Wokin' the hog

Or the dog, depending on your culture and culinary tastes of course. Tanya and I found a new kitchen store today and invested in a wok. Plain iron, plain wooden handles, like I have seen lots of times in China. $12. Not a bad price.

It's cloudy in the west and looks like rain. Wind has been strong and cold for the past two days. Maybe it will rain. Tanya didn't water her flowers tonight, just in case.

We have a new neighbour living in the old house next door where Lucia's mother used to live. Actually he showed up while she was still very sick. Homeless, no job, no documents. Told folks his name and that he was from Krasnodar in Russia. Made arrangements with the owners and started digging up that jungle of a garden spot behind the house. A very hard worker, he had it worked black and planted in no time, then cleaned up the yard and fixed the fence up a bit. Until Lucia's mom died, he lived in a shed in the yard and cooked what little food he had on an open fire.

Sometimes he will borrow 10 hrivna from Tanya for food and he has always paid it back when next he found an odd job. Today as Tanya and I were heading into ZV, he was standing by the gate into our dog yard. He was raving that the dogs needed food and about the people that only he could see and hear and much more. Tanya calmed him down and sent him to his house, then called her friend Ira at the ambulance service.

Apparently no one wants to do anything with him of for him because he has no papers (Ira said and Andrei confirmed later). There are no Social Services anymore (no money), the police won't do anything; the hospitals neither. Because he has no documents there is no way to bill his expenses to the appropriate authority and anything that is done will be at the expense of the person who does it.

I will ask Tanya what we can do. It is sad to be alone in the world.