Natalia & sons
The thirteenth, a bonus story, one that has left a lasting impression on me. From Mykolaiv to Wolfau. I do hope we together might help Natalia, Danya and Nazar.
Natalia is 43 years old. She is a single mom of two boys. She was raised by her grandmother in a village near Mykolaiv. Her granny was 60 when Natalia was born. “She was born in 1919. She lived through the Holdomor, and the war, and she always said: anything but war. We can handle anything, but please let there be no more war.”
Natalia came to Austria in June from Mykolaiv, after months of bombardments, after their apartment building was hit on three separate occasions by Russian rockets, after their windows were blown out. Natalia didn’t leave immediately because she has two sons: the youngest could leave the country, the eldest, due to his age, could not. At the time, the three of them were living with her boyfriend in his apartment in Mykolaiv. Natalia’s eldest, Nazar, had worked at a local McDonalds before the war, as a part-time job next to his studies. Thankfully, when the war broke out, McDonalds Ukraine continued to pay its employees even through their restaurants shut down. Nazar lives today on this income. He is currently staying in an apartment in Mykolaiv owned by Natalia’s friend who left for America. There is not consistent electricity. There is no drinkable running water. Often there is no water at all. He pays the utility bills in exchange for a roof over his head. In early summer, when Natalia made the difficult decision to leave Ukraine with her younger son, Danya, Natalia’s then boyfriend took Nazar to a dacha in Zaporozhye, to his brother’s place. But after a while, they were no longer welcome. The usual family stuff. Nazar came back to Mykolaiv.
When the war began on February 24, Natalia awoke at 5am to the sound of shooting and explosions. Their apartment was on the first floor, with windows facing too different sides of the street. She heard explosions. Her boyfriend slept through it all, only waking up at 8am. The boys could see explosions from their bedroom windows. They were not far from the airport, and it was a military airfield. They could see the flames out their window. They opened the internet: WAR.
Natalia says she thought there would be war. She had a feeling, an intuition. For weeks she had been telling her boyfriend to close the curtains; she had been afraid of something flying through the windows. She had read on the news other countries were calling back their ambassadors from Kyiv. She had stocked up on food and essentials: candles, matches, even a gas-fired hotplate for cooking. That first morning, she joined many others in a long line for the pharmacy. The ATM machine had a pile of white receipts next to it — everyone was in such a hurry to take out cash they all tossed the papers to the ground. When the first explosions happened, Natalia heard their upstairs neighbours leave by car in a rush. They too must have packed ahead of time.
Natalia didn’t flee immediately because of Nazar. She couldn’t imagine leaving him behind, and she knew with the age of 21 no one would let him out of the country. Not legally, and she had no funds to pay a bribe. Over the next few months, the family’s apartment building was hit on three separate occasions by Russian GRAD and SMERCH missiles. The apartment windows on one side blew out with the first explosion. They covered them with a plywood of sorts. They began sleeping on the floor of the bedroom, below the windows. It was cold in the apartment, as windows were only left in one room. Danya, her youngest, was really afraid. Her boyfriend kept telling her: take Danya and go. Danya’s arms shook with fear for three weeks. The shaking only stopped after a month. In April, a second direct hit to their building. Nearby, many pedestrians in Mykolaiv had been killed while out shopping. Natalia didn’t leave home for several days, and when she did, she had to walk past the blood on the streets from where some of her neighbours were killed.
Natalia explains she was out of work when the war began. She used to work as a kindergarten teacher. She speaks fluent Ukrainian as well as Russian. They never received any kind of aid from anyone in Ukraine. They were registered in the village home where she grew up, so were not eligible for any local payments in Mykolaiv itself. There was no humanitarian aid. It was each man for himself.
Natalia saw on local internet groups how her neighbours were killed on that local square, she saw the images of people hiding, fearful for their lives. On April 12, the water supply to Mykolaiv was cut off. For three weeks, there was no water at all. Then, water was supplied to the taps, but it was not drinkable. You still cannot drink the water in Mykolaiv. Water is brought in from other cities and sometimes pumped from a well. On May 4, their building was hit for a third time.
Pieces of metal from the bombs pierced through the plywood covering what had been the windows. Natalia explains it was lucky no one was hit. One of her neighbours next door died like that in his own stairwell. The metal pieces which flew out of the GRADs could kill like bullets.
After her building was hit for a second time, the neighbours, and elderly couple, left. They left Natalia their apartment keys. The family began sleeping in the corridor hallway between the two apartments, thinking it was safer than inside their apartments. She could not sleep at night out of fear. Danya was begging her to leave. Nazar was urging them to go, too. Natalia didn’t plan on Austria, she just knew she needed to go west. There were free buses operated by charity organizations. She asked for seats from a Lithuanian aid organization which offered her two seats on the bus plus a space for the family cat, Kokos (coconut).
Natalia saved the cat last year after he had been bitten by a dog. He thinks she is his mother. Natalia had no savings with her when she left, and she knew the family could not survive on Nazar’s part-time McDonalds salary. She thought if she went west she would find work and be able to send money back home to help Nazar.
The bus first stopped in Moldova. They were given places to sleep in a church, fed by volunteers, and then another bus took them via Romania and Hungary to Austria, where they arrived at Train of Hope, in Vienna. From there, they spent a few days at a temporary dorm in Vienna. I ask, which one? The one with the showers in containers outside, she says. I nod, the BBU dorm on Geiselbergstrasse. I have been there many times delivering Hofer cards.
When Natalia and Danya arrived, they didn’t have much money or food with them. They need to feed Kokos. Natalia didn’t even have a litter box for Kokos in the dorm, she tried to guide him to use newspapers as a makeshift toilet. A security guard saw her walking Kokos outside, and brought her some cat food, showing her photos of his own orange cat at home on his phone.
