Helping the helpers (Day 114)
Evaluating where we are right now (very anxious about that), how to help those doing the helping (hint: they don't get government salaries), brief news update.
My daily routine has shifted over the past week or so, from daily trips to the train station and splitting my time between helping there and sending out supermarket gift cards, towards more time spent working on tougher questions to solve for a smaller number of people. I am still spending a lot of time answering messages and delivering grocery cards, both in person and by mail. But as the train station has less demand for on the ground help (they told me to come back over the weekend, which I will do), now that ÖBB finally put a translator on each shift, and the volume of people arriving and leaving has slowed (observation from earlier this week, no idea how long this will remain the case), I have felt my own work shift. This has pluses and minuses.
I realised I like the instant gratification of an immediate problem solved. I am not stressed out by “train is in 20 minutes and ticket is not printed yet”. I am much more stressed out by big, logistical, bureaucratic problems which money cannot solve. The kind of problems you can only solve in Austria with a rolodex and perfect German. I don’t have either of those. So then I am not much help to Ukrainians here. Or so it feels.
After I last published, on Wednesday, I raced off to meet Natasha and Pasha for an adult volleyball training session. A more senior coach would come watch him play. I wanted to pick them up from home, but their psychologist insisted they could take the train themselves. This requires one train to Vienna, switching trains, and then a short commuter ride bak to Lower Austria (yes, really). They had a plan with times and train tracks and numbers. What happened? In short: they got on the train in the wrong direction and rode nearly to the Czech border. They got off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I raced to find them. Communication was a disaster because no wi-fi and they still have Ukrainian SIM cards. I was calling the psychologist, she was calling them. In the end, it took me nearly an hour, but I picked them up. We missed everything. Meeting the coach. The chance to play with good adult players. All the planning down the drain.
It was an important lesson for all of us. About managing expectations. About not projecting onto others what they might not be ready for. About communicating when things do go wrong. While I was trying to drive as fast as I could through the motorways of Lower Austria, I received a phone call from the head of Volleyball Austria. We had a very nice chat. I am on the right path, I was assured, of trying to get Pasha to try out for Vienna teams. Some other kind readers pointed me in the right direction, many emails back and forth. In short, Pasha will have trial practice with two teams in Vienna, and then hopefully they and he can choose which is the best fit. I woke up at 4am stressed out if they will make their train today — I changed the plan and said don’t even try to look for the tram, I pick you up directly from the station you arrive to in Vienna. Assuming they get off at the right one.
It is all so incredibly stressful: no Austrian phone number (I need to fix this but it requires finding a used smartphone as they are not wanting to give up their Ukrainian SIMs and lose all their contacts from home), living over an hour’s train ride from Vienna, no car, I am here, the activities and people who want to help are here, language barrier means I have to be the translator (or find someone else who can). Now multiply this and imagine how many Ukrainian families across Europe are depending on Europeans to help them through every step of the process of starting a new life. And this family is lucky to have a Ukrainian psychologist living nearby who speaks perfect English and is helping them on a daily basis. And still. It is all so hard.
Yesterday I asked some women to meet me in person so I could deliver Hofer cards. I named a Starbucks, sent the address, closest subway station, even a screenshot from Google maps. Two women arrived, no problem. We had a nice chat, one of them has a roommate who was one of the first people I ever met at the train station. I remember driving her to a friend’s address late one Saturday evening after a long shift. These two women are living in a dorm in Vienna, are struggling to get by on €215/month, are frustrated they cannot legally seek work without losing their housing: it’s a viscous cycle. A broken system designed to dissuade refugees from coming to Austria in the first place. They know this location from this Austrian TV report about a once-a-month opportunity to apply for a bag of groceries and a huge line and the charity workers from Volkshilfe saying they sometimes have to turn people away who waited hours with tears in their eyes. They do not have enough food. The two Ukrainian women tell me people line up there from 5am. Many Ukrainians, many Syrians. The food is fresh. It is not spoiled like the stuff you sometimes get elsewhere.
A third woman never showed up. I called her over Messenger. She luckily was on wi-fi, and told me she was at Starbucks. I thought I was losing my mind, searched up and down the sidewalk, didn’t see anyone. But you aren’t here, I said, what do you see? How did you get there? It turns out she took a train to Vienna, got off at the main train station, got on a bus (do not know why), and got off the bus at the first Starbucks she saw. She did not know it is a chain. She had never heard of it before. I couldn’t meet her then as I had plans and everything was timed to the minute, but I assured her I would send the card by mail ASAP, which I did. It went in the mailbox yesterday afternoon.
