Juggling
Some positive surprises, ongoing worries, trying to figure out the best use of 24 hours in the day. Weekend reading recommendations.
This week ended on a high note. Late on Friday afternoon, I sent an email to the head of the BBU — Austria’s federal agency technically in charge of the refugee response. In practice, much lies in the hands of the individual nine Austrian states. I had promised the Ukrainians in my Telegram group to share their concerns about public transport and access after November 1. When you survive on €40 per month pocket money, you cannot afford to pay for a train or bus ticket every time you need to reach a store. This is the lived reality for many in countryside villages. I added in a few of my own concerns, namely, elderly and handicapped living in Vienna dorms where I am worried about their lack of money, lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, lack of access to translators for health care. I even mentioned an 80 year-old granny in Vorarlberg who is being forced to share a small room with another woman who does not sleep at night. Granny wants to give up and go back to Ukraine, asked if she might be switched to a single room. A room is apparently available, but the charity in charge said no. Long story short — the kind of email you shoot off on a Friday late afternoon hoping maybe someone will read it on Monday.
Readers, I received an extremely polite and point by point response on Saturday afternoon. Bottom line: directives given to those in charge of the individual addresses to follow up. Transport in talks, hope for public update this week.
Readers, I was so pleasantly surprised! No one in official Austria answers emails on Saturdays, certainly not in senior positions. So I am going into this next week with my kids’ off school for fall break and a certain amount of cautious optimism.
This important article was also published a few days ago on the dorm in Vienna’s 11th district where for months Ukrainians were not allowed to receive Meldezettel (registration at that address). I am so grateful to the journalist who pursued the complicated story where others had shrugged their shoulders. To my knowledge, the residents (around 200 I am told) are now receiving their Medelzettel papers but still haven’t received a penny of cash in hand from the state. Not even the €40 of pocket money each refugee is technically entitled to.
The last few days I have been dealing with a lot of individual messages. I feel like a one-woman-unofficial-hotline. I don’t know how or why they contact me, but the messages all start with the same phrasing, “Dear Tanja, my friend gave me your number, they say you can help, we don’t know who else to ask, no one gives us an answer…” and then the individual problem. And they call not just from Vienna. They write from all over the country.
A mom of three kids, aged two, three, and five, writes me from Vienna that she is being kicked out of her social housing because she has a job and how can she find new housing when she cannot afford a deposit? A woman writes from Tirol she is working full time at a factory, studying German in the evenings, paying taxes, needs to find a new room to rent, and no one will help her because she is working.
Then there is this. On Monday a kind Vienna resident will bring an appliance to the woman who wrote me. I hope they will let her plug it in!
Another topic I forgot to include in my email to the BBU (starting to think maybe I should make a Friday round-up of relevant topics each week? since I am acting as a default volunteer hotline not really by choice but by circumstance) is Familienbeihilfe — child support in Austria paid out for every child living here irregardless of the parents’ income level, working or not working, etc. Ukrainians are eligible for these payments. Around €140 per month, per kid. Backdated, apparently. Parliament voted in June, the law went on the books in August, but payments have been very slow to arrive on bank accounts, and inconsistent.
In short, refugees here since spring and summer are getting into routines, but daily life is still very challenging. New refugees are still arriving, albeit not in the huge numbers we saw in the spring, but as Ukraine’s infrastructure continues to be hit, no one knows what winter will bring. There is, in my opinion, a real risk of a large inflow of refugees this winter, and no one is prepared for it. We are barely housing and feeding those here now. Barely.
I continue to distribute Hofer cards. 15 more going out today; these were returned from Ukrainians who applied on the website and since moved onwards.
I will meet some Vienna dorm residents this afternoon. I am really trying to prioritize the elderly, handicapped, moms with young children, addresses in small villages with no aid organizations. Our waiting lists are very long. As soon as I receive the €10,000 prize money, we will get to work on it. I hope that will be soon. At least the payout process seems uncomplicated, which is great news.
For the weekend, some recommended reading, in no particular order:
It definitely feels like a turning point in the life of a volunteer. I saw one message this week from a wonderful woman who has helped non-stop for eight months. She is leaving the chats, taking a step back, going to go work for money, because it has been eight months and she has done enough for now and needs a break and to focus on her own family and their needs. I 100% understand this. It also means for every volunteer who “retires”, more work falls on the shoulders of those who keep going. Which is also not sustainable.
A constant sprint without any time to take your breath has turned into a steady jog. I do have moments now to stop and think. This raises more long-term questions: how do I spend my time in the most efficient way? Am I distributing resources in the most possible equitable way? This week I really asked myself if it wasn’t a mistake to distribute €50 cash equivalent, if that time might have been better spent lobbying the government for better policies? But knowing this government, that felt at the time like a waste of time. But I realise now how enormous the problem is. I know we cannot fix it with Hofer cards. €50 supermarket cards are a tiny tiny band-aid on a wound that needs major surgery. So perhaps more time spent lobbying in the right places is smart. To get Ukrainian refugees off of Grundversorgung, which was designed for failure on purpose to deter asylum seekers, and offer them a fair social package. Work should be incentivized. At present the system punishes those who try to work while living in social housing. The rental market has gone crazy, inflation is biting, and the amounts being paid out mean we have tens of thousands of people living amongst us — elderly, handicapped, families with kids, way below the poverty line.
I realised this week I know now what malnutrition looks like. What the skin of someone who hasn’t eaten fresh vitamins in months looks like. And that really, really upset me. When there is a BILLA filled with fresh fruit across the street. But no money to buy it.
I also have to ask myself how do I want to finish out 2022 and beyond? Sometimes the Ukrainians forget what a volunteer means. It means someone who receives no financial compensation and donates their free time in huge amounts. I answer my phone seven days a week. I am nearly always online. I do not ignore messages. Even if the answer is “I am sorry, I really do not know the answer”, I write back. But I also have three kids and bills and this is also not sustainable forever. So it is a time of soul searching. Fall is like that. Back to school, you make new plans. For me the new year is always more like September 1 than January 1. This year I am a little late getting organized, but now I am finally starting to ask myself these questions. I don’t know what the right answer is. I love what I am doing. I feel useful as a communicator, sharing information, passing messages from one group to another who do not easily reach each other. I believe myself to be a good, empathetic listener and also of rational mind. Emotionally this year has been super challenging, but I am coping. I work fast. I work well under pressure. I don’t know if I would fit in any organization because I am the kind of person who works best in an entrepreneurial environment. I avoid calling the authorities (code word bureaucrats) as it is because usually those encounters are so frustrating and I am terrible at them. My professional experience is like a museum piece — finance, oil & gas, and investor relations, pre-2008.
On paper, I am a dinosaur.
I am 46 years old and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Maybe fate will call me in a certain direction, just like it did in March of this year.
Thank you so much for your continued support. Plenty of gorgeous grocery photos arrived in my inbox yesterday! Hard to pick just one:
> still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Ditto, and I've had 14 years more than you to make my mind up.