5 minute read
Wartime reality
Offering hope through help and human kindness in war-torn Ukraine is a risky but rewarding part of the life of an aid worker
WORDS ELISSA DOHERTY
Human touch
Gaffer tape. Pocket knife. Flint. Space blanket. Three days of rations. Emergency distress strobe light.
I’m finally getting out of Australia after Covid-19 border closures, and my suitcase bulges with items I never imagined I would need. There’s no floaty summer dresses, poolside reads or strappy sandals, because this is no holiday. I’m heading into Ukraine.
The long list of life-saving goodies I have been handed by World Vision is a standard kit for aid workers travelling to dangerous places such as war zones. It’s my first trip “to the field” with the aid organisation and I’m hoping I won’t need them.
“Pack these in a separate backpack to take immediately if we need to evacuate in an emergency,” the team is told in the safety of our Melbourne office.
Two days later, we are crossing the border on foot from Romania into Ukraine with day packs, including the all-important flints and gaffer tape, and plans to return that night.
It’s only a 1.2km journey. But it represents a chilling divide. A chirpy “Welcome to Ukraine” sign looms incongruously to our right. Aside from trucks and aid vehicles, few others are travelling in our direction across the border.
A man in uniform opens a gate on the Ukraine side, hands us some bruised apples and bids us farewell with an unsettling “good luck”.
The jarring reality of war hits quickly. On the forest-lined road into the town of Chernivtsi, in Ukraine’s west, we are told an air-raid alarm has sounded. Our breakfast meeting with colleagues shifts and we scramble down crumbling stone stairs into a dingy bunker.
Mattresses, blankets and benches are strewn around the cold, dimly lit space. A small modem blinks in the corner.
Messages from home stream in but wi-fi is patchy. An hour later, the siren pierces the air again, signalling that we are free to leave. But this time, it blares from a mobile phone app. Pulsing heat maps highlight in red which oblasts (regions) are in danger.
The unnerving sound of sirens would become a daily soundtrack to our time in Chernivtsi, even though it’s one of the "safest" parts of Ukraine.
Above ground, the locals are largely unperturbed after enduring months of war and sirens but, fortunately, no attacks. Bars are buzzing, restaurants are full and life seems normal.
But life isn’t normal. Displaced people fleeing the hard-hit east have squeezed into every corner — into schools, restaurants,
LEFT: World Vision workers offer aid and comfort to Ukrainian families.
hospitals, factories, dorms and churches. The population of the beautiful town had swollen 30 per cent in just two months. About 100,000 people fled there for refuge.
We meet a pastor who has taken 27 people into his home. We visit a school with 180 people (including 45 kids) sleeping in classrooms. We talk to countless mums crammed into a church shelter, each one desperate to protect her children; like Tetiana, who weeps as she remembers the war starting in Kyiv.
Tetiana's three-year-old pigtailed daughter runs around her feet in a Peppa Pig T-shirt, like any other child. But she’s already seen far too much.
“We were hiding kids in the bathroom when we heard the alarms and bombs going off,” Tetiana recalls.
“We would make kids stay in the bath and cover them with blankets. But it was hard to stay in the bathroom for hours, because there was no fresh air. Then we moved to the corridor and stayed there among load-bearing walls. We had been staying in the corridor for 10 days when she started screaming at night.”
Now Tetiana spends her days helping to cook for 100 other displaced people, the purpose giving her comfort: “You can see us smiling again.”
— Tetiana
Our one day in Ukraine turns into five, and we push on towards Kyiv where a seven-hour drive takes 15 hours due to constant military checkpoints and bombed buildings. Eerily, the traffic thins the closer we get to the capital and postcard-perfect landscapes are replaced with the images from the news — destroyed bridges, burnt-out cars, shells of petrol stations, blackened homes.
Inside the city, a World Vision partner is running a regular food distribution. Volunteers expect 300 people but 650 people have swarmed the vans, a mix of frail elderly people and young mums.
Sasha, 11, tells us his family has “lost everything”.
His father disappeared when the war started, they’ve run out of food and their apartment has shaken with countless strikes.
But his resilience is remarkable. He perseveres with his schoolwork online. “I am trying to study every day. I am studying so hard as I want to grow up and pick a profession I love.”
Two months later, over the border in Romania, refugee children are taking local language classes in a Happy Bubble — a child space set up by World Vision to inject some fun and normality into their lives. I’ve returned to support the team with media, and staff are bracing for a new wave of displaced people seeking safety and security.
A father in Odesa calls his son on FaceTime, and tells us: “Thank you for putting a smile on the faces of our children."
It’s time to leave and I pack my untouched emergency kit back in my suitcase. I’m not ready to go.
But I know every food parcel, every cash payment to refugees, every activity in a Happy Bubble is making a difference — and the generosity of Australians donating to World Vision is a big part of this.
I know the staff who stayed behind will keep doing their best to keep putting smiles on faces. But we need Australians, and the world, to remember Ukraine, as this crisis is not ending anytime soon.
