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Toilers of the Sea

Oksana Yushko

Sum­mer. Sea. Beach. No, we are not on vaca­tion. How to explain? No, we will not go swim­ming. And will not sun­bathe. We earn a liv­ing. But does the gov­ern­ment look after us? No, it’s not enough. What should we do? Do you see all of these people? They are vaca­tion­ers. And what about us? We are the toil­ers of the sea. And what are we going to do? We will be offer­ing dif­fer­ent ser­vices to them. Mis­cel­laneous ones. Every day. The whole sum­mer. Then when all of them are leav­ing we will go too. Where? At home. And next sum­mer we will return again. To the sea. On the beach. Why?

Every year trains take vaca­tion­ers to the south with the first warm sun and every year toil­ers of the sea appear just in time and busily begin their simple activ­it­ies. They have no work, lack for money because of scanty pen­sions or maybe some­thing has happened so they sell, buy and sell again, grow fruits or dry fish that became the sole