For the last few days, one topic has been occupying the university staff: the non-payment of salaries. The salary is always paid in two installments, one of which by the middle of the month. Now it is said that there will be no more before the end of the month. The situation is the same across the country. If you think realistically, you understand that it couldn’t have been otherwise. Economic experts forecast that gross domestic product in Ukraine will fall by around 30 percent this year. May it stay that way. No one can say how many more industrial objects will be destroyed. A month ago, the Rectorate announced that all grants would be canceled from June, although the university salaries were not lavish anyway, not to say that in view of the prices in many places they seemed more like pocket money. A logical consequence of this was a brain drain, if you think soberly you have to reckon with the increase in this trend.
On a trip to Romania, I met a former English student right across the border. S. was one of the best in her class, got a position at the chair herself after graduation, taught English privately on the side, and translated a few times for our projects. When we see each other on the Romanian side, we are delighted and hug. Then S. says she quit her job shortly before the war and tried to get a Canadian visa. After the war broke out, she went to Romania and now works as a volunteer, but her journey is imminent, she has just received her visa. Her departure feels painful to me, like a small personal loss. I will probably hear from many others that they have decided to start a new life abroad.
What you no longer need, you give away for free and thus help others to survive
Money worries will probably be an ongoing issue in the coming months. But there are also almost crazy stories about it, like that of another S., whom I meet by chance when I’m handing over a bag. There is a local group on Facebook that I think is very useful: Re-Use. There you give away what you no longer need for free, everything goes away – from clothes, shoes and technology to broken things that skillful hands bring back to life. I’ve been able to get rid of a lot, most recently a new bag that I was given as a gift, which was too small for me because no DIN A4 folder fit in it.
At the handover I meet a woman in her 60s who says thank you but apparently wants to tell something. Her old bag is already so unsightly that she is ashamed of it. Personally, I don’t find the bag that terrible, but I’m happy that the lady obviously likes the new one. S. says she was born in Chernivtsi, but after her studies she lived and worked in Gomel, Belarus. She retired in the fall and came back to Chernivtsi to take care of her elderly mother. Everything was so nice and good, she received her Belarusian pension and could use the Belarusian bank card everywhere in Ukraine. Now she can’t access her account because SWIFT has shut down the bank, she can’t travel to Belarus and the card is just a piece of plastic. They now earn their living from their mother’s modest pension. That’s why she has to “beg” for re-use from time to time.
It is once again clear to me how many individual lives are threatened or made more difficult by the war, even if one’s life is not in direct danger from bombs or rockets. The extent of this catastrophe is incomprehensible anyway, but it is becoming more and more tangible, also in university circles. Several male colleagues from the administration, but also lecturers have moved in, in the office of the head of the International Office S. there are always a few sleeping bags, insulating mats, combat boots, tactical first aid kits and gloves – things that are asked for when we hear from someone that they are being mobilized. Before getting this equipment in your military unit, it is recommended to have at least the bare essentials with you. Or there are inquiries from colleagues whose husbands or sons are already at the front – from there the need for food and medicine is reported. Today, for example, some are going to Odessa and Kharkiv. We much prefer such inquiries to the reports that are now read literally every day in the local news: “Heroes of Bukovina: Soldier NN fell in the battle for town N. He heroically fulfilled his duty to his homeland.”
Oxana Matiychuk is coming to the Munich Lustspielhaus on May 29 – and Iris Berben is reading from the “Ukrainian Diary”. All info on www.sz-erleben.sueddeutsche.de
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