Hope after chernobyl

摘要

It's quarter to four on a bitterly cold afternoon in early November 2007, the sun is low on the horizon, and my wife and I are standing on the frozen, snow-specked earth of a fledgling orchard in the village of Golovchitsy, southern Belarus. In the slanting rays of the setting sun, we walk around the orchard talking to our local partner, Vladimir Nikolayevich Khlopok, who manages it. As we do so, I struggle to take some photographs with my frozen fingers. "What on earth am I doing here," I wonder, not for the first time on this trip, as the cold eats into my bones.