Bukuria. The story of one voyage

“During half a year of service, I learned how to fill toilets with bleach, gave a child bleach to drink, was afraid to go to war with a friend, almost broke up with my girlfriend. And I also gave away all the money I had saved, barely got a patient out of a serious complication, buried my career as a surgeon and gained 10 kilos. Oh, and I also almost destroyed the mental health of my beloved cat, who hasn’t seen her owner for weeks.”

“Bukuria” is a funny, incomprehensible word that was supposed to denote a good emotion. And that’s exactly what the crew of their “ship” decided to name Bohdan Zhuravel, who one day went from a civilian surgeon to the battalion’s chief medical officer.

Bohdan skillfully combines black despair with black humor: in his text, a conscript accidentally drinks his medicine with bleach instead of water, a war for survival is going on all around, and the author himself regularly has conversations with an interlocutor whom no one has ever seen - sometimes about something philosophically embarrassing, and sometimes they just share jokes.

This is a frank story of a person who made a difficult choice and does not always understand how to live with it. To live in a world where an enemy wants to destroy you and your future. An enemy who has no pity or honor. And what to do in a world where you decided to fight despite the fact that you are so scared.