A year ago, on March 25, our two roommates came from Mariupol: R., a former student of our university, whom I used to know, and her mother I., whom I didn’t know. There were three other people in our house at the time. Little by little, our emergency community has become smaller again. The German studies colleague M. from Schytomyr has managed to emigrate to Germany and is building a new life there. New family, new happiness. The young couple returned to Kiev in mid-April, and their son was born shortly thereafter. The young parents now go to work and the grandparents take care of the little one. From time to time K. sends photos, they are all fine.
R. was able to keep her job at the organization Terre des Hommes, the organization opened new offices in western Ukraine, and after a month’s stay in Budapest she moved to Ivano-Frankivsk. Life abroad didn’t particularly appeal to her, at least not in Hungary. “I would like to do something meaningful in my home country,” said R. after returning from Budapest.
I was secretly happy, her mother was obviously happy. After all, she knew her daughter was relatively close. I. stayed with us. When it became clear that her daughter R. had a job in Ivano-Frankivsk, I said to I. that we would be happy if she stayed with us. Finding affordable accommodation for one person is not easy. And so, at some point, she gave up looking for an apartment. Our flat-sharing community works perfectly – I don’t think you’ll find one like that again in a hurry. Because things can also go horribly wrong, everyone has probably heard stories by now of how things go bang in the shared households that were created out of necessity, because different lifestyles and habits collide. We’re just very lucky.
Given our regional origins, we are a Galician-Donbass community in the middle of Bukovina. I. actually comes from Alchevsk, which today is in the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic”. She studied finance and accounting and worked as an accountant. In 2014, she went to Mariupol with her daughter. R. was supposed to get a proper Ukrainian school-leaving certificate after completing the 2013/14 school year in the “young people’s republic”. I. left the parents’ house in Alchevsk, where they lived. Her daughter’s future is what counts, she says, not the real estate. After completing his bachelor’s degree, R. found work at Terre des Hommes Mariupol and actually wanted to stay there. But things turned out differently, because Putin, whom many Western politicians did not suspect to be a “crazy nationalist”, to quote Sarah Wagenknecht, turned out to be crazy and nationalistic (on closer inspection one should have seen that years ago, but seen it there are a handful of “anti-Russian” experts and many of the “Russia-hating” Ukrainians anyway).
I admire the steadfastness and determination of this woman who turned out to be an extremely mindful, sensitive and adaptable person. A few weeks after her arrival she found work in a tannery. She leaves the house just after half past six every workday. She doesn’t shy away from going to the authorities and never complains. Everything she had with her when she came to us in March fit in a backpack and a small suitcase. She looks for her “new” clothes among the items sent as humanitarian aid or among the clothes that my friends in Germany send me directly for distribution, and she does so with calmness and dignity. She received aid packages from the city administration, which were due to her as an internally displaced person. Since September last year, however, there has been no material aid from the city.
In our home, I. is part of our community. She is present at all family celebrations, her birthday in October was of course celebrated in our group and with a cake from my niece. She understands very well the somewhat crude Galician humor of my brother-in-law and his two brothers and has a good sense of humor herself – which makes our life together pleasant. And to her ex-husband, who as a “citizen of the Luhansk People’s Republic” with a Russian passport still lives in Alchevsk and looks after her house where his car is in the garage, she says during the rare phone calls that he should think about it how he will “retrain” himself – when the Ukrainian armed forces liberate Alchevsk.
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