Haircuts and Poverty

Michele (my wife, here in Dnepropetrovsk for the first time as part of our delegation of psychiatrists) wanted a manicure and a haircut, so we arranged with Natasha Riyer, the director of our Microenterprise Loan Program for women (overseen by JVS in collaboration with MATI-Haifa), to point us in the right direction. We ended up at a small salon on Karl Marx Prospekt, “Very Well Salon.” Asya did a beautiful French manicure for Michele and Afina gave me a haircut (Michele went to another salon, this one a microloan recipient, for her cut--“she did a great job with my hair—I’d go back to her if I could”). Afina’s parents moved from Georgia when she was very young, but the family’s heritage is Greek (thus her name). Like many Ukrainians, she’s been abroad, including to Greece, but prefers to live in her native city.

This is my seventh time in Dnepropetrovsk, but the first time I’ve had a haircut. The experience pointed to some of the economic realities in Ukraine: the haircut cost me 50 grivna, about $6.25 (including two trips to the hair washing sink and, somewhat pathetically, a blow dry of my peach fuzz), but inflation on consumer goods, including staple food items, continues to rise. After my haircut, I visited a supermarket to buy some snacks, and spent a similar 50 grivnas on 2 chocolate bars and some nuts (almonds are nearly $30 a kilo). This mismatch between wages and prices affects the whole country, especially the elderly, who unlike Afina, cannot stay on their feet from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. cutting hair.

Before our haircuts, we visited Oksana, a woman—born in 1947, so she’s younger than my parents, but seems much, much older—who lives with her son, Sasha, in a half a house in the outskirts of the city. She welcomed us into her kitchen, hoping we could speak Yiddish with her. She told us that the other rooms in her apartment were under construction, so we couldn’t go there. Yan (our Dnepro staff person) later told us that in fact those rooms are so full of stuff that it’s almost impossible to find a place to stand—she was embarrassed for us to see them. When we asked her about herself, she said that she loves cooking Jewish food and is essentially confined to the house. She is obese and suffers significant pain in her feet. She has sought medical treatment, but rejected the recommendation to amputate her feet—not that she could have afforded such a major surgery. She started crying when she told us about her family, most of whom perished in the Holocaust—her father managed to get out of the city before the Germans came, but his parents and siblings were all killed. She then related Sasha’s story: when he was in school (at a regular government school, she said, because the Jewish school hadn’t opened yet), he was walking home when some bigger boys beat him up, leaving him with severe head trauma and headaches that persist to this day. The hint that antisemitism motivated the attack was hard to miss. He cannot work and spends most of his time with his dog.

Oksana’s economic situation is dire: every month she receives a pension of 800 grivnas ($100), half of which immediately goes to pay for utilities. That leaves 50 dollars a month for medicine, food, and other supplies. (When Michele went to use the bathroom, there were only a few scraps of paper there and she felt guilty using even one of them.) Therefore, the assistance Oksana receives from the community is invaluable. This assistance includes food packages at Jewish holidays and occasional visits from foreign visitors, who bring a small stipend to supplement her income. It’s not clear how she can survive, especially supporting her son (who also receives a pension, even smaller than hers), but as with so many Ukrainians, she finds a way not only to survive, but to continue to live independently.

The juxtaposition of the young women working long hours in the beauty salon (who mostly continue to live with their parents) and this poor elderly woman with a disabled son captures so much of the reality here—the challenges that this resourceful population faces every day.