(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My experience with housing a Ukrainian refugee [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-23 Mementos for the fridge. So we said goodbye to our Ukrainian refugee today. It is a strange moment to me, one that sent me down the memory lane right to the first days of the all-out invasion. If you are curious to hear about one European’s personal experience with the Ukrainian refugee crisis, this article is for you. I remember the very first day — when I burst into my then-fiancé’s room, exclaiming “F**k everything!” with tears in my eyes. I also remember day two, when my rage and despair drove me to action. Searching the internet I found, to my pleasant surprise, that the Czech government had moved lightning fast. On day two, they already had a website ready, where you could fill in a form and apply to house a refugee. Once I submitted the form, the website responded with “thank you for not being apathetic to the situation.” I remember a convoy of yellow buses rolling into the central streets of Ostrava, the third largest city in Czechia, about a week or two after. They were packed with women and kids, the latter excitedly waving at pedestrians, as if they were merely on a big family trip. I waved back with a smile, infected by their optimism. The daddies were far away, fighting and dying — if these kids could face this travesty with a smile, so could I. I remember the surreal experience of travelling through the Prague train station. About a third of the announcements were in Ukrainian. There were special trains shown on the arrival/departure board, marked as refugee transports. Clad in reflective vests, volunteers roamed the station in packs of three, looking for people to guide and help. Massive signs in Ukrainian were hung above the escalators, showing with big fat arrows where you can do your paperwork or get a SIM card. Sometime in March 2022, I finally got a call. It was a government agent, asking if I am still available and confirming that I really don’t need compensation for housing a refugee. We then agreed on the place and time where we would pick up our new flatmate — a lady in her fifties from Cherkasy, whom I will refer to as ‘Olena’ (after Ukraine’s first lady). We realized very fast that there would be serious communication issues. Olena did not speak a lick of English, only Ukrainian plus Orcish as a second language. My then-fiancé spoke English, German, and limited Czech. I spoke Czech, English, and limited Japanese. Six languages between us, and not a single common link. Despite that, Olena turned out to be the best guest we could ask for. She was quiet, polite, and very quickly found a job at a local hospice, doing general housework. She offered to pay rent, which we refused; undeterred, she instead decided to extend her housework services to our flat, cleaning floors and surfaces. Occasionally she would cook for us too — we got to taste authentic Borscht, as well as Varenyky (filled dumplings) and Paska (a cake that strongly resembled our Czech Bábovka). Eventually, we bridged the comm gap too, albeit with a bunch of rickety wooden planks. As slavic languages, Czech and Ukrainian share certain similarities which can be used to sort of get a point across. The rest got covered by gestures and silly faces. Misunderstandings were frequent — like that one time when Olena almost dropped something, and I exclaimed “pozor!”. Which means “watch out!” in Czech, but “shame!” in Ukrainian. We had a good laugh about that later. It has been over a year. So much has happened, the world is basically unrecognizable: Among other things, me and my darling got married. And Olena found herself new living arrangements — from my understanding she is not returning to Ukraine yet, but moving to her own place, which she can now afford. I guess you can't stay a refugee forever, eventually you have to settle down and regain some semblance of normal life. “I will never forget you,” she told us today. “This is our favorite gift,” my wife said, showing one of the two fridge magnets that Olena had given us last year — pictured in the title image. “Everything will be good,” I said, hugging Olena. “When I get to the taxi, I will just sit and cry,” she responded. There were times I felt useless, unable to stop or even mitigate the invasion. But if there is one lesson I learned from this conflict, it is that small contributions add up to great effect. It takes a million raindrops to create a flood. - With love from Czechia [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/23/2165439/-My-experience-with-housing-a-Ukrainian-refugee Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/