Abstract
The following excerpts and illustrations from Footprint of the Black Wind (Minsk 1995), were produced by Belarusian school children in response to a competition on the theme ‘Chernobyl in my destiny’. The writing by children from within or near the 30 kilometre exclusion zone expresses their confusion, grief and sense of loss at their evacuation from their homes. Children from further afield, in areas officially declared safe, discovered only three years later the true extent of the disaster and the damage to their lives