These are the logistical challenges we face. I now have 3 different volleyball appointments for Pasha which is wonderful but also means 3 different times hoping the train will work and they won’t get lost or give up etc. I went and bought gym shoes this morning he doesn’t even have time to try on for size before practice. I am lucky I can help in this way. I can choose to spend my time like this, and yes it means making sacrifices, like not driving my own kids to their sports practice that day because Pasha and his mom need me as a translator.
I guess what I am trying to convey is the enormous effort volunteers are making across Europe and I am sure in Canada, UK, to help Ukrainian families start over. The work is overwhelming because it is so emotional. And all of us had/have jobs and families and lives and this is just a whole new uncompensated FT job on top of everything you were balancing before March 2022 and it is simply not sustainable. Just read these messages:
Today I received a paragraph long request for new shoes for a woman’s son. I received a full explanation about why the old shoes broke and why the ones they found at the charity don’t work. But I don’t have money for everyone for shoes so I have to say what size do you need and hope maybe I have a pair in my own storage from my kids but this is not a solution. We are all running around going crazy, those of us who speak all the languages even more so, trying to plug all the holes in the government’s wholly inadequate response to this humanitarian crisis, but the ship is sinking and all of our little plugs are not going to stop the flooding from happening.
And with regards to food aid, which is what we do, only not with stuff, we do it with cash equivalent. Anyone can do this. Big organizations could do this. Churches could do this. The state could do this (but it would be better if the state would simply hand out enough cash to live on plus provide unrestricted immediate access to the labor market for all). If none of this is happening, ask yourselves, why not?
Austria just posted its highest inflation figure since April 1976, the month and year I was born. And I am old. So that is quite a crisis. For everyone. So it is understandable the government announced anti-inflation measures last week. For everyone except the refugees. Because I guess they shop in special Ukrainian Spars, or? This is a crisis amongst us that is invisible because if you can easily choose to look away and not see it and as was rightly pointed out yesterday, the Austrian government gets away with it because:
Bad foreign press. I spent a lot of time with a German television crew and set up interviews and let them film and what happened? So far, nothing. So then the next time someone calls me up and says deliver me “some Ukrainian moms” I will think twice because at the moment those moms need food first and actually there has been no established link yet in my mind between media coverage and conditions improving for them, unfortunately. It’s like expectations are so low that the public is numb and nothing shocks people anymore. Even the charities and experts are coming together to sound the alarm bells. The situation is THAT bad:
I won’t dwell on the European leaders who visited Kyiv yesterday. Plenty of smart commentary out there from other sources. The caption contests are amusing.
But don’t be fooled by the EU track announcements — they needed to bring some kind of good news to cover up for what they aren’t doing. Just ask the Balkans how the EU process goes once intention is announced. The EU itself is a frozen conflict, it doesn’t add new members, it cannot make the existing ones get along. This did make me LOL though:
Russia’s economic forum is in full swing in St Petersburg with honoured guests such as the Taliban and DNR leader. Coca-Cola is pulling out of Russia. Lavrov keeps spilling his toxic waste, this time to the BBC. Medvedev has gone completely nuts:
Russia’s retail banks are a mess at the moment: banning all sorts of transactions for their customers, feeling their wrath over social media — the uproar if huge and painful and if you read Russian, do check out the comments. Russia is also still trying desperately to hire more soldiers without having to draft them. Good luck with that.
As I cannot follow Russian news right now, I don’t have the stomach at the moment, this cold analysis does it well:
I’m going to turn now back to my micro problems, to worrying about volleyball and how many more grocery store gift cards I can find or find. Many of you already donated, and we are so grateful and I know you cannot do it again. But what is really helpful and doesn’t cost anything is to tell other people about us. Folks not on Twitter. Spreading the good word is also a huge help to the many families from Ukraine who are really struggling right now in Austria.
Two clicks to donate with credit card or via IBAN here. Also just a few clicks to donate via PayPal here. The website money goes towards the Hofer cards bought in bulk and sent out in batches to our long waiting list. The PayPal funds go directly to cards I buy on a daily basis in smaller batches and send to those families who contacted me directly. The addresses in both cases are spread out across the country, but I am also meeting Vienna dorm residents in person as we have learned the hard way about what can happen to mail in some locations.
Thank you. Fingers crossed volleyball try-out #1 works out today. They are invited this weekend to watch a tournament. I will try to facilitate that too. And meet some more women at the train station to distribute Penny cards (aren’t they pretty?). And help there a few hours if it is needed (ÖBB told me this week that weekends are worse). And my own three kids. And husband. And we are invited to dinner tonight. And the house I didn’t clean. And the grocery shopping I didn’t do. And the boring paperwork I never dealt with that won’t fill itself out. And, well, you get the idea. There are only 24 hours in the day. Everything volunteers do — we make other sacrifices to be able to do what we think is important in that moment.
But for how long is this all sustainable?