This week was a good week. I finally had a surplus of cards! As our waiting list on Cards for Ukraine is so long, inevitably we end up sending out cards to Ukrainians who have left or moved. When those come back to sender, Mario hands them to me. I first cleared my own waiting list, and then began to make in-person deliveries to the “arrivals center” in Vienna, which is only a 20 minute bus ride from where I live. I still do this all over Telegram. I’ll explain.
Arrivals Center is a fancy term for an old university building converted into temporary housing run by an NGO. Refugees sleep on cots in shared rooms. I understand there are showers in a container. Three meals a day, one of them warm. The original intention was that Ukrainians would only stay there for a maximum of three days before being given a housing assignment somewhere in Austria. Unfortunately, I met people this week who have been waiting for weeks. Refugees (I could not tell you how many) are also living on cots in Stadthalle. To reach “new arrivals”, I text over Telegram those who have already contacted me and received cards, and ask them to spread the word. Then the text messages start rolling in. I make meeting times and never go inside the facilities. We meet and chat outside.
I met many families this week. From all over, Chernihiv to Dnipro to Kyiv to Ivano-Frankivsk. Their reasons for coming now to Austria vary. I met two robust women 40-ish who left their kids at home in Ukraine with husbands/grandmothers and specifically came to Austria in the hope of finding well-paying work. They asked about factories. I explained Austria doesn’t have so many. You will be more likely to find factory work in other eastern European countries. They didn’t know that if they accept social housing they will be banned from earning more than €110 per month (this legislation should change end of February but not by a substantial amount). They listened carefully and by the end of the conversation decided it probably makes sense to go to their friends in Poland where you can rent a room in a hostel and immediately find a job. I don’t disagree.
I met a mom of three little kids (8, 6 and 2) who came from Kyiv with her husband by car. By car, I asked, but petrol is really expensive? Our car runs on natural gas, she explained. Far cheaper than 5 bus tickets. The family crossed into Italy one evening, could not find a hotel nor hostel, slept in the car, and decided to come back to Austria. She hopes her husband can find work. He works in IT. But first they must learn German, she says. Three kids. Arrival center. Winter. Not an easy decision. I start to get the impression many families originally stayed in Ukraine thinking the war would be over soon. But it wasn’t. And now it feels like economic factors (the hope of finding a good job, even though this does not reflect the lived reality for most who arrived earlier) and a cold winter with lack of electricity on an ongoing basis are contributing factors.
A mom from Dnipro came with her 12 year old son. She is an English teacher. He is a brilliant student, fluent in English, very good in math. After the missile attack, she said that’s it, I am not going to risk my son being hurt or losing his life, we are leaving. She asked me for trousers for her son. Tall and skinny. I didn’t have any. I asked the Ukrainians in my group if they could help. We talked schools. A very difficult topic as you will have read in my last post. She asked about bilingual. Yes, there are public bilingual English-German gymnasium in Vienna, but they are hard to get into and your son doesn’t know German yet. I give her the phone number of a Ukrainian mom who has a daughter enrolled in one of these schools. An Austrian helped them get a place. It almost always takes both luck and the help of a caring local.
I would call this a systemic problem. Some of these Ukrainian kids arriving are extremely bright, they would do fine if just given the opportunity to join a normal classroom with extra German support, but the school system does not offer this. Only in lucky cases. You are expected to know German before you can learn anything else. I find the whole approach racist and stupid, but I am not an educator. I am sure they have some fancy language to explain their approach of “separate then integrate”.
Parents of a one year old. Seem to have run away from a bad living situation. Another family was in Austria, went back to Ukraine for a few months, came back again. A missile hit close to where they lived. They realized they went home too soon. Older ladies. Younger women. Reuniting with relatives already here. Hoping for a nearby housing assignment. Hoping for any housing assignment. Were already sent to Lower Austria but when we got there it was full, we had to come back on our own dime. They made a mistake. They make lots of mistakes. We are scared they will send us somewhere terrible. We hope for the best. Thank you so much, I will buy lemons. And so it goes.
This week I also met the parents of two young girls in intensive care in a Vienna hospital following the horrific helicopter crash recently in Ukraine. I brought one mom (it is a mom and a dad) some household things she asked for and helped drive her around too. What I only learned yesterday is their spouses are also in hospital in Austria, but in a different city. In short, a tragedy you simply cannot imagine. We have arranged meal deliveries but mom is having a hard time eating. Several Ukrainian women volunteered to make home-cooked food and bring it to them in hospital or their hotel (they are in a refugee hotel now — the first NGO-run place was so awful the mom shuddered as I picked her up from it yesterday — and they even had the nerve to charge her €20 for a lost key). So we have a food-delivery schedule and are trying to help with little things (dad asked for slippers, I bought some, will deliver today) so they can focus on their loved ones. Just so incredibly sad. I am gathering some money for them both, although they say they don’t need it, I hope if I hand over two envelopes they will not refuse. The parents’ daily expenses here will be more than in Ukraine, and no one in their families is working now, obviously.
Last night I got a message that should have been for the police. I tell them the police phone number. I then check the BBU hotline as they have Ukrainian speakers. It doesn’t work weekends. I could scream. I was tired. I had also “worked” most of Saturday. I didn’t want to be the one saying what to do during a crisis that could potentially turn violent on Saturday evening. The state has a budget. I do not. You get the idea.
The more time marches on, the more it all stays the same. I don’t see progress. I see slowdowns. A little bird told me Lower Austria would not make any housing assignments for refugees until after their election today. “Foreigner” is in many parts of Austria synonymous with undesirable, unwanted. Then you try to explain this to someone who just fled Putin’s bombs for the sake of their kid’s future. You cannot.
I have about a dozen cards left. I will hand them out on Monday. I owe several people phone calls and others have ideas for me and it is such a struggle to set boundaries when some else’s great idea might take up time I simply don’t have to give. And just because we are volunteers doesn’t mean we are free 24/7 either. It’s so strange. Everything is so strange. I have no faith left in anything official anymore. I start to think those with good intentions who try to fight within the system have so few results to show for years of trying. Only a tiny sliver of faith, surely not all people are bad or selfish.
I have faith in the doctors and nurses in the intensive care units. I have faith in the medical evacuation teams (ambulance to Lviv, then airlift from Poland). I am thinking a lot about those little girls and their parents. How life can change in an instant, through no fault of your own. The doctors and nurses are very good, I said to mom, as I dropped her off by the hospital. She speaks English, thankfully. She can communicate with them. The dad cannot. She translates for him, too.
Today, she will go to church.