FIVE of the Fermanagh people who welcomed Chernobyl children to their homes travelled to Belarus for a glimpse of life in the former Soviet state.

Exactly 16 years after the explosion in the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the effects of the disaster are still widespread.

Alma Kinnear (pictured centre) from Ballinamallard, who travelled to the village of Bogdanovka to visit the children she hosted last year, said she was not surprised they had been so overwhelmed on their arrival at Aldergrove International.

She explained: “The children thought they were landing in Paradise. How they took in what they saw when they landed, how they coped with that – I can see why they wanted to just sit on their own and watch what was going on.”

The children Alma was visiting, Tanya and Vasya Savich, belonged to one of Bogdanovka’s more well-off families, as was apparent from the fact that it owned one of the village’s only two cars.

The visitors came away with the impression that the country resembled an Ireland of the 1950s – with transport consisting of horses and bicycles, fields ploughed by traditional means, and restrictive society.

The Fermanagh people formed part of a group of 13 representatives of the Ballymena-based Chernobyl Children’s Appeal.