At her 80th birthday party, she had over 100 guests - all friends she made here in New York. She’s now 87 and has an easier, safer, and more comfortable life than she ever experienced in Ukraine. Plus - and this part is hard to explain - America had blue jeans.įor my Baboosia, America has been better in almost every way. And because everyone said that America was better (in every way). Because, thanks to my father’s tiny furniture store, we received death threats from people who didn’t appreciate his attempt at entrepreneurship (i.e. Because we didn’t trust our government anymore. We were leaving Ukraine because we waited in queues for hours to buy things like milk and pantyhose. We weren’t just leaving because of fear of radiation. By the time we were offered a chance to leave, I had made a full recovery and we lived far enough from ground zero that we figured the worst was already over. Five years later, the unexpected silver lining came of getting asylum into the US. She snuck in every night to sit by my side. There were no visitors allowed, so my mother bribed a hospital worker to acquire a nurse’s uniform. I was one at the time, and spent nine months in the hospital. Tania Luna: How a penny made me feel like a millionaireĪfter Chernobyl, the rain came down black. There was no “ what if?” No “ should we?” Several countries offered us asylum, and we jumped at the opportunity to get out. Together with my mother, father, sister, our dog and me, she chose to leave Ukraine after the Chernobyl accident and move to the US. This talk resonates deeply with me because it reminds me of my very own Baboosia, what we call grandmothers in Ukraine. After watching today’s talk, she shares her own thoughts on her family’s decision to leave, and what their life has been like ever since. Speaking at York, Tania Luna reflected on the beauty and heartbreak of her own childhood, as her family was uprooted by nuclear meltdown and relocated to the United States. Last year, another TED speaker offered a different perspective on the Chernobyl aftermath. “Home and community are forces that rival radiation,” Morris concludes. Choosing the comfort of familiarity over lonely, transplanted lives in Kiev, these babushkas have lived in their ancestral land, on radioactive soil, for the past 27 years. Holly Morris: Why stay in Chernobyl? Because it's home.īut in today’s powerful talk, Holly Morris introduces us to a group of elderly women who returned to Chernobyl after the disaster, setting up their lives in the toxic dead zone. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, 350,000 people were presented with the heart-rending decision: to stay in their homes and risk exposure to radiation, or to uproot their lives and move away. Here, she shares her reflections on hearing about the woman who stayed after Chernobyl. Tania Luna left Ukraine when she was 6-years-old.
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