Rats (Day 124)
I really wanted to end today on a positive note. That didn't happen. Nothing surprises me anymore. The official silence is deafening.
I know it’s an awful photo. I also received photos of rats and maggots but I spare you those. These photo sets the scene. Now imagine 48 Ukrainian women and kids sitting in this dump of a motel somewhere deep in the Lower Austria countryside. This was the alarming message I received this evening, at the end of an already long day.
I was already waiting for Natasha and Pasha at 8am this morning on a train platform. They took a later train by accident. We would be late. I asked them if they could connect from commuter train to subway by themselves. Better you meet us, they told me. We went to a Vienna gymnasium, the meeting arranged by a kind reader whose children attend the school. The school director was extremely polite but took one look at Pasha with no English and no German and explained gymnasium would never be possible. Polytechnical school, she said, that is your option. And don’t mention you already completed 9 grades in Ukraine. Better not mention that at all.
I translated. They nodded. The director kindly went to her email and started contacting others to try and secure a polytechnic school place. We thanked her for the introductions. On the way back to the subway, I said: if that’s the only option, you have one of those schools in your town, you could just come to Vienna for volleyball…by train…in the back of my mind I have this horrible fear that we would never find an affordable apartment for them in Vienna, and Natasha seems sort of settled where she is, they were brought new supplies to their apartment, they have been visiting the local pool, the psychologist is nearby. Maybe Pasha can do volleyball with a long train commute? Maybe. I don’t know what they will decide. But finding a school in Austria for a normal Ukrainian 15 year-old without foreign languages is a nightmare. That part everyone agrees on.
Next I drove to a hotel in Vienna to pick up 10 Hofer cards and 10 McDonalds cards brought by a kind American reader and fundraised by a local group back stateside. They came wrapped in the loveliest of handwritten cards with messages in Ukrainian!
Quick stop at Hofer. I would like 18 gift cards of €50 each. Yes, you heard that correctly. I’ll pay with a card. Oh and one more in cash. Also €50. My husband sold some old golf equipment this weekend and gave me the funds for one card. Every little helps. Pull over on the side of the road near a post box. Quickly stuff 10 envelopes. Mail them off. Drive home. Sort out the next 19. Separate between mailing addresses with stamps and Vienna dorms. Roughly half half. Start texting the dorm residents. Announce meeting times: 2pm, 3pm, 5pm. Make a schedule on the fly. Hop in the car again. It’s 37C and feels like the Sahara outside.
Arrive at 2pm and wonder if I can just walk in the building. Follow a mom with a buggy into the lift. The security guard doesn’t notice me. Reach the floors I need, begin looking for room numbers. The place is enormous. Like a giant octagon maze with wings upon wings of rooms. I wonder what it once was. Perhaps a pensioners’ home? It didn’t feel like a former hospital. Very brutalist concrete with brightly color-coded floors and block letters and numbers on everything. Kind of like Yugoslavia but in German. Renovation circa late 70s early 80s. It would be retro if it had a fresh coat of paint. The Ukrainians had made little signs for their doors with their names. I started knocking, met some people in person, others I slipped their cards under their doors. When I realised some of the people couldn’t speak, we texted each other on our phones and held up the messages to communicate. When it was time to go, I asked how to slip out unnoticed: down six flights of stairs, walk out the door like I live there. Mission accomplished.
3pm arrive at the next dorm: 100 vulnerable residents many of whom have limited mobility. Some of them are now telling me that on several occasions there wasn’t enough lunch for everyone and some people were turned away at 12:30 even though lunch is supposed to be from 12 to 2pm each day. It is the only hot meal of the day.
A small crowd of a half dozen gathered in the courtyard (I don’t dare step foot inside so as not to raise suspicions; you can see security guards from the entrance) and they took turns sharing their grievances with me. No social worker on site. Hasn’t been one there since June 2. They don’t know who to speak with about their problems. They cannot travel halfway across the city to ACV to find the charities to ask for help.
