Ukrainian refugee Myla: I was terribly afraid of who would pick me up
“I have photos in it, a card with a Czech number and thanks to the internet I know where you will take me. What a place where I will live to be before the war is over and I will be able to return home to Zhytomyr, “he adds after looking around the staff with a larger purse stuffed with basic necessities used in a car.
“I was terribly afraid of who would pick me up. Quite strange people came for my acquaintance, how to say it…? Simply put – she’d rather not get in the car at all. And now I’m afraid to answer a housing offer, “the woman explains one of the reasons why she went to the meeting with her landlords only easily, without a bag of things.
She kept this with friends to be sure. “Besides, I had no idea if I would have my things with you,” adds a woman who read fairy tales before the war and sold commercials on the radio.
Hope dies last
“I’ll show you the papers so you can see I’m done,” Myla smiles, hunting for a visa in her purse. And even when we see the smile on her face, we are visibly relieved.
We nodded at the long-term accommodation of a woman we knew absolutely nothing about. We do have a small room in the house, so there is nothing to think about! However, letting yourself enter the privacy of an unknown person is one side of the coin. Actually, it’s easier – you can imagine that. But as the hour of our meeting on the outskirts of Prague approaches, doubts became increasingly difficult for us as to whether we could support a man fleeing a war-torn country, leaving his loved ones, perhaps part of his family.
Will you lock yourself in? Will he still cry? The advice of psychologists we have overheard in recent days is becoming a gray theory when you face an unknown person with a soul full of sadness and ruin.
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After all, it was easier for her. And so do we. She left “only” her whole life in Ukraine, the work she loved and the memories. She has a flat there and has already visited Prague once. So she didn’t go completely into the unknown. Only to strangers.
It was definitely easier than a pair of young women, sisters, who hastily left their homes in Lviv with three school-age children. They do not know Prague and would, quite logically, like to live together. Which, of course, is not easy.
Few people have enough places in their own house to live in at least a little comfort for both homeowners and five newcomers. And so women began to look on the Internet even after the classic rental. provide, however, that everyone is willing to rent their vacant apartment to refugees. Hopes for living together thus slowly began to fade…
When a word gives a word…
But in the end, they too were lucky. Their acquaintance addressed other acquaintances who have lived and worked in Prague for many years. “No one can fit in our small apartment anymore, we live in it three and sometimes our granddaughter stays with us. But we really wanted to help. So we thought of asking for the advice of the family I clean the household with, ”says Valerie, a 60-year-old woman from Moldova who came to the Czech Republic with her daughter and husband at the turn of the millennium.
“I don’t usually touch myself, but the wave of solidarity that broke out between them and their friends really got me. During a single weekend, they got an apartment, brought tables, beds, chairs, dishes, towels, clothes for women and children. I have some food. Simply everything you need to live with three children. In addition, they agreed that before women find a job, they will hire them, ”says Valerie.
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She and her husband are genuinely horrified by what is happening in Ukraine, where Valerie’s mother still lives. “It will sound strange, but when the war began, I was quite calm. In my life, I would never believe that such a hell could unleash in Europe in the 21st century. in a country where both Ukrainians and Russians live, and often in the same family, “he says with a distress in his voice, packing the clothes he wants to pass on to other people, whom he also knows are heading from Ukraine to the Czech Republic with almost bare hands .