Working with all the powdered food at the Pasta Café has begun to have an effect on me — I noticed this on Tuesday morning when I was sneezing non-stop. For this reason, it was good to be working in the downstairs section of the kitchen, where we packaged meals for internally displaced people.
The packaging process usually comprises a chain of three people. One pours a portion of food into one side of the food container, the second adds salad, and the third seals and packs the container into a large carrier bag. On Tuesday the meal consisted of sausages, potatoes, and sliced cabbage and carrots. Volunteers and kitchen staff are provided free meals for their work at the café, but I decided to eat lunch at a different venue to explore more of Lviv.
I had been told by several local and volunteers that Ukraine is renowned for its dumplings, so I thought I’d better try these. The dumplings didn’t disappoint, and I also recommend them to any visitor, just make sure you are able to translate the menu!
After lunch, I thought I’d try a new type of voluntary project I’d been hearing about. Camouflage netting is a popular choice for volunteers in Lviv, and there are venues hosting it all around the city. The place I went to was headed by a group of older Ukrainian women, some of whom had family involved in the military. There were a couple of English-speaking volunteers who talked me through the netting process and providing me with the relevant fabrics.
A large net was held taut on a wooden cube-shaped structure, and we essentially tied and weaved fabrics through the net until there were no obvious gaps. Once the net was completed, we removed it from the wooden structure, and the whole thing was able to fit into a large pillowcase. I would recommend this type of volunteering work to people with skills in arts and crafts, and you can sit down while you work on this — a nice break from the on-your-feet work I’ve done up to now!
In the evening, I went out with one of the volunteers I’d met previously, and we toured the Lviv streets. After the bars closed (normally between 22:30-23:00 ish) we walked in the main plaza by the opera house. Because of the curfew which begins at midnight, you often see police patrolling the streets making sure people are returning home. Its often easy to put the ongoing war in the back of your mind here, but things like this remind you quickly of wider reality.
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