Twice a day, during much of Russia’s eight-month occupation of the southern city of Kherson, a Ukrainian partisan known as “Dollar” went to a secret hiding place, unearthed a cell phone, and briefly called Ukrainian forces with intelligence on Russian military positions.

Using that buried phone was dangerous work. Kherson was the only provincial capital to fall when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine one year ago, on Feb. 24.

This shipbuilding hub on the Dnipro River north of the Black Sea proved its patriotic mettle, as citizens boldly staged anti-Russian street protests for weeks. But when Dollar put together his network of Ukrainian spies, those public protests were finished. He decided to fight back, he says, at a time when activists were being taken by Russians “every day” from their homes and were often tortured. Some disappeared.

Dollar – a heavyset man with short gray hair who managed building projects before the war – counts at least two successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian troop concentrations that resulted from the coordinates and vetted intelligence he transmitted over his buried phone.

In his pocket today he carries a medal inscribed with words of gratitude for “assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Yet Dollar was not alone. His decision to resist mirrored that of legions of Ukrainians, though outnumbered and outgunned by Russia on the battlefield, who chose to fight against long odds rather than surrender to Russia’s invasion force of 190,000 troops.

The Kremlin had expected to seize the capital Kyiv within three days and in short order raise the Russian flag across the entire country. Yet the invasion has showcased more than Russian military weakness.

In Ukraine these last 12 months, it has helped to forge anew a Ukrainian nation that had struggled to define and solidify its own identity since gaining independence in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Ukrainian partisan who uses the nickname Dollar holds up a medal recognizing his assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in Kherson, Ukraine, Feb. 15, 2023. Dollar created a network of informants that provided targeting information and other intelligence during the eight months of Russia's occupation of Kherson.

“I know a lot of people from this country who can say, for example, ‘Oh, these politicians are so corrupt, we hate our government,’” says Dollar. “But when the enemy comes, even if that enemy calls himself your brother, these people will unite and kick his [tail]. We are very in love with freedom.”

United around a common cause, and increasingly aware of what it would mean to be absorbed into a neocolonial project that Moscow calls “Russkiy Mir,” or Russian World – especially after a year of conflict that has brought a tide of human suffering and razed entire cities – Ukrainians beam when speaking of their rekindled and refocused national spirit.

From the constantly active 650-mile-long front in the eastern Donbas region and the south, to the sophisticated coffee shops of the west, Ukrainians in uniform and civilians alike often say that “truth” or “God” is on their side. And they voice an expectation – bolstered by promised Western weaponry – that they will defeat Russia, even force its retreat from Donbas and Crimean territory seized in 2014. In Kyiv this week, President Joe Biden vowed that American and European support for Ukraine would not waver.

Role of Russian cruelty

Kherson became a test case of both the Russian World experiment, and of Ukrainian resilience in the face of it.

Russian forces tried to present Kherson as a model city, where citizens welcomed Russian forces and humanitarian aid while being cleansed of “Nazis” and “fascists.” Russian attempts to annex and create a “Kherson People’s Republic” included the exclusive use of Russian currency, issuing Russian passports, and converting schools to a Russian system.

But it was here also that Russian cruelty and later spite, combined with a widespread refusal by Ukrainian citizens to give in to Russia’s program, have provided a window into how acts of resistance, large and small, have added up to a melding of defiant purpose for the Ukrainian nation.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Russian ammunition box lies on the tarmac at the Kherson International Airport, which lies in ruins after being used as a base by the Russian military during more than eight months of occupation until it withdrew in November, in Kherson, Ukraine, Feb. 14, 2023.

People here feel the Russian spite today, nearly four months after they were liberated, because Russian forces that retreated south across the Dnipro River continue frequent shelling of the city, in “revenge,” residents say, for their failure to conquer Kherson.

One Russian rocket on Tuesday struck a bus stop in the city, killing six people, and Kherson’s streets are eerily empty because of the constant threat of bombardment.

One family that housed four generations under a single roof during the occupation describes how they now pile clothes by their beds at night, ready for when incoming shells force them into a neighbor’s basement – as they do most nights.

Only 95-year-old Olha Belaya sleeps all night in her clothes, which include a bright magenta headscarf and a worn robe held together at the top with a large safety pin.

“I don’t want to die naked,” she says, wryly. “We never thought Putin could be so evil.”

