17/7
A lovely Ukrainian doctor I had met last week in Odesa invited me to come and do some interviews in her home town of Bila Tserkva (literally ‘white churches’) with refugees that she does volunteer work with. She met us and took us to do interviews with one of the refugee mums with her little son.
She was so young and with this small boy who looked so fragile. He was only three but already knew to ask his mum if the bombs would get them or when would the war stop. They had fled from Kharkiv and for a long time he would jump or cry at loud noises or run to the window and ask if it was shooting.

Diana the doctor has bought some toy cars for him and it was wonderful to see his smile which I think was wider at seeing her than the toys. Diana had moved back to her parents home during covid when her parents were unwell and together she and her family and others in her church have been offering their home to refugee families with nowhere else to go and feeding and clothing them.

Diana then so kindly took us for a bit of a tour of her town, showing us the white churches it is named after and the beautiful river.
Her town is also one of the first towns established by Volodymr the Great and celebrated its 990th anniversary a few years ago and will celebrate its 1000th anniversary in 2032!

She then took us to her family home. She moved back there during Covid to help her parents who have health problems. Her sister and her family also live there. Together as a family and with others from her church, they have welcomed war refugees into their home and helped them get established and fed and clothed them.
It was so wonderful to visit their beautiful home that was a real traditional Ukrainian home with a beautiful garden full of vegetables, fruits and berries. There was a well in the garden for water and the kitchen was full of home baked goodies and jams and pickles that we were treated to with a generous spread.

Then arrived a couple of lovely ladies who were sisters and one of their daughters who was 17. They were refugees from Donetsk. They had fled quite some time ago, earlier in the war, yet they still had that tense, hyper vigilant look about them that I was starting to recognise in those traumatised by war. I also noticed that the teenage girl had the same flatness and distant stare that the teenage boy had that we had interviewed days earlier.
It was sad and I could see it wasn’t pleasant for them to dredge up those memories again and I was so grateful to them for being willing to do this and share their stories. They did crack big beautiful smiles though when I asked them what it meant to them to have the help of someone like Diana. Those faces said it all. Of course Diana would have none of it- continuously insisting it was ‘all God’ and nothing to do with her.
They had fled from Donetsk. When asked how they knew the war had started- their answer as it had been going on since 2014… a grim reminder. It was only that the shelling got more intense and close. Like so many other refugees we met; their homes had been destroyed and relatives who had remained would send pictures. A common story amongst refugees was that elderly would insist on staying and demand their younger relatives flee to safety. The old people knew nothing else and would often rather die than leave their home villages and homeland and many figured they could stay and undermine the Russians or help stop looting. It was always very distressing for families who then had to worry about parents and in many cases see them go under Russian occupation and maybe not even hear from them again.

The older sister got quite emotional when she talked about her anger at the ‘stereotype’ that Ukrainians on the East who speak more Russian somehow wanted to be under Russia, or were sympathetic to Russia. She emphasised how much they hated the Russians and that even everyone she knew who had maybe thought the Russians were okay before now hated them.

After the interviews Diana then took us for a lovely walk through a beautiful garden that had been established centuries ago, destroyed in world war 2 and also by the Soviets and then more recently restored. Thankfully a lot of the beautiful old trees survived. Elsie wasn’t able to go too far so she and John waited by the gate whilst Yulia, Diana and I walked the circuit of the park.

Then her dad so very kindly offered to drive us back to Kyiv. What a beautiful family. If you’d like to contribute directly to the work they are doing- contact me and I will give you Diana’s account details. She doesn’t ask for money but I know they would use it well.