While many of the families around her were afraid, Anna Livandenko and her two young children were ready to go back home to Kiryat Shmona after more than a year of being evacuated, she said Sunday.
“I wasn’t afraid; I don’t know why,” she said, adding that maybe it was because of her husband, who works alongside the IDF. He told her she could feel safe going home.
“Some of the families are very frightened; they didn’t want to come back,” and ever since they did, they don’t stop talking about their concerns about security, she said.
Livandenko was not worried about her children either – a son in the 2nd grade and a four-year-old daughter going back to school – saying that she knew that they had safe areas and drills to make sure the children knew what to do in case of emergency.
“We are on the border,” she said. “It’s Kiryat Shmona. There is a shelter or a safe area every meter here. The first thing I asked when I went into my daughter’s kindergarten was, ‘Where is the shelter? Where do they need to go?’”
The family was tired of being outside of its home, Livandenko said, adding that she and her children were ready to return to Kiryat Shmona. While the family was evacuated, they were “first in a hotel, then an apartment, and then a vacation cabin.”
“My daughter switched kindergartens,” she said. “My son started first grade in Kiryat Shmona, and then the war began.”
Livandenko described the tumult of being evacuees, including spending a year in Tel Aviv with her children and then moving them North to be closer to where their father was working.
“The kids could not remember what their dad’s name was or what he looked like,” she said. “I realized I needed to bring the family together.”
The family was near the Kinneret for a few months before finally returning home at the end of last month.
In the weeks leading up to their return, Livandenko went to their home in Kiryat Shmona to renovate it each weekend.
The renovation was necessary because windows, doors, and multiple walls were damaged in the war, she said.
“There were [rocket] impacts across from the house, so we started putting the house in order and renovating, because we knew that if we came home, we had little kids, and it was winter and rainy,” she added.
The family did not have anywhere else to stay or a big family to lean on, Livandenko said.
They received some funding to cover repairs to their home, but not everything was covered, she said, adding that they had not asked for anything new – just to refurbish what they already had.
They also needed to pay out of pocket and wait to be reimbursed, Livandenko said, and they waited for a long time for this to happen.
Contractors have raised prices as demand for repairs has increased, she added.
While things are not perfect, she feels Israel’s leadership is doing what it can, she added.
She congratulated Avichai Stern, Kiryat Shmona’s mayor, on his good work, saying that although “there are downsides, [the leadership is] working.”
“I love my city, our people, and our country more since we have gone through this hard time,” Livandenko said. “Am Yisrael Chai.”