Natalia was lucky. She got in touch, via the internet, with a woman I know here who works on social housing placements. They coordinated together so Natalia and her son would be sent to one of the properties managed by the woman’s employer on behalf of the state. It was a good group home in rural Burgenland. 50 Ukrainians living together. Shared kitchen, shared washing room, each bedroom has its own toilet and shower. Natalia and Danya were amongst the first residents to move in in mid-June.
Everything was great, Natalia says, but there was no work. She soon discovered she could legally only earn €110 per month plus €80 per child and not lose her social housing and payments. Through another Ukrainian woman, Natalia found an official job cleaning for three hours every Saturday in a local bakery. She earns around €7 per hour. She works 12 hours per month. She is afraid to earn more. She doesn’t want to break any rules.
Natalia is taking German classes online. They have a very good teacher, herself an ethnic Hungarian, and Natalia seems to be taking her studies very seriously. Danya was given a school place in a polytechnic school in Oberwart. He leaves each morning at 6:30am by bus to get to school in time for 8am.
It is very hard to live on €315 per month which is what Natalia and Danya receive from the state. Burgenland, like Lower Austria, never increased the payment amounts. “He is a teenager, he eats three times what I eat, how do they think I can feed and clothe him on €100 per month?” she asks me. There is no lunch in school. He brings a snack. His bus ticket was reimbursed. But he never received school supply money — they were told he did not qualify due to his age. Danya finds the math very, very easy. Back home he was in a special naval college with a focus on math and physics. But he is not continuing with Ukrainian school online. Natalia explains she made that decision, “he will not go back to Ukraine.” The local school did not make them pay the extra money they collected from other parents (€70 for the year). The director explained Ukrainians do not need to pay.
I ask about humanitarian aid, furniture, clothing and shoe donations. That is all coming from the people managing the residence. They bring what they can. Once, when travel was still free, Natalia went to visit a charity shop for Ukrainians run by an NGO in Vienna, but there wasn’t much there. Now that same ticket to Vienna would cost her €25 each way, money she does not have.
Mother and son received each €75 vouchers for clothing, one time. She applied for Familienbeihilfe (child support) in August, but still hasn’t received the money. Sometimes they go to a nearby town where you can pay €2 to an NGO on a Saturday and collect a bag of groceries. Recently there was an unpleasant experience when it was clear to the Ukrainians there they were being served last, with all the Austrians and refugees of other nationalities being allowed to go first. The next time there was a different shift of employees and it was a more fair distribution system, first come, first serve. Sometimes they have to wait outside in the cold. Just because.
I ask about local help. Sometimes neighbours stop by and drop off what they can. Sometimes German teachers come by and offer the women help and conversation practice.
Natalia talks about her worry over Nazar. Is he eating? Is he warm? Sometimes she calls him and asks what he ate that day. Macaroni and ketchup. She says you must make soup. He doesn’t want to. But she told him over the phone how to do it. I ask about eggs, maybe an omelette? Natalia explains: eggs are now in Ukraine more expensive than in Austria. Eggs are a luxury he cannot afford.
Natalia attends German classes online on an old laptop she brought from Ukraine which is holding up but sometimes the camera acts up. Danya’s used Android phone broke but there is no money to buy a replacement. They would need to spend money to buy a SIM card anyway.
Natalia is quick to stress she has no fears for Danya in Austria. She is grateful they have peaceful sky above them. She does not have to worry about him when he is out. She really does not feel comfortable with asking for help. She has been self-sufficient her whole life, just like her grandmother taught her. Her granny taught her the only person you can rely on is yourself. Natalia even got her degree while working as a kindergarten assistant. She would love to work in her profession again, but she knows all the opportunities are in bigger cities like Vienna, and to move to Vienna, you need enough money for a deposit on private housing. She saw recently an opening for a kindergarten teacher with Ukrainian language skills for a weekend school, paying €17 per hour. But it would be impossible for Natalia to apply while living where she is now. She couldn’t afford the transportation cost.
When they first arrived, they heard thunder, a summer storm. Natalia, out of instinct, grabbed the cat and Danya and ran to hide in the toilet. She describes a scene when a little girl, a toddler of one and a half, saw a low-flying airplane in the sky here in Austria and burst into tears, pointing at the plane to her mother.
Natalia would like to stay here for Danya’s sake. “There is no work back home. Everything has been destroyed.” She stayed behind so long because of Nazar. She still cries when Danya is in school about having to leave behind her eldest. Kokos the cat gives her comfort. His cat litter costs €9 and lasts three weeks. Each box of dried food costs around €4, and he eats a box per week. This too has to come out of the family’s modest budget of €315 plus what Natalia earns with her cleaning job. They do not receive any funds in Ukraine. Unlike others, Natalia points out, she has no pension in Ukraine, no father of the children sending money, no child support. When Danya needed a winter jacket and shoes, she really had to pinch pennies. She had to learn to food shop very carefully. She had hoped she would have money left over to send back to Nazar. At the moment, she does not. They are paid twice per month and by the end of each pay period they are holding their breath waiting for the next instalment. “I would much prefer to work,” Natalia explains, “I am not used to have to ask for help. But I don’t know how we will ever save up enough money for a deposit to move out and be able to look for a full time job.”
I thank Natalia for her time and honestly and open words. I tell her I never know ahead of time what impact these stories will have on readers, but I promise to share her contact if anyone would like to get in touch with her directly. I realise this makes her a bit uncomfortable, but I explain that in this situation which Ukrainians find themselves in, at this moment, in Austria, it is ok to ask for and accept help from kind strangers. The mathematics of survival simply don’t add up otherwise.
"it is ok to ask for and accept help from kind strangers. The mathematics of survival simply don’t add up otherwise." Really prescient and well articulated, Tanja.