(written Nov 1st, 2022)
In late October, I was in Kyiv and Janna requested that I ask all of the young people who are still at Safe Haven what is happening in their lives, and specifically what is hardest for them at the moment. My first reaction to Janna’s request was not great, I wanted to sarcastically tell her that she should drive all the way to Kyiv and ask everyone hard questions. But I checked myself and that last evening, I pulled out my computer, and asked them what the hardest thing was right now. Then I tried to listen as attentively as possible and take notes. It was kinda like a therapy session, at first, thoughts came slowly, but once they started talking and saw that there was a sympathetic ear, they really opened up.
Sabina’s thoughts were first consumed with circumstances at school. She is a new teacher, and every day for the past few weeks, she has had classes interrupted by air raid sirens. At school, when the siren goes off, you have to get your class to stop what they are doing and calmly walk down to the basement, where they continue the lesson. Even though this is routine already, at least one of the kids will invariably ask, “Why do we have to keep doing this?”. The answer is that Russian forces are firing missiles in the direction of Kyiv again, and those missiles could strike and kill everyone. Sabina can’t just say that, she has to come up with an answer that is clear, but also doesn’t create unnecessary fear in the kids. Each time the siren goes off, Sabina’s thoughts go to her husband who is serving in the military. He is now serving in a strategic military target, and this nagging fear hits; this might be the siren that signals his death.
As all of this is going through her head, she has to get downstairs, organize her kids and start teaching again while sharing a room with three other classes. Very often, she and another teacher will be partnered up; one of them will teach, the other will sit and scroll through the news updates trying to figure out where the latest strikes are, how many people were killed and what are the chances that someone they know was hit. Sabina said that it is so difficult to keep focus when all of this is going on. A few times, she started teaching, and simply couldn’t remember what class she was teaching, much less where she was in the lesson.
Andrei is teaching at the same school. He is teaching computer, and so if the air raid siren goes off, his class just stops because its not like they can just take the computer lab with them to the basement. He spent the first six months of the war trying to find any kind of work, but there weren’t many options except in construction, and that isn’t Andrei’s kind of work. Even though his class is disrupted often, he’s still grateful that he has a job.
Igor says that his relationships with people have changed in many unexpected ways. At work, more is expected from him, but he doesn’t have the time to finish his work and be home before curfew is effected (11 PM). Many of his co-workers also live like they aren’t aware that a war is even on. They complain about how the war has made their lives harder, but say nothing about the need to bond together to make it through the war. His boss is clearly trying to exploit this situation to work her employees more while paying them less. This is at a time, where the people surrounding Safe Haven are serving in anyway that they can to support the war effort; be that getting food and medical supplies to the militia units, or getting food, medicine and clothing and so much more to the most vulnerable families who are being hardest hit by the war. This contrast is very jarring for Igor.
Vlad came in later during this conversation. He is working in a warehouse that is completely surrounded by strategic targets (power infrastructure, a military base, etc). More than once he has made the long trip to his work, only to find no one there because of missile strikes. Vlad said that he didn’t have a lot of hardship now. But after thinking for a minute, he clarified, saying that he had to turn off all the thinking about what is happening and just go to work and do what he can everyday. I don’t think most of us have that ability.
On October 10, Russia started a renewed phase of bombing the interior of Ukraine, specifically targeting power infrastructure. As a result, while I was in Ukraine, there were air raid sirens going off several times a day. There were also rolling power outages to lessen the load on the grid. Safe Haven was going without power for at least 5 hours every day. Sabina said that before the war, they would occasionally have a blackout, and the family would turn it into something fun. Now the power outages aren’t fun. Everyone just comes down to the main room, sits around the wood stove and they quietly wait for the power to come back on.
These young people are in their 20s and one of the things that they love to do is go to the movies. But now, if you plan on catching a movie, there could be an air raid siren that goes off while you are on the bus heading to the mall. If that happens, the mall will be closed and there isn’t much for you to do other than turn around and go home. (I experienced this when I was trying to buy an SD card reader, everything in the city was closed even though the sirens had stopped over an hour before.) Even if you can start the movie, everything can be stopped in a moment if the sirens go off, and you just have to evacuate. If you are lucky, you’ll have free time the next day to come back and try the whole thing over again.