Day-to-day resistance

The risk of Russian attack, day and night, means that they seldom leave the house on a plot that the family has lived on, close to the river, since the late 18th century.

The family rarely articulates sweeping statements about the significance of their day-to-day resistance, but it was in such actions that their sense of nationhood grew.

They refused, for example, to let their youngest, 14-year-old Danylo Ivanov, go to Russian school. They chose instead to continue his studies online with his Ukrainian teacher, who left Kherson because she rejected the Russian curriculum.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Tears and respect flow from family and fellow soldiers at the funeral of Ukrainian Armed Forces platoon leader Ruslan Kamenev in Zelenivka village, a northeast district of Kherson, Ukraine, Feb. 15, 2023. Mr. Kamenev was killed near Bakhmut in the Donbas, which has been contested for months, trying to protect two of his soldiers during a Russian strike.

Danylo’s aunt Aliona has now moved to Europe, but during the occupation last April, when Russian troops were dispersing protesters with live bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades, she told The Christian Science Monitor about the difficulties of life under the Russian yoke.

“Many of us are now conducting a quiet guerrilla war,” she said at the time, as she described Russian security agents kidnapping local activists and suppressing resistance. She berated one Russian patrol for turning a civilian car they shot at “into a coffin” for a grandmother and her son.

Liberation has not brought peace, and this family describes the “scared panic” with which Russian troops fled in early November. The Russians stole new trolley buses from their station and took boats from the local dock, recalls Aliona’s father, Volodymyr Schulz.

And while Russian troops may have been in a hurry, this family was appalled to witness that, in their final days, their occupiers found time to use the hooks of a crane to rip out the wires of the electrical transformer that served their neighborhood, plunging all into darkness.

“It’s not even 100%, but 1,000% that people’s views have changed against Russia,” says Mr. Schulz.

“We never expected this war would happen, or such a level of destruction,” adds his wife, Olena Schulz.

Shelling, and patriotism

Throughout the occupation, Mr. Schulz refused to speak to Russian soldiers – in part because his son, Sasha, was a soldier. “I didn’t want to make a sin on my soul,” he says. “With my son in the Ukrainian Army, how could I talk to them?”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Olena Schulz beside pruned rose bushes in her garden in Kherson, Ukraine, Feb. 14, 2023. Ukrainians are struggling to establish normal lives after eight months of Russian occupation, even though Russian forces withdrew last November.

Soldier Sasha has been home four times in the past year, and Mr. Schulz took pictures of teen Danylo wearing his uncle’s armored vest and helmet, and holding his rifle. That was a moment of excitement for the youth, who is not allowed outside for more than 20 minutes at a time, because of the risk of Russian attack. At home Danylo makes plasticine figures, plays with his keychain and toy insect collection, and has read every book in the house several times – especially an atlas of the natural world.

The family home isn’t far from an old factory that is a frequent Russian target, “but they are not very precise, so anything can happen,” says Mr. Schulz, noting that neighbors were wounded on an adjacent street in December. “Of course we’re scared, but when the shelling starts, we run straight to the basement.”

“That’s how we live. When we wake, we pray to this icon,” says Ms. Schulz, pointing toward an Orthodox icon sitting on a shelf. “We can’t think about the future. We have no plans.”

“We thought after they left, there would be peace, but they are destroying Kherson every day, every street,” she says.

As Russia continued its strikes, says Mr. Schulz, “of course, I became more patriotic.”

And so did Dollar, the partisan who speaks with disgust at the number of pro-Russian “traitors” who were exposed – among citizens, in the police and intelligence services, and in local government.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian teen Danylo Ivanov is shown with his uncle Sasha and grandmother Olena, on a phone held by his grandfather, Volodymyr Schulz, in Kherson, Ukraine, Feb. 14, 2023. Danylo wears the body armor and carries the rifle of his uncle during one of four times the Ukrainian soldier visited home in the past year.

One of his own sets of delivered targeting coordinates, of a Russian unit – which he says was confirmed repeatedly by his spy network and himself – resulted in friendly fire striking a neighboring residential building, instead. Dollar is convinced that, somewhere along the chain of information he gave to Ukrainian forces, a pro-Russian sympathizer changed the coordinates.

But Dollar’s pride in Ukraine deepened when one Russian special forces base that his network had been surveilling for weeks – the Restaurant Faris, on the northeast edge of Kherson – was destroyed by two American-supplied HIMARS rockets on November 5, killing an estimated 20 to 30 paratroopers just days before Russia withdrew from the city.

