A "cry from the soul"
This week I've been sort of bombarded by what can be directly translated as "cries from the soul": frustration with schools, healthcare, job search, long-term life in a new country.
This evening, in a fit of frustration as I was trying to make dinner for four teenagers, I wrote this on “X”:
“I am extremely tired of seven days a week “explaining” Austria, a country which is also not my homeland, to Ukrainians. The gist of it is: no one cares what your circumstances are and don’t expect any exceptions or special treatment. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
This has led to 48 hours of debates. I will blog about it soon. In the meantime, more end of school year drama (not giving Ukrainian kids passing grades), and a phone call tonight which knocked the wind out of me.
As many of you know, Mama Olya had a stroke in early April and has been in hospital in Vienna ever since. I have been visiting nearly daily. This takes a huge emotional toll. Respect to all those who work in medicine; I could never ever do it.
Mama Olya was recently moved to a room with 5 women. Turns out one of the other patients is in her 80s, from Odesa. They live in a hostel. Her husband was visiting her when someone arranged transport. Tonight, he called me. Olya likes to give out my phone number (no comment).
The couple both in their 80s fled Odesa after a rocket landed next to their apartment building. Recently. And then she had a stroke. He too is in the same hospital; also just had surgery. His wife has dementia. He wonders how they will manage when they are discharged.
They came to Austria because in 1943 (yes you read that correctly) his wife was brought to Graz as a girl with her parents, by the Nazis, who took her parents from Crimea to be farm workers. The dad was apparently a talented confectioner. His wife remembered this country fondly.
And now she is in a neurology ward in a Vienna hospital and I see her every day but also didn't know how to help until now, and he heard the word volunteer and called me as if their fate depends on my divine intervention. I was brutally honest with him.
You are going to need to ask everyone who will listen, hospital staff, social workers tasked with helping Ukrainians (if you can reach them) to help you solve your housing issues. For now, don't rush discharge. Be happy she is being cared for.
Olya collects strange friends and she has one who comes and sometimes brings food, and this woman has also taken to feeding the elderly Ukrainian woman, brushing her hair. Staff must assume they know each other. They do not. I warned the husband: don't be too trusting.
I guess all I want to say is this fucking war has ruined so many lives of people who lived through other horrible wars already. 3+ years in, no one cares. It's not like anyone is particularly worried about the fate of an elderly couple. Maybe it's lucky they ended up in hospital.
Hospital is fine but the food is appalling. I now feel an obligation to bring in calories so Olya can build strength to do the physio they demand of her. This too is a burden. And the atmosphere, well, it's bloody grim. Hats off to those who choose these careers. Heroes.
I would like just one day when no Ukrainian calls me to tell me about their problems.
I have become ruthless in my answers.
I explain that in this life you cannot change entire countries or cultures; you have to adjust to the environment or leave if it's not for you.”
Most of the requests I receive these days, aside from those for Hofer cards (please be patient, I will send when I can…), are for rather unsolvable problems. These are much, much more frustrating in the sense that my natural, initial reaction, particularly when I am in the middle of my own stuff, is, why is this person writing ME about this? And then I have to take a deep breath and remember that the Ukrainian is writing me because they are mega frustrated and turn to me as a person who can sometimes (and I am not alone in this, plenty of fellow volunteers in my Telegram group who also fill this role) “explain” the nuances of life in Austria to them. Except, now the big questions are coming, to which there are no easy answers. The landlord wants to raise the rent and you cannot afford it and you haven’t figured out how to find a job or make more money on the side? Your problem, really. The school says your child hasn’t mastered German yet and needs to repeat the academic year (unfortunately a common occurrence in Austria to begin with, nothing to do with Ukrainians)? Well, you can beg the teacher/school director, but it is within their right to make such decisions. You are frustrated with the medical care you are receiving? I have to bite my tongue very hard to remind them they are receiving free healthcare from a system many of them never paid a cent into. Therefore, one should not complain about inefficiencies or long waits or sometimes rude staff.
My new motto, one that I shared this morning in a voice message to my Telegram group, is no country is perfect. And remember in Ukraine, you were also all on your own. Having had the privilege and the challenges of lived in several countries over my lifetime so far, I can say with confidence that you will find good and bad everywhere, and the best way to manage is to accept the new environment for what it is, not expect to change it, and figure out how you can best manoeuvre given the options and rules in front of you. This is of course easier said than done, particularly when there are children involved.
Yesterday, a mother of a teenager lost it on me, emotionally, super angry that her eight grader was told she could not move onto ninth grade, because she had not managed to pass French nor German. The mom started sending me screenshots of the French exam. She ranted about teachers here not caring that her daughter speaks five languages, that teachers in Ukraine cared more, that someone should just let her move forward and catch up later. To which, I said, first of all, the only person who can help you right now is the school director. Second, it is a rule in Austria that with an “F” for the year you cannot move forward to the next grade in gymnasium, but you can ask to study all summer and take an exam on the first day in September. And if it is so great in Ukraine — then go back. I was blunt, and she immediately replied that I had been on the receiving end of her “cry from the soul”, in other words, she could not understand on a human level why no one was meeting them in the middle.