Sabina said the same thing goes for grocery shopping. There have been times, when she had her cart loaded in the store and was waiting at the cash register, only to have to leave the cart and vacate the store.
At this point in the conversation, Bogdon, who had been there the whole time, piped up, “But at least for the moment, we have gas. We can still cook inside even when there isn’t any power. If the gas runs out, we’ll have to go outside and cook by flashlight.” I think Bogdon was just trying to find something positive in the middle of all the negative. For me, it had the opposite effect. There is a chance that the gas will either run out or be targeted by Russian forces. For now, cooking outside wouldn’t be that great of a hassle, but in the deep of winter, it would be very difficult.
The part of the conversation that hit me the hardest (as if everything we’ve already covered has been pretty light-weight) was Igor talking about being lonely. When the war broke out, Igor was renting an apartment, but after his pay was cut and his girlfriend fled to Poland with his sister, Anya and Bogdon encouraged him to move back into Safe Haven. Now, every evening when he comes home from work, he is surrounded by people he has known since he was a kid. This is better than when he was living by himself, but he still feels really lonely. Right now, there are 6 people living in Safe Haven. More than half of the people who lived there before the war evacuated to the Czech Republic. Even if their house is still pretty full compared to most standards, there isn’t a single whole family in the mix. Every person you are around reminds you of the people who aren’t. Sabina agreed with this heartily. They miss Anya and even the younger kids … well … some of them.
Do they understand?
After sharing for a while, everyone quieted down. Igor asked if the other half of Safe Haven, and everyone else who fled the country, understood what life was like for those who stayed in the country. He wanted to know if they cared about what was actively happening, or if they were just trying start a new life away from Ukraine. I knew that underneath this question, he was wondering if people were forgetting those who had been left behind. He had experienced this somewhat when his girlfriend stopped communicating with him after a few months of separation. I told him that all of us were following the news all the time. We woke up worried that a strike had occurred and some of our loved ones may have died. We were doing the best we could to adapt to life in the Czech Republic. Ultimately, however, we just wanted to go home to Ukraine. I did what I could to explain to him that those of us who left weren’t going to forget. Then I thought for a second. I remembered my first time coming into the country. Seeing the destruction, not in a picture but with my own eyes. Examining the building across the street from our apartment that had been bombed out. Seeing it with my own eyes changed things a lot. Now, Janna can’t understand what I’ve seen because she is in the position of only having seen it in the news. She understands a lot because she follows the news, she cares deeply. But unless you have been there, it’s just not the same.
Igor processed this. He nodded understandingly. He spent the first months of the war in Western Ukraine and then came back to Kyiv. Things were tense, but he was never really close to missile strikes or fighting. But a few months into the war, he rode up with Bogdon to the areas north of Kyiv that had been occupied by Russian forces. That drive, that experience, was profound. He had seen the destruction in the news, but until he saw it with his own eyes, he hadn’t seen the destruction. Igor paused and looked at me, “But I didn’t live through the occupation. I don’t really understand what those people went through.”
Russian forces have done a lot of horrible things in Ukraine. The invasion on blatantly false pretenses, the missile attacks targeting civilians and civil infrastructure, the war crimes, intentionally trying to starve people, and on and on. But in some ways the harder part is that most Ukrainians are trying to push on and move forward. Families are trying to create normalcy for their children. These past few weeks that has been all but impossible. Ukrainian forces are getting better and better at intercepting missiles, but the warning system still needs to alert citizens to try and limit deaths. This means that when Russian forces launch missiles 5 times a day, it brings life to a halt 5 times a day. The power outages, stop everything for 4-5 hours a day. On the day that I am writing this, Russian strikes have cut water from 80% of people living in Kyiv, and many other places around the country. Our friends are constantly stopped from living their lives.
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