Dollar comes from a long line of Ukrainian partisans, including his grandmother, who served as a courier in the Ukrainian resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. Her uncle was a commander of the Ukrainian resistance forces.

“I am coming from very old [resistance] roots,” says Dollar. “I don’t need to learn how to love my motherland.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this article.

It’s mid-morning on Wednesday in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, as Prosper Uka sidles up to a group of women standing in a crowd outside a bank.

Have they heard of a man named Peter Obi? he asks, shouting to be heard over the roar of motorcycle engines and honking cars on the busy road nearby. Mr. Obi is a candidate for president of Nigeria, Mr. Uka explains, and he’s going to make sure they never end up in a mess like this again.

The women nod. They’re listening. Like the others in this group, they’ve been waiting for hours in the Lagos heat, hoping to withdraw a few dollars from the bank. As Saturday’s presidential election approaches, Nigeria is in the grip of a massive cash shortage caused by a bungled rollout of new banknotes. It has left many people unable to access their money, and without the means to buy anything.

If voters in Africa’s most populous country weren’t already fed up, they are now. So when Mr. Uka begins to describe a presidential candidate who will change all this, who promises to make life in Nigeria a little easier, the women lean in closer.

“Make a vote for LP. Labour Party. Peter Obi,” he says.

Nyancho Nwanri/Reuters

Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi attends a campaign rally in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 11, 2023, ahead of the Nigerian presidential election.

The stakes of Mr. Uka’s canvassing campaign could hardly be higher. For the first time since military rule ended in Nigeria in 1999, a third-party presidential candidate, Mr. Obi, has a genuine shot at victory. His candidacy has been propelled by his popularity with people in their 20s and early 30s, who make up nearly 40% of the country’s 93 million registered voters. They could prove decisive.

In a country with a median age of 18 and the largest population of young people on earth, Mr. Obi’s popularity alone sends a resounding political message. This is no longer a country for old men.  

“Voting is like a step for me to liberation,” says Chizaram Ebegbulem, a political science student at the University of Lagos. “I know that Peter Obi has the youths’ interests at heart.”

Carlos Mureithi

Chizaram Ebegbulem, 20, at the University of Lagos on February 17, 2023.

“Never had it so bad”

It’s not that Mr. Obi, who is 61, is particularly youthful himself, though he is the youngest major presidential candidate by a decade. But in a country where young people have been pushed to the periphery by unemployment, corruption, and police brutality, Mr. Obi’s promises of clean governance and an outsider’s perspective have caught the imagination of a generation. His supporters call themselves his “Obidients.” 

“Nigeria today is at a critical juncture, and the people, led by the youths brutalized by bad leadership, are awake and leading the movement to transform Nigerian politics,” Mr. Obi said in a speech at Chatham House, a think tank in London, last month. 

He is campaigning to succeed Muhammadu Buhari, who is in many ways a textbook example of Nigeria’s old guard. At 80 years old, he was the country’s military dictator in the mid-1980s, before becoming the democratically elected president in 2015. His eight-year administration has been marred by violent insecurity and a shuddering economy in Africa’s most populous country. During his presidency, the country has undergone two recessions and unemployment has risen sharply. In recent weeks, a sudden change to new banknotes has caused a massive shortage of cash, preventing people from buying basics such as food, water, and bus fares.

“I know Nigerians always say we have never had it so bad, but truly, truly, as nearly everyone will tell you, we have never had it so bad,” says Sully Abu, a Lagos-based journalist and co-founder of FrontFoot Media Initiative, a journalism nonprofit. In that context, he says, Mr. Obi “has fired the popular imagination.”

Sunday Alamba/AP

Supporters of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate for Nigeria's ruling party, rally in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 21, 2023. Angered by high unemployment and growing insecurity, younger Nigerians are mobilizing in record numbers to take part in Saturday's presidential election.

Historically, Nigeria’s presidency has bounced between Mr. Buhari’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and its rival People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The APC’s candidate for president this year, former Lagos state Gov. Bola Tinubu, is literally campaigning on the slogan “It’s my turn.” And the PDP has put forward former Vice President Akitu Abubakar, who has run for president five times before. Like about half of Nigeria’s population, both men are Muslim, as is Mr. Buhari. 

In this context, Mr. Obi has successfully marketed himself as new blood. He is a Christian running on the ticket of the Labour Party, a lesser-known party with minimal representation in the Senate or House of Representatives.

