'There is no time to grieve': Ukrainian refugees arriving in Warsaw focus on helping each other
CBC
Olga Bolshova gestures around a small room in Warsaw crammed with three beds, a table and a small fridge. This is a temporary home for her, her husband Sergei and her daughters Ivannka, 15, and seven-year-old Stephania, who fled Kyiv the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
"We have everything we need," she said in English with a smile.
The room is inside a convent where the high stone walls still bear shrapnel marks from the Second World War bombing. The nuns had a spare guest room and offered it to the family.
"The Polish people have been very kind since minute one," said Olga's husband Sergei in English.
The Bolshovas are among the 1.6 million fleeing Ukraine who have arrived in Poland as refugees. Their stressful journey has been punctuated by such acts of kindness. Rather than focusing on the uncertainty of their situation, they are spending their time helping other refugees like them, paying back the kindness they've experienced.
The family originally left their home to stay with Olga's parents in a small Ukrainian village 300 kilometres west. But air sirens soon started and they all wound up hiding in the basement. The tension and fear were too much for Stephania, who has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Olga and Sergei, who adopted Stephania as a baby, decided their daughter's health came first and kept going. They headed for Poland.
"She was the reason we were so quick to leave Ukraine … we left for her, she could not tolerate that tension." said Sergei. "She was losing her ability to speak."
Sergei originally planned to see his family cross the border into Poland and then head back to Kyiv, where he works in sales for a financial products company. Ukrainian martial law requires men of fighting age to stay in the country. But it also allows primary caregivers of disabled children to travel with them, so Sergei left the car at the border and stepped into the unknown with his family.
"There is this narrative in our society [that men should fight] but my wife needs me and in the long perspective my kids need me," he said. "Who I am living this for if not my family?"
The Bolshovas list off the many acts of kindness they've received since that day. They include the border guard who gave Stephania some gloves, the man who drove them in his own car to Warsaw, the family they stayed with for a few days, and now the nuns who offered them shelter in the convent.
"When I just came I noticed how hospitable Polish people were to us," said Olga.
That is helping the Bolshova family find their way in the confusing and exhausting new existence as refugees.
As a first step, Olga is volunteering at a women's social action group to help other refugees arriving in Warsaw.
"There is no time to grieve. I am here in this moment. I just want to be useful," she said. "If I can go and help Ukrainians I will do that. There is no time for thinking and grieving."
