynko
UUARC’s representative in the city of Kyiv, Ukraine