“He is the candidate that the major candidates did not take seriously, but as time has gone on, it has proved a fatal error on their part,” says Tunde Ajileye, a Lagos-based partner at SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical research consultancy. 

Will young people turn out?

For a so-called outsider, Mr. Obi has a long track record in Nigerian politics. He was governor of his home state of Anambra, in Nigeria’s southeast, for nearly a decade. And in 2019, he ran as the PDP’s vice presidential candidate. 

Still, young Nigerians have been energized by his promises to clean up corruption and create jobs. 

“People want something different,” says Amaka Anku, head of Africa Practice at Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk firm based in Washington, D.C. “They feel like the old rulers have not brought development.”

Sunday Alamba/AP

Supporters of presidential candidate Peter Obi chant during a campaign rally in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 11, 2023. Mr. Obi is making a special appeal to younger voters keen to see the change he is promising.

For many, the tipping point came in October 2020, when young people launched mass protests seeking the disbandment of a police unit notorious for harassment, illegal arrests and detentions, rape, extortion, and extrajudicial killings. The movement quickly expanded to include demands for better governance. At least 51 civilians and 18 members of the security forces were killed in the protests. 

At the time, Mr. Obi publicly expressed his support for the movement, known locally by the hashtag #EndSARS after the name of the rogue police unit. And as a presidential candidate, he has made it part of his promise to “reset and reboot” Nigeria. 

Going into voting day, some polls have Mr. Obi leading the presidential race. To win in the first round, a candidate must garner the most votes, including at least 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the country’s 36 states and the capital, Abuja. So a runoff election is a possibility.

Experts say that to win the election, Mr. Obi will need a massive turnout from his base, many of whom have never voted before. Indeed, 84% of the 10 million people who registered to vote ahead of this election are under 35.

Analysts also warn that a lack of strong party machinery may set Mr. Obi back. His main competitors’ older and more established parties have more local branches, women’s and youth groups, and – importantly for election day – agents stationed at polling centers to act as observers to the voting and counting processes.

“If you don’t have that, boots on the ground,” cautions Ms. Anku, the Eurasia Group analyst, “it is very difficult to turn voting intentions into votes.”

The “gospel spreader”

For some voters, that kind of existing political infrastructure is reassuring. Shola Adebanjo, a high school teacher in Ogun state, says Mr. Obi is a “social media politician” whose promises to voters are unrealistic. Mr. Tinubu, on the other hand, “is ready to lead this country,” he believes. 

Carlos Mureithi

Prosper Uka, 32, a volunteer with Peter Obi's youth-oriented presidential election campaign, shows mock ballot papers at Lekki New Market in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 22, 2023.

Mr. Obi is relying heavily on his informal network of “Obidients” to turn out the vote for him Saturday. Mr. Uka, for instance, has a day job in printing on Victoria Island, the main business and financial center of Lagos. But he “spreads the gospel” of Mr. Obi every chance he gets.

“I walk on the road, I do it. I stay with friends, I do it, I stay with family – every opportunity,” he says.

At Lekki New Market, he approaches two hairstylists at an informal roadside salon. He shows them a mock ballot paper and explains to them how to identify Mr. Obi’s party and mark their vote.

Then he bends, turning to speak to the 2-year-old child of one of the women.

“There is hope for you,” he tells him. “Tell your mummy, tell your daddy: vote Peter Obi.”

Ikenna Omeje contributed reporting to this article.

Allie Vugrincic/The Vindicator/AP

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (left) and Tristan Brown, deputy administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, look at part of a burned train car, Feb. 23, 2023, in East Palestine, Ohio. Amid criticism, Mr. Buttigieg acknowledged this week that he “could have spoken sooner” about the Norfolk Southern train derailment.

Three weeks after tank cars carrying hazardous chemicals tragically derailed in this small Ohio town, a core challenge for the official response is bridging a yawning gap in trust with a wary public.

Federal and state officials appear to be trying. Pressed by a local resident, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Wednesday that he’ll stay overnight in East Palestine Ohio to partake of what citizens there are experiencing. To some experts, it’s an example of how building trust hinges not only on delivering help but also on forging personal bonds of confidence.