One older woman looks at me in desperation when I say here is your Hofer card it is only a few stops away by bus. I don’t think she has ventured more than 100 meters beyond the building so far. I hand out McDonalds cards to those present. I promise a young mom to find out who can translate for her tomorrow at the police station. She lost her backpack with all her documents on a bus. Her passport is gone. She needs a police report. She wanted to go to her mom in Spain. Now she worries she is trapped forever. I need to leave this country, she says, this place isn’t good for me. She is holding a young toddler on her skinny hip. He has just been in hospital. Rotavirus. Another elderly lady with a walker and chronic health issues obvious to the naked eye tells me how she spent three days in hospital and checked herself out because there was no translator available. You hear this a lot. The most vulnerable, poorest Ukrainians do not speak English. This puts them at a real disadvantage. They are completely dependent on volunteers to help them.
I listen, I promise to stay in touch, tell them to keep their chins up and demand their rights, not lose their dignity. Say I’ll be back soon when I have more cards for the others. I am not sure my pep talk was convincing, but it was genuine. I want to inspire confidence. You are in the driver’s seat. Your fate is in your hands. You have rights.
So I drive back and do some mom stuff, drive my kid to her guitar lesson, talk to another kid on a school trip abroad until Thursday, but my phone is exploding, because the happy recipients in the dorms have told their friends, and more Ukrainians are asking for Hofer cards. I sent out 29 today, but I don’t have any more. I ask for patience. I do not answer all the messages yet. I take some time to post photos of groceries because I know how important those are, that people see where their donated money went to, that they too can read the messages of genuine gratitude.
A long, productive chat with a journalist who gets it. It feels like therapy. And then just when I think I can make dinner and start writing, the rats and maggots appear in my inbox. A colleague has seen them in the Telegram group and thinks I should be aware. I start investigating. Please see the whole thread here:
I text with one woman in Tulln who puts me in touch with her friend in this terrible motel in this tiny village deep in the Lower Austrian countryside. We speak by phone for half an hour. She fled Mykolaiv under bombs and ended up first in Vienna, then Arena Nova (mass housing on cots in Wiener Neustadt), then was told to get on a bus and was driven to this village by the Red Cross, and she and her small child were dumped, with others, in front of a rundown motel last Monday. They were only given money for food on Friday. For three days they ate rice.
Now there are 48 Ukrainian women and kids living in a rundown former motel in the middle of nowhere (pardon my French) with rats and maggots in the courtyard. The owner apparently knows about the rats. They are not sure when the charity will come to check on them. They feel totally alone. The mom I spoke with wants to leave ASAP and go to another bigger town in Lower Austria where her friend from Ukraine is living in a school and says there is space. But she has been told to wait for “paperwork”. I suggest not waiting, just leaving. She says, but how? At 5am? With a small kid? On the bus that comes who knows when? Her kid has diarrhoea. There are 48 people sharing one kitchen, one fridge. It sounds like absolute hell.
I tweet about it, hope journalists will reach out, hope local authorities will look into it, you can’t even figure out who is responsible… I email a few charities in the hope they might know what to do or who to call. I consider calling the mayor tomorrow but then we are talking about small village Austria. Everyone knows everything and if someone is running a refugee “motel” with rats running around the courtyard and rubbish piling up (see photo above) will my guess is the local authorities are already aware and apparently ok with it. Just a hunch.
And then it is very late and you still have dozens of unanswered messages: thank you for the card, my card didn’t arrive yet, when will my card come?, my friend told me to write you…and on and on.
I am extremely concerned about the coming months as Austrian government officials all go on super long holidays and Ukrainians are left to fend for themselves with not even enough money to buy food staples at today’s prices. The worst is this feeling, this horrible feeling I cannot shake recently: no one cares. Nothing surprises me anymore. I still try to fix what I can, I try to draw attention to what I can, but I expect nothing in return. It is a horrible feeling.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your continued support. I of course immediately offered the women in the rat motel Hofer cards, but they aren’t even sure if they will get their mail. They have other problems right now. Once I have more funding, I will continue to work off my waiting list, prioritising the neediest cases (especially those handicapped dorm residents who do not receive any state money) as does Mario with the website, where we also have a very long waiting list. I always remind the Ukrainians I meet: there are many, many families in need and we cannot deliver what we do not have. Please be patient, I say/write.
Finally, you don’t need me to tell you about the horrific news out of Ukraine today, but this is haunting. War crimes. In broad daylight. Civilians shopping. Targeted on purpose. For simply daring to exist. The death toll and casualty list will be horrific.
This, so much this, ICYMI: