Soup plate

Krasnoyarsk Yuri Goncharenko was homeless for three years. He was helped to survive a miracle and a weekly plate of hot soup. Now he distributes this soup himself

A small square on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. Promzone, near the passage of the Sibstal plant. This place is known to everyone who, due to various circumstances, was on the street. Every Friday, at exactly 16.00 a passenger car drives up there. Volunteers, led by Yuri Goncharenko, take out a large battery with soup and less - with tea from the trunk. Bread - eight rolls, four white loaves, four black and three kilograms of gingerbread - I brought today.

They are already waiting for us. Most volunteers who come to the square personally know, but each time someone new comes. They look like wanderers - with packages, knots, fit and hang them on trees.

Volunteers lay out a small table, put a tank with a soup on it and line up in a chain. One gives out disposable plates, the second pours, the third gives out bread, the fourth squeezes a stream of mayonnaise in a plate. People move after each other, without pushing, but, on the contrary, letting each other. Then carefully, so as not to splash, depart and attach under the trees. Then they come up for tea and gingerbread.

M slo, handkerchiefs, doctor

“I brought you the doctor today, the present,” the volunteer Elena Malakhovets joyfully reports. “As soon as you drink tea, come up.”

Bints, Zelenka, iodine, peroxide, Levomekol - all the most necessary to treat wounds and provide first aid. “I can do something from the cough”, “I don’t let go of my stomach,” “And my head hurts,” “my leg is festering.” Dr. Ekaterina Kalinina today is here for the first time, but was not at a loss from such an attack, but in turn examines everyone. And immediately cuts off those who want to collect drugs just in case, in reserve.

Yuri Goncharenko photo: Anton Petrov for TD

“These people almost never reach the hospital,” the volunteers say. -Of course, we do not have the right to appoint something to them, you never know what-they will drink aspirin, and there the ulcer is perforated. Therefore, only the simplest and most harmless.

“You can Levomekol,” the nimble man asks the rest.

- And what's wrong with you?

“Not me, comrade.”

- So let it fit.

The young man, clearly embarrassed, says that he has been breaking and oozing for six months already.

- Show me.

- I can't, in an intimate place ...

- Six months - a lot, it is necessary to go to the hospital and antibiotics, the ointment will not help.

I am tactfully left. They whisper with a doctor for 10 minutes, she persuades him to see a doctor. In the end, it still gives an ointment-“Take swabs at least at night, when you lie without movement, and it will definitely be in the hospital as early as possible, otherwise it will be bad.”

A dry, twisted woman, the age is generally impossible to determine, shows the recipe - she has problems with the stomach, and even reached the doctor, only there is nothing to buy medicines. Girls promise to bring next time.

After the inspection, everyone gets soap - the most ordinary, white. And the scarves, disposable - they look so strange in blackened hands. All this wealth is happy to shove into pockets.

“On average, about 50 people come here,” says Yura. - We are counting on this quantity. If something remains: bread, gingerbread, mayonnaise-we give with us. But soup and tea - always clean up. Everyone has their own drama, but we don’t particularly climb into the soul, unless they want to talk. There are those who previously held pretty decent posts in the city: former officials, businessmen, even managers. As a rule, they are not very talkative, do not like cameras, hide their eyes. They can be understood - many hope to return to normal life. For more than a year, one former driver has already been walking. Remember, an emergency occurred in the city when the bus ran into a fountain with boiling water? Many people were injured then, and the driver was accused that he had fled without even opening the door - left passengers in a trap. He was then given a year conditionally. It turned out that after that he left his family and lives on the street, spends the night in a night, and he came to eat. He cannot work, he was deprived of his rights, and in addition to everything will be blind. The first time he was given very blind. We began to pray for him, he lay down on the operation, we fixed one eye. But the second is blind. Many in the city still accuse him and hate him, they say, they gave him little. And no one knows that he still carries his cross and feels very strongly, this wine kills him. ”

"It is difficult to recall, but to tell painful"

I ask between volunteer duties - what is the point of bringing soup and pastries once a week and how will it help people who have been living on the street for years? But Yuri himself lived so and knows that sometimes a plate of hot soup saves life. Literally.

“ I will never forget this feeling, when a life -giving hot liquid is poured into a bought -up, almost grimacing stomach. You come to life straight, straighten, blood begins to run faster through the veins, and the stomach is working. ”

Volunteers distribute food homeless in this square every Friday photo: Anton Petrov for TD

A nice middle -aged man, smart, attentive eyes, a toned body. Yuri is trying not to remember how he looked more recently. He says that he would not have dreamed in a terrible dream that he would take bottles, spend the night with rats and look for food in the trash. There was a successful businessman, the owner of a woodworking workshop, who had everything: a wife, two handsome daughters, a car, an apartment, a cottage, a bunch of friends. Woodwork is a profitable thing, and the business went uphill. My wife, of course, did not like that he was not at home forever: either work, then friends, but she was patient. Then the daughters grew up, the wife moved away, and it turned out that the family has her own life, separate from Yura. And once he decided to leave. In addition, I fell in love with the loss of the pulse. But he did not live with new love for long. The crisis struck, the orders were sharply reduced - I had to take a loan, then another one. To cover debts, he took money. It was more difficult to give, not to be nervous and resisting a drink too. When the new love did not want to live with the loser anymore, Yuri was left alone with debts.

"It was a slow suicide"

Friends helped the first year - they rented a room. The business for some time still managed to keep afloat, but then the equipment was taken for debts.

“I tried to return to my family, but somehow ridiculous. He enraged the drunk - to the sober to appear on the eye was ashamed. The wife kicked out, called the police. My girls felt sorry for me. The eldest walked with me around the city when there was no one to sleep at all. At first I still tried to earn extra money somewhere, but soon I could no longer work. I didn’t really eat, just drank. I stopped holding on to life in general, I got drunk to kill himself as soon as possible. I did not notice how the friends and relatives gradually turned away, I was left alone. When they kicked out of the next place of part -time job, this was the last straw. He sat down at the stop and realized: I exhausted all my capabilities, there was no one to call, nowhere to go. Dead end".

Some man took Yura to the basement, where they took bottles, and arranged a receiver. The position is authoritative, because the receiver is issued for the calculation. But in return they take the passport. So a person falls into slavery, and this can last for years. After an unbearable debt for a homeless person, two and a half thousand rubles from acceptance had to leave. Without a passport and things. The street took him with open arms. The booze began more terrible and tougher - alcohol flooded in the empty stomach.

"First, everyone pleases to suck stronger"

“Homeless people are not spent on food,” says Yuri. - They are looking for potato cleaning, scraps, moldy bread. Each penny - for alcohol. It is customary that at first the newcomer lives like a king - they please him, feed, pour it to suck tight. And then the time comes to work out debts. You must do everything that the rest: climb the garbage dumps, look for aluminum, metal, copper and take it to the common fund. I felt how it dragged on, which was a little more-that’s all. Another refuge was the apartment on the outskirts of the city, or rather, a stash - bugs, lice, cockroaches. There, for the first time in my life, I saw bugs wear a person. Do not believe it, woke up - I see how they lifted him and carried him. In fact, he was just biting that he, wriggling, moved around the apartment. Alcohol helped to hold out the night [when Yuri left the street, he saved people from exactly the same apartments - TD ]. Bomzhovnie is hard work, no matter how paradoxical it sounds. In the afternoon you collect bottles, do not eat, just drink. The stomach refers so much that you can no longer push a piece. At night you are saved either from bugs or from rats, which sometimes do not let your eyes close. Harvesting to the bum in packs. The only salvation was Christian organizations that fed with hot dinners. ”

Yuri in his workshop photo: Anton Petrov for TD

Once, one of the Kormils invited Yuri to come to church. He shouted. But a week later, on Sunday, when longing was eaten worse than hunger, I remembered. He took off everything that lice lives in: socks, linen, T -shirt. Stayed in a dirty Olympic and pants. There is no money for the bus, do not go through the whole city. But still went. I barely broke half the way, and there are four more kilometers ahead. The gaze fell on the only thing that connected with the outside world - carefully kept the old, with a cracked screen and sowing battery, Samsung. I thought: “Why do I need it? Just call and say that he died. So he is still without charging. ” Some passerby gave him 100 rubles, and Yura reached the church.