The trust gap has roots beyond the Feb. 3 derailment itself. Across America, public confidence in a host of institutions has been on the decline for years – a trend tied in part to forces like rising partisanship and social media’s ability to spread doubt alongside facts. But the challenge in this case is also hyperlocal: People could see and smell chemical-spill evidence that ran counter to what they were hearing from officials.

Even where officials and residents agree on the urgency of cleanup, it can’t happen soon enough for those who live on-scene, and no amount of promises will be persuasive without action to back it up.

Area residents like Daniel McRoberts still don’t know what to believe about the risks they face or the pledged cleanup. His mother and grandmother live only blocks from where the Norfolk Southern train derailed. Now Mr. McRoberts has questions about the well – the water source for many of the region’s households – for his own home 6 miles from where the hazardous chemicals initially spilled.

“Do I get it tested?” he asks others at an East Palestine pizza joint. Rail yard friends tell him it’s fine; others say he should leave town altogether. “There’s so many conflicting things. I’m not educated on that stuff. There are people that say they are,” like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state health and environmental safety officials, “but then everyone says, ‘Don’t trust them.’”

Alan Freed/Reuters

Members of the community gather ahead of a town hall meeting to discuss their safety and other environmental concerns following a train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals, in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 15, 2023.

Remarkably, there were no immediate injuries or deaths after the train’s initial derailment. But in the days and weeks following, reports of illness among community members have coincided with officials giving all-clear signals on air quality. Similarly, local drinking-water supplies have passed post-accident safety tests, yet many residents worry that chemicals could leach into local water sources over time. 

“You’re not going to turn things around in a 24-hour news cycle,” says Stan Meiburg, executive director of Wake Forest University’s Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. “You have to commit yourself to a long-term engagement with the community of being available, being transparent, being patient, recognizing what you’re dealing with,” including post-traumatic stress.

Officials need to listen as much as speak, says Dr. Meiburg, a former EPA acting deputy administrator.

Building trust: It starts personal

In fact, ultimately restoring trust will be about building relationships.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Dr. Meiburg says of the work ahead for federal, state, and local officials. “The only way to build trust with institutions is to create relationships that are trustworthy, and then the institutions will be trusted because the relationships are trusted.”

Some of those steps may have begun. 

Governor DeWine has visited East Palestine several times, and on Wednesday he bluntly acknowledged the trust gap.

“Sometimes we don’t know all the information,” he said in a CNN-hosted town hall meeting with residents. “Sometimes we get facts that maybe are wrong, but there’s no way in the world I’m going to convey to you or to any other citizen a fact that I think is wrong.”

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, also at the town hall, said the company felt it had an “environmentally sound plan based on engineering principles” to deal with the tainted soil, but community pushback prompted a shift. The company has decided to rip up and replace the tracks to completely remove the soil underneath them.

Skepticism among residents still runs high. But Mr. Shaw’s presence stood in contrast to the firm’s no-show at a similar meeting a week prior.

“We’re going to get the cleanup right, we’re going to reimburse the citizens, we’re going to invest in the long-term health of this community,” he said. “We’re going to work with these community leaders to help you thrive.”

Federal transportation officials are also trying to bring clarity to the accident’s cause. The National Transportation Safety Board provided details Thursday on how an alarm triggered by an overheated axle arrived too late for the train crew to prevent a derailment. The NTSB says its investigation will continue.

Matt Freed/AP

Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw speaks to reporters on Feb. 21, 2023, near the site where a freight train derailed Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio. The company has pledged a full site cleanup under federal supervision, and says it has spent $6 million on direct financial assistance for the community.

Questions about the derailment have also bubbled into national politics, with Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who visited the town this week, accusing Biden administration officials of being slow to visit the accident site. Federal agencies, in turn, say their emergency responders were quickly on the scene, at a time when cameos by top officials would have hindered action.

In the days immediately following the derailment, state and federal responders managed a controlled burn of vinyl chloride that remained in several tank cars and posed an explosion risk – prompting a temporary evacuation of nearby residents.

The chemical spill’s severity was highlighted yesterday, when Ohio officials released a new estimate that about 43,700 small fish and other creatures in a 5-mile radius died from the pollutants in the days immediately following the spill. 

Late last week, public officials began attempts to sway opinion through social media clips of them consuming local tap water. Through cheers and shared smiles, lawmakers and top health officials downed their own glasses. 

