Friday, March 03, 2006

Roza's story

Roza Yusupova was born in Kazakhstan in 1958. She has been living in Grozny off and on since 1980.

During the war, she left Grozny with her family and returned in April 200 only to find her house to be unihabitable. At that time, her husband managed to get a job as a plumber at a police station.

One day, around 2 months after working there, he told Roza that he was going to the police station to get paid. That was the last Roza had seen of her husband.

The police station deny any knowledge of what happenned to her husband - much to Roza's disbelief.

Life has not been easy on Roza - or for that matter, those who live there. There is no piping and water supply. Clean water has to be bought and is very precious. At the same time, rain water is collected and saved for purposes such as laundry and mopping the floor. There is gas supplied - but it gets turned off frequently and is unreliable. Roza stocks up on firewoood to keep her stove going.

Roza has four sons. She says this about them:-

"I feel upset and ashamed that I can't give my children what my parents gave me. We can't give our children a peaceful childhood. There are no decent schools, and if there are they don't have the most basic conditions.

They don't know what parks or funfairs are. They are children of war, they know what killings and explosions are. They know nothing but war."

But it is her sons - and recently, a granddaughter - that keeps her going on no matter how tough life is, no matter how much she is deprived of basic human rights.

People have commented how strong Roza is, how she never cries. She doesn't deny the latter but regarding the former, she confesses that she "...was afraid to cry in front of the children, so as not to traumatise them even further".

See Roza' story told in a photo journal in BBC News Online here

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