I listened to the sermon. Then everyone began to go to the altar. Someone pushed Yuri, and he also went out. He repeated the words behind the priest, and he himself looked with the eyes of the person who asked him to come. When he left the church, I thought: why it would I, my legs will no longer be here. However, on the way back he noticed that it became somehow calmer. He returned to his blathat, where everyone is drunk and poured - but I no longer want to. That night, Yuri slept in the attic nine -story buildings. And for the first time in many months he slept in a strong sleep. In the morning I woke up - the sun is on the street, the birds sing. Then everything was like in a dream.

Some man for food and overnight took him to clean the cellars. And three months later, he accidentally met an old acquaintance. He had been looking for him for a long time, he needed a wood specialist for the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi. The acquaintance bought a passport, gave money, clothes. Then, however, the plans changed, and instead of Sochi, a friend went to work in Gagra. But miracles still continued. Before leaving, he settled Yuri with his comrade in an unfinished cottage. Now he was not only fed, but also paid 500 rubles a day - he helped to finish the house. Then there was another cottage and the salary is already one and a half thousand rubles a day. Yura no longer drank - completely, not a drop.

After some time, I tried again to open a business - sewing workshops for sewing clothes, but there was not enough money to unwind. He continued to work at a construction site. The person whose Yuri lived and worked for several years has come to a certain place once a week and fed the homeless with a hot dinner. Yura first helped, and then he took up this himself.

"I'm very afraid to go back"

“No need to read morality and notations, you just need to feed. After all, this rejection did not occur in itself-just all of them once bred love. And they need such a vaccination so that immunity against Bomzhov’s life is developed. It's not only about food. It is important to feel this manifestation of care and attention, to understand that someone needs you, someone cares about you. Yes, often they are drunk, spit, stinks of them. But over time, we noticed that by our arrival many are trying to sober up, to look more derived. As if something human wakes up. According to our estimates, about 40 people whom we feed have already returned to normal life. This is a very large figure. As a rule, if you stayed in the skin of the homeless year and more, it is almost impossible to return back. ”

Yura with volunteers collects empty dishes and garbage and says that he is most afraid of relapse. It’s scary when everything collapses before your eyes, and you feel helpless. It is terrible to skip the point of no return, after which you cannot break out.

Yuri Goncharenko photo: Anton Petrov for TD

“I now have a small workshop, and I am again engaged in my favorite thing - woodworking. I also want to engage in the production of real honey, I am learning to bake bread. Such that without chemistry is natural. I met a beautiful woman. We talked, corresponded for a long time, and a year later we decided to live together. She works in a bank in a good position. On the first date, I told her everything, but she did not scare her away. With her daughters now he began to communicate more, although they are already adults, they have their own lives. Lyuda and I want our children. I'm only 48 years old. Of course, I try to earn, provide a family. But I have no more this panic, when the money ends, I began to think with other categories. Apparently, it’s not for nothing that the Lord sent me such trials. ”

PS While this text was being prepared, Yuri and his comrades found a room for their own food production and began to make repairs and purchase equipment. Now Yuri plans not only to distribute with volunteers weekly finished dinners from the dining room, but to make them in his own kitchen and in his own bakery.

“We feed them with industrial bread now, but there is no soul and warmth in it that these people need so, which means there is no benefit. Do you know how to grab domestic cakes and shanges that our volunteer girls sometimes bring with them? Because this is a part of the house, which many have not had for so long. I want to return this piece to them. ”

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