“Devastating for our little town”

Despite the performance, Kathleen Unkefer continued drinking bottled water at her workplace, a floral design store in downtown East Palestine. She came into 2023 with a lot to look forward to, including her 50-year reunion at the local high school later this year. It’s an achievement one earns, she laughs, after a lifetime in a small place like this community of about 5,000 along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

“Everybody knows everybody,” she says of the village’s character.

That goes for the community’s problems, too. 

Ms. Unkefer mentions a local friend whose wine and honey business has stopped receiving orders since the incident. Folks stopped buying another friend’s chickens. Another, a resident of 78 years, came into the flower shop earlier that morning crying.

“It’s just devastating for our little town,” Ms. Unkefer says as she wraps a customer’s flowers. “We’ve been through so much. We’re just trying to survive, and we will. But you just worry.”

Alan Freed/Reuters

A sign directs visitors at a newly opened health clinic in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 21, 2023, following the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals, prompting contamination of soil and water and sending a cloud of smoke over the town.

“I’m not worried about me,” she adds. “I’m worried about the young people. Will they stay?”

A new health clinic opens

Seth Randolph has served as a volunteer fire department and emergency services personnel member for 13 years. He grew up not far from East Palestine, just miles away in New Waterford.

As an intermediary between aid workers and locals, he’s felt tensions rise in the community.

He understands the frustrations, and that residents want answers.

If “they don’t get answers, their first scapegoat, so to speak, is your public safety entities,” Mr. Randolph says, as he walks to a cash register to purchase flowers recently wrapped by Ms. Unkefer. “Residents look to the people they pay to make decisions to keep them safe.”

On Tuesday, the EPA announced it would assume control of the site’s cleanup by enforcing Norfolk Southern’s complete remediation of it, from soil removal to a full reimbursement of costs to the agency.

“Let me be clear,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community.”  

That same day, the state opened a health clinic for residents experiencing symptoms potentially linked to the chemical spill and the controlled burn that followed. Ohio officials have also recently requested additional aid and medical assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and personnel from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

For now, state officials are advising people reliant on wells to continue consuming bottled drinking water. Governor DeWine on Wednesday stood by the latest tests finding that local tap water and air remain clean.

“Never too late to do the right thing”

Norfolk Southern has also pledged at least $6 million in local assistance.

“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” says Andrew Whelton, an environmental engineering and health researcher at Purdue University.

Gene J. Puskar/AP

Workers from HEPACO, an environmental and emergency services company, observe a stream in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 9, 2023. Days earlier, 38 railcars of a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in the town, 11 of them carrying hazardous chemicals: vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene.

Dr. Whelton has witnessed similar environmental fallouts. The drinking water for more than 300,000 people was contaminated after more than 10,000 gallons of coal cleaning liquid was spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River in January 2014. Roughly 300 people sought medical treatment during a 50-day emergency in the state.

Dr. Whelton was among those asked to advise the state government on a way forward.

“Once you lose that trust, you can’t really get it back” without a third party, such as science or health experts from outside federal or state government, he says.

“This is a time for extreme transparency” from officials, he adds. As in West Virginia, in East Palestine residents “want to know the safety of their water, their soil, their homes. They want to know if it’s safe or not, are their kids going back to school, are their kids exposed to chemicals that weren’t cleaned up.”

For Mr. McRoberts, it’s a sense of community that’s brought him to the local pizza house on this recent day. In his hand are dozens of signs he made in support of East Palestine. His small company designs logos for products; it’s his way of giving back to the community that raised him.

For the week after the derailment, his relatives from near the site stayed at his home. Now, their household and his family lack the means necessary to leave town and start over someplace new. As for himself, he’s not sure if he would want to, or if it will be necessary someday.

It’s become a matter of “just living with it,” Mr. McRoberts says.

More so, he adds, his family hopes that “everything [officials] say is fine, is actually fine.”

At a frigid ice rink in Wayland, Massachusetts, members of the Broomstones Curling Club look for a clean push-off that will send a 44-pound stone gliding more than 100 feet across the ice and closest to the target, called the “house.”  

“Some say it’s like bocce, but it’s more like playing chess,” says Rich Collier, vice president of the Broomstones. “I might do something now [that will] benefit three or four shots from now. It’s all about building it up and sequencing.”

Curling, which started in 16th-century Scotland, may look puzzling to the uninitiated. Two teams take turns making throws, with their respective teammates sweeping in front, so the stone will travel farther. (The stone actually curves, or “curls,” giving the sport its name.) The team with the stones closest to the center wins the round. There are 8 to 10 rounds in a full match and the team with the most points wins the match.

MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF

An overview of the rink shows four curling lanes at Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland, Massachusetts. The bull’s-eye targets are known as the house. Teams of players throw the stones from one end to the other, trying to land as close as possible to the center.

Since it was added to the Olympic Winter Games in 1998, the sport has grown in popularity. Today, there are more than 80 clubs in the United States. At Broomstones, the wait for a membership slot is five years. 

After the match in Wayland, both teams meet in the lodge for refreshments. The evening ends in smiles and handshakes. “The easiest part about curling is having fun,” says Mr. Collier. “The hardest part is not taking yourself too seriously.” 

In 2009, a group of dedicated curlers who couldn’t travel to Broomstones opened the Ocean State Curling Club in Smithfield, Rhode Island. “The one thing people should know about curling is that anyone can do it,” says Dave Rosler, the club’s president. He says new players can be curling in a league after two hours of instruction.

“It’s just a really social sport,” Mr. Rosler says. “I enjoy losing at curling more than I enjoy winning at almost any other sport.”

ALFREDO SOSA/STAFF

Ocean State Curling Club player Brianne Straus delivers a stone in a league match on Jan. 11 in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF

A curler’s shoes show the types of soles necessary for the sport: one surface sticks to the ice, the other allows sliding.

ALFREDO SOSA/STAFF

Ocean State Curling Club players (left to right) Eric Stamp, Melissa Morales, Layla Ferland, and Seth Ribeiro sweep hard to make sure the stone makes it over the line during a match. They listen for instructions from their captain, known as the skip, from the far side of the rink. Sweeping reduces friction, enabling the stone to travel farther.

ALFREDO SOSA/STAFF

Buster Pike of Ocean State cleans the bottom of a stone during competition.

MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF

Curling stones – made of granite and weighing about 40 pounds – are ready for use.

MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF

Broomstones curlers gather to socialize after their game on a weekday evening. Participants say the camaraderie between players is one of the best parts of the sport.

AP

Women in Samandag, Turkey, prepare a meal inside a greenhouse where they stay with relatives following the earthquake.

The earthquakes in Turkey this month – the largest to affect the region in 200 years – have shaken the country’s society to rethink old norms. Shoddy construction and lax enforcement of building codes, for example, have become a political fault line in a presidential election campaign. Corruption is under a fresh spotlight. Yet one long-term issue has also emerged: a resurgent demand from women for equality, not only in Turkey but in neighboring Syria where the tremors also hit.

Female survivors were far more impacted by the tremors than were men – in finding safety, privacy, and basic goods and services. “When it comes to needs, we saw that women still come last,” Özge Ozan, a Turkish civil engineer and relief volunteer, told The Women’s Defense Network. “We need women to participate in active and decision-making positions, from the most central level to the most micro-scale.”

Major crises from natural disasters to COVID-19 often shift opinions toward challenging social traditions. The pandemic, for example, led United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to call for a “new social contract” worldwide that could create opportunities for all and heighten respect for rights and freedoms.

The earthquakes in Turkey and Syria may mark a similar shift. Men and women were affected in roughly equal number, leaving an estimated 28 million people in need of emergency care. Yet as Care International noted, “gender inequality exacerbates the impact of disasters, and the impacts of disasters exacerbate gender inequality.” 

To right that balance, women’s groups from Turkey and abroad set up makeshift refuges where women can access care without the threat of violence. That includes the provision of so-called dignity kits to meet hygienic needs complicated by social taboos. Those responses follow a model developed nearly a decade ago in Myanmar following the mass rape of Rohingya women.

The relief efforts already have a broader message. For Turkish women, the earthquakes have magnified two decades of diminishing respect for equal rights. They also pointed to the persistence of femicide, repeated arrests and harassment following public protests for equality, and the decision by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last year to withdraw from a European convention on preventing violence against women.

In Syria, where armed conflict and disorder have complicated post-quake recovery, women have found new voice. “Without fault, in every group of women, individual or collective, their message was the same: We’ve had enough. We are exhausted, and we want reconciliation,” said Laila Baker, regional director for Arab states for the U.N. Population Fund, in a recent briefing. “And we hope that during this very dark moment, that it’ll be a moment where everyone’s hearts and minds are open to the possibilities of peace.”

In Turkey and Syria, two landscapes have shifted. The earthquake shook the ground for a short while. But change in the social landscape has only begun.