Sunday thoughts & reading (Day 109)
I find myself gravitating towards reports on the Ukrainian people and what they are going through right now. How their lives have been turned forever upside down. A brief visit with Natasha & Pasha.
This morning I drove out to see Natasha and Pasha again and deliver Pasha a laptop, organized via a wonderful charity in Austria, PCs für Alle, which provides used but functional laptops and tablets to students in need across Austria. On Saturday morning, I picked up a freshly engineered Toshiba laptop, complete with instructions in Ukrainian. All arranged by a local Twitter reader, who kindly put in the request on behalf of Pasha. Both mom and son were very grateful, and he went right to work, silently, not asking any of us for any help. Natasha made us the mini beef burgers you see below in the photo, and the flowers I brought them on Thursday were now in full bloom. In the corner of the photo you can spot the snow-flaked face of the eight year-old female black lab who came to Austria together with their psychologist, herself from Kyiv.
I brought Pasha some T-shirts and shorts from my teenage son, as they mentioned he needed some summer clothes, but when he stood up I realised how tall he is and we giggled that I am so sorry I hope everything isn’t too small and too short. For Natasha, I found three nearly new bathing suits I had ordered from a good quality British online shop, and then never wore because I never lost those 10kg. I wasn’t sure how she would react, but she was thrilled. She loved the bright colours and said she couldn’t wait to try them all on. I added in a white flowered sundress and some nearly new sandals. For trips to the local pool.
We talked about options for the family. I promised to keep researching possibilities. I explained what I have heard/learned, so far, after writing about them on Thursday. All plans have to be built around Pasha’s continuing education (i.e. finding the right school for September and securing him a place) and getting him into sports, German language classes (he does attend some with adults in the town where they live now), and socialising with other kids his age.
I heard this from several parents on Friday living in a dorm in Vienna, and I told Natasha so she would know other mothers are struggling with similar trends: the teenagers do not want to leave their rooms. They are on their phones, but don’t want to socialise in person. One mom told me how desperate the parents are to try and organise some outdoor group activities which will pull the teenagers out of their rooms. What about school, I ask this mom. Her daughter is 16 and will continue “online” school in Ukraine from Vienna in September. That, you can imagine, is, for a myriad of reasons, a less than ideal solution.
As I said a few weeks ago, we are entering a phase now of the harder, longer-term, more complicated challenges which need solving. These questions require more time, more energy, and are more complex than providing emergency diapers and baby formula or buying coffee and sandwiches on the train station. I have always chosen to spend a small amount of time on many families rather than focusing on a few, more intensely (which perhaps makes me different from many other volunteers), but in the case of Natasha and Pasha, I know more time is needed, and I will invest it.
I begin this coming week with 7 empty envelopes which require in-person meetings, 52 empty envelopes which need to be sent by mail across Austria, and 12 more envelopes waiting to be delivered to a dorm in Vienna’s 3rd district. That’s 71 envelopes x €50 = €3,550 I don’t have.
I keep a tiny emergency fund (currently €659) and I am going to dig into it tomorrow to buy €450 of cards, so 9 envelopes. This is how my accounting goes. What comes in goes immediately out. We, Mario & I, have no overhead. We don’t pay ourselves anything. When you donate via the website, the money goes directly to bulk card orders, for which Mario also benefits from a small discount from Hofer. My own pile of envelopes is supported by cards sent to me by post (or you can ask me to meet you in Vienna!), and donations made via my PayPal. Whichever option you choose, I can assure you, the money goes to work immediately with zero overhead. Sure, I do expense things like envelopes and stamps, naturally, but I don’t pay myself anything and neither does Mario. Luckily, we are both able to donate our time. For now.
I continue to remain optimistic, but I do worry in general about public interest slipping away. Although when I write about specific cases, like I did this morning about two pensioners from Kharkiv, now in Vienna, who wrote me begging for help, the response on Twitter is immediate and very positive. Two readers offered to send money (€50 and €80), a third made a donation towards a Hofer card, and a fourth offered to send money in two weeks (“the problem surely isn’t going to go away…”). But what about everyone else? How will we reach so many people in need? These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.
Tonight I would like to share with you some moving, tragic, incredibly important reporting about the human toll of this horrific war of aggression by Russia. In no particular order.
Anna Nemtsova with a truly unbelievable, devastating true story of two teenagers from Mariupol.
This entire thread by Liz Cookman and her Foreign Policy piece from the front lines and the ordinary people whose lives have been totally, irrevocably torn apart
Los Angeles Times with photos
WSJ with a story on Ukrainians with disabilities and how they escaped, which does have an uplifting ending:
FT on conscription in Donbas. My TikTok feed also now includes posts mourning young husbands and fathers killed in action from DNR/LNR.
One final thought. I have no ability nor competence to judge if this is a realistic scenario, or not, but I am frozen with fear that it might very well all be an accurate prediction. Mass hunger as a weapon against the West. And some leaders still think phone calls with Putin will pacify things?
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your continued support. The happy grocery photos continue to arrive, even on Sundays (shops in Austria are not open on Sundays in most places, with very few exceptions). I love the photos and messages of thanks in 4 different languages. They give me motivation to keep going.