Because I have no TV, by choice, I don’t follow the news often.
When I am hungry to know what is going on in the rest of Ukraine or the world, I go online and read the news. I have heard that the economic crisis has hit Ukraine pretty hard, but had not seen too much in Illichevsk. I heard that some stores had closed their doors, waiting for the crisis to pass.
In my opinion, the economy in Ukraine has been moving forward too fast in the past four years. Two generations who never saw what the rest of the world was experiencing were now experiencing the same or similar. In the past 18 years, the people of Ukraine have been flooded with so many “things” that were never a part of their lives before. Some have taken out loans on houses or cars, and are now in very tight finances. Even the banks went overboard in lending money.
One family that I know in another city decided to become a supplier for clothing and material shops. When the crisis hit, their venders could not pay for the goods because customers were few and far between. They were in a serious predicament.
In Ukraine, if you have a private house, there is usually a nice bit of yard that goes with it. But there are no yards like what we call a yard in America. Rather, all of the land is used to produce food or animals for food. This family had a large garden, a pig house, a chicken coop, and a summer kitchen. They had about 20 or so chickens when the crisis hit them.
True to Ukrainian mentality, they took what they had, what they knew, and made it work for them. Determining the most productive item that they had, they mass produced chickens. They turned a family supply of chickens into a business of growing and selling chickens. Now they have more than 200 chickens. The summer kitchen is now a staging room for chickens: peeps to mid life. The pig house is now a staging room for chickens: growth bulk feeding to harvest. This family is surviving the current crisis.
