BIALYSTOK, Poland -- Katsyaryna Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya's voice trembles inside her small apartment as she recalls leaving behind the business she had spent nearly six years building in Hrodna in western Belarus.
"They cut off a huge piece of me and threw it away like garbage. I didn't do anything wrong. I made quality products," she says, overcome with emotion. "Perhaps your children are also happy with what I made for them."
Katsyaryna Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya with handcrafted decorations in her Bialystok apartment.
In the beginning of 2023, the wood toymaker had no intention of leaving Belarus.
"We'd invested a lot to get to where we were. A generation of children has already grown up playing with my toys," she says.
But the government oppression that has dramatically expanded throughout the country since Belarus's disputed 2020 presidential election reached her own home last spring. The toymaker's husband, Alyaksandr Yendzheyeuski, was detained for several days on charges of subscribing to "extremist" social media channels.
Later, the couple said they noticed possible plainclothes police tailing them. They knew it was time to leave, and fast.
Toys made by Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya photographed in her former home in Hrodna, Belarus, in 2019.
Within two weeks, the couple had arranged visas, canceled the lease on Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya's workshop, and sold her toymaking equipment.
By July, the couple and their young daughter had joined the tens of thousands of other Belarusians who were forced to flee their native country for Poland.
Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya laughs as she shows off her "workshop" -- a kitchen cupboard filled with various specialty paints is virtually all that remains of her working materials.
Specialist paints and dyes in the Bialystok residence
Thousands of dollars worth of equipment remains in Belarus, sold off in a rush for around half of what she paid to purchase them.
"When we put the band saw up for sale, someone called within 90 minutes and said he'd take it. Then half an hour later, another man called from Brest and said, ‘I'll pay more for it. Don't just give it away,'" she recalls.
When the buyer arrived to pick up the band saw, the toymaker cried and spoke to the machine as if saying goodbye to a family pet.
"My tears were flowing. I hugged her. I said, 'You are my girl. You are beautiful. Serve with faith and do not damage the wood. Be a good girl," she recalls.
A 2019 photo showing a sander and other equipment the toymaker was forced to sell when she fled Belarus.
Another reason for Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya leaving Belarus with her family was the increased encroachment of the state into her business. By July 1, 2023, craftspeople in Belarus were required to register with an opaque government commission. But even one month before the July deadline, it was not clear how exactly the registration was to be done.
"They said, 'You give us the documents describing your technical processes along with photographs.' These had to be printed as they would not accept flash drives with discs."
The toymaker did not want to hand over every step of her working processes to unknown people in the government commission and eventually decided not to waste her time on the procedure. She never submitted the documents.
Wooden mushrooms carved and painted by Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya.
Some of Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya customers who are fellow émigré told her the toys she made were so precious they took them along as they escaped Belarus. In contrast, one regular customer wrote a furious message after learning the toymaker had left Belarus, promising to throw away all her toys.
"Traitors have no place in the country," the customer wrote.
Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya is working to rebuild her business in Poland but admits there is a long road ahead. She does not yet know where to set the prices of her toys. She browses Polish toy stores, but prices vary widely.
"I had to change the name of my brand, Lyubo-dorogo (It's A Pleasure), because it is difficult to translate into other languages," she says. Her toymaking company is now called GoooodWood, spelled with two extra vowels. Versions of the name with two and even three o's in the first word were already taken.
Nesting dolls seen in Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya's workshop in Hrodna in 2019.
The toymaker is not yet close to renting a workshop or buying machines. The costs are too high, she says, and it's still not clear if such a business will work in Poland.
For now, acquaintances allow the craftswoman to use their workshops, then inside her apartment she does the quiet work of polishing and painting as she prepares to display her wares at craft fairs in her adoptive country.
But Yeudakimava-Yendzheyeuskaya is holding onto hopes she can fully rebuild the dream business that she built in Belarus. She even sometimes fantasizes about a large workshop with panoramic windows and a new band saw.
"A person shapes themselves," she says with determination. "We are the creators of our own destiny."