My lovely hairdresser also reached out to me, asked me for help to formulate a letter to the school this afternoon. She had just found out, in June, that her children, also in gymnasium, would not be given grades this second semester, even though they had taken exams and she had been promised, at least orally, that they would be graded. Now the school informed her, with three weeks to go in the academic year, that they would like to transfer her kids out of the gymnasium into the middle school. She felt like it was a done deal before she even had a chance to go advocate for them. And as a new business owner working her ass off, she was debating if it was worth taking a day off, hiring a translator, to figure it out, or if she should just accept the news as a given and swallow it.
The problems when you first arrive — taking care of immediate basic needs, are in some ways much easier to fix than the long-term issues which arrive as a result of immigration, whether by choice or by fate. Many of these mums have real academic ambitions for their kids, but we are in a totally different academic context here. This is a society, like Germany, which divides children at the tender age of 10 into two different school paths, with a variety of options for having a future profession, and many of them actually do not require one to go to university. But even then, I am told, those mothers who are trying to guide older teenagers towards sought-after “apprenticeships” in Austria, are finding these positions to be very hard to be accepted to, and they expect perfect German. So you spin in circles. And time marches onwards. It is not easy, and there is no magic counsellor you can turn to with these academic questions, so much of which depends on the school itself, the “human factor” of the teaching staff, the child and his/her abilities and motivation, and whether parents can adjust their ambitions to the new environment and realities.
In healthcare, a similar story. I was translating today for a cancer patient at her appointment, and yes, we waited a long time in a very busy public hospital. The staff were polite but in a hurry. She had a long list of questions, and high expectations for the amount of time that would be spent on her, and I also, rather bluntly, reminded her she was getting all this care for free from a system she never paid into. She knows exactly that the medication she is receiving her would be unaffordable to her in Ukraine. This is one of the reasons why she came here, now. In the end, she left, satisfied. I explained it makes no sense to compare apples and oranges. And I have a feeling of course that how she is treated when she is alone differs from when she comes with someone like me who can speak German and be polite to the staff and they are relieved that the communication barrier is removed. It is a two-way street. Austria’s healthcare system is strained by so many immigrants with sudden access to the wonders of free healthcare. It has not collapsed, but it is under pressure.
I turned to my Telegram group yesterday to provide some cold showers of sorts, explaining to accept things for how they are, not to expect to change anything on a global level, and instead to try and work within the new reality. This sparked a huge debate amongst the Ukrainians themselves, some really stuck in that rut of feeling sorry for oneself and complaining, while others so grateful just to have a roof over their heads, electricity, and no bombs at night.
Those with a positive attitude keep plodding onwards, and by the laws of physics, they will eventually succeed, even if the job search and everything else feels like a huge hill to climb. There are others who seem stuck in a rut, not sure how to break out of it. And the resources? All the NGOs are stretched thin, there are no fresh consultants with tons of energy to help navigate bureaucracy. I imagine they have all become as inpatient as I have. Which is not good at all if we are about to receive a new wave of arrivals from Ukraine. Reading the news, I cannot rule this out, and we are woefully unprepared. It seems a god-given that whatever government is elected this fall, the war in Ukraine and the fate of Ukrainians in Europe will not be high on anyone’s agenda. The face of Europe has already changed as a result of immigration over the last ten years (asylum seekers is perhaps the more correct term), from non-European countries, and this is going to have a huge impact at voting boxes, already has a huge impact on our schools, social welfare systems. Ride a subway or a tram in Vienna now and you see it is not the same city it was ten years ago. The vast majority of new immigrants cannot vote here, and so their fate will be determined by those who can. Society is divided on this issue like it is across the board on so many other big questions of our time.
In this context, I explain to the Ukrainians in my group, do not expect miracles. Understand that you are swimming on your own. You must decide if it is worth the fight, if this is the right place for you and your family, long-term.
I would recommend listening to this interview Zelensky gave to the New York Times. It is simplified for an American audience, and I think the journalist glossed over some of the really divisive issues like the draft and mobilisation, the war, the government and its popularity/legitimacy, but it provides a good overview of where we are. I read last night that the U.S. will send Vice President Kamala Harris to the “peace” summit later this month, and sort of rolled my eyes. America is focused on itself. I do think Europe has a much larger roll to play here, and Europe does finally realise it cannot wait for Washington to making dealing with Russia a priority.
As for America itself, well, everyone I speak with seems to think Trump still has a very good chance of winning in November, whatever that means. I don’t know that we fully understand what that means, which is pretty frightening. What a time to be alive, I keep saying to myself, on repeat. And then after visiting the hospital each day, I am so grateful to be alive. It is a slap in the face about just how fragile everything is, and that your normal can be snatched away from you in an instant.
I was stressed just reading this latest entry.
There is a line from an old movie called Bull Durham where the main character says "the world was not made for those cursed with self awareness". One can read from your words that you are very cursed.
I won't insult your intelligence but I will say that people need to be careful when they give far more than they get. Some people, and some governments, are very apt at exploiting people's compassion and trust. At a macro level, I believe russia, as a state, is very apt at playing head games with its constant threats of nuclear war, low level acts of terrorism disguised as vandalism as witnessed by the recent news out of France. russia has always been very good at overcoming its technological disadvantages by exploiting its understanding of "systems." I have strong doubts that western politicians and leaders understand, at least in the US, what is manifestly obvious which is half measures, the constant kicking of the can down the road is not going to save the day anymore.
Whatever, without knowing you, what I just read concerns me as person that you are stretched too thin....We all like to think we are tougher than we are, and often we are, but I have known some people who became extremely bitter when they eventually realized that the world does not loved them as much they love the world.