Hi friends, my name is Valeria Chernomortseva, I am known to many people as Lierka Liusterka. I have been organizing Belarusian-speaking excursions-travels around Belarus and abroad with different cultural events, concerts and lectures since the early 2000s. For some time I worked in a travel agency, and then in cultural and educational institutions, including the famous “Art Syadzibe”.
I was also an activist of the Belarusian Christian Democracy for a long time, starting from 2000 and up to 2020 inclusive, I was an independent observer at all elections, where from year to year I fixed numerous falsifications.
Since 2007, I have been working in the organizing committee of the BCD on the project “Repentance”, recording the memories of former Gulag prisoners all over Belarus. These materials formed the basis of the Virtual Museum of Soviet Repressions in Belarus, of which I am one of the creators.
I have organized and conducted numerous excursions to Kuropaty, the site of Stalinist executions near Minsk. In 2016, I graduated from the courses for tour guides with the final work “Tourist potential of the Kuropaty tract”, but I was not allowed to defend this route to obtain a tour guide certificate for political reasons.
It was for my excursions to Kuropaty in October 2022 that KGB officers came to me, kicking in the door. They took offense that I was allegedly disrespectful to their Enkavedist predecessors who shot innocent people in 1937. True, I was officially arrested under the “people's” Article 342 for participating in the 2020 protest marches. But I was lucky, and after 10 days of torture in Okrestino and several months in the pre-trial detention center in Volodarka, I was sentenced to 2.5 years of “domestic chemistry.”
Without waiting for a second arrest, I evacuated to Vilnius, where I have been living for two years. Here I organize and lead Belarusian-language walks around the city, as well as other cultural Belarusian events, concerts, lectures and quests. During this time, I have completed a master's degree at YSU in the program “Development of Cultural Heritage”, and now I have set myself an ambitious goal — to finish the courses for tour guides in Lithuanian and get a certificate to be able to officially conduct tours here.
Of course, this is very hard for me, as languages have never been easy for me. And after COVID, which I got in 2020, I was diagnosed with diabetes, which, among other things, complicates my memory. But I fight hard: I learn English and Lithuanian every day, and attend memory improvement courses.
However, together with the tour guide courses, it takes up all my free time, and there is no energy left for any part-time work. In the meantime, my small scholarship in my master's program is already over. Therefore, I have to ask you, my dears, for support for the next three months of spring to become your official Vilnius tour guide from summer.
Please help me to pay for the guide courses and related expenses for the study tours, as well as additional intensive courses in Lithuanian language and memory development, accommodation fees for three months, the mandatory Lithuanian health insurance Sodra and the purchase of a tablet for the tours.
If you support me with an amount starting at 50 euros or more, and contact me personally afterwards, I can thank you with my own tour of Vilnius.
How much is needed?
€2100
€500 — guide courses and related expenses
€290 — intensive Lithuanian language and memory development courses
€900 — room rent for three months
€220 — Sodra health insurance for three months
€190 — tablet for excursions