Mountains and Heaven in Between: Winter life in Ukraine's Carpathian Region

Nestled in the heart of scenic Transcarpathia in the old-new nation of Ukraine is the tiny village of Kolochava. It is a backwater, with poor roads and few services, cut off from the rest of the world by towering, snow-capped mountains. There is a church in Kolochava but no hospital; workers but no jobs. It is the quintessential backwater, right smack in the middle of Europe, where Ukraine meets Poland, Slovakia and Romania, and where the nineteenth century meets the twenty-first. Holding the village together are its female paramedics. They travel the treacherous roads in even more treacherous weather, responding to every call, from drunkenness to melancholy to Covid-19. Armed with little more than a thermometer and a blood pressure cuff, they offer both moral and medical support to people who seem to have nowhere else to turn. We follow these women over the course of one winter, as they brave the elements to bring solace and healing. And along the way we meet people of all ages, celebrating and suffering, marrying and mourning, living lives that echo the lives of their grandparents and their grandparents before them. We visit them in the market and watch them in church, performing the same rituals that they have for generations. We watch young people rolling flaming tires into the river (a local Easter tradition), and join literally hundreds of guests at a young couple’s wedding. As we celebrate Easter and the season of rebirth, we can’t help wonder with the paramedics whether Kolochava itself will be reborn into something new, or whether things will carry on the way they always have. As much as the paramedics want change, it seems like it will take everything they have just to keep the status quo alive.