'Everyone who was evacuated from here came back dead'

LENA MUZYCHEMKO: Radiation continues to change the very landscape of Belarus. In the rural south, ancient villages have disappeared from updated maps, the inhabitants banished from their self-sufficient small farms and communities to alien tower blocks and urban living.

Some simply refused to go. Although living in the notoriously contaminated region of Vetka, Lena Muzychemko dug her heels in, even when the collective farm had to shut its gates and her husband, Ivan, and son, Sasha, were forced to travel to Vetka town to live and work.

While the village of Bartolomyevka was bulldozed around her and little remained but the ruins of the school and the second World War monument, bereft of context in what was once the village square, she and her cat hung tight at 23 Komsomolskaya Street in her traditional small blue house.

When officials threatened to demolish the house, she told them to go ahead: "I said I'd build a shed and live in that."

Today, only seven of the 400 families who made up the community of Bartolomyevka remain. The area is still a toxic exclusion zone. To officialdom, the Muzychemkos barely exist, though a local administrator regularly nails notices about scary radiation readings on their house.

The electricity has been cut off, there is no phone, the postman never calls. Without transport, the family must walk several kilometres to the main road to get a lift to town. Their light comes from oil lamps, their radio is battery-powered, their snug, warm home heated from the log pile outside.

Not only has Lena defied authority for 20 years, she has defied radiation itself. Now 78, after breaking all the rules - drinking milk from her cow, eating her own poultry, fish and vegetables - her only problem is a little deafness. Otherwise, she has 20/20 vision, with an extraordinary collection of embroidery to prove it, and exudes good-natured energy.

"Everyone who was evacuated from here came back dead. They're in the graveyard," she says heartily.

"The main reason they're dead is that they were uprooted from the land," adds Ivan. "They couldn't survive that."

Lena glances towards him with wry affection: "I heard when you drink a bit, it's good for the radiation." Ivan grins. "Maybe I'm rotting inside, but I'm okay."

Sasha, who returned from Vetka a couple of years ago to care for his parents, says he used to meet Bartolomyevka evacuees in Gomel [ the regional capital]: "They'd be sitting on benches, crying, with nothing to do. They'd say if they still had a house here, they would come back."

At 40, Sasha has little chance of finding companionship in this desolately beautiful countryside. But when he sees his peer group, the young of Bartolomyevka who scattered to Vetka and Gomel, he reckons that they too have regrets.

"Sometimes when they come back for the memorial day, you often see them crying at the school or going down to the river and crying there," he says.

Lena sees nothing to fear from radiation.

"It doesn't smell, I can't touch it, I can't see it," she says. "I'm here now and if I die a day early or a day later, what about it?"

Do they know anyone from the community who died young? Sasha looks thoughtful.

"Some of my classmates are dead. Three at least. I'm not sure how."