Life on hold

Anna T. doesn't know what her life will look like in two weeks. Just as she did not know in February, when she was a successful real estate entrepreneur in Odessa, that in a month's time she would volunteer at a bus station in Bucharest, where Ukrainian families were constantly asking for information, guidance, support or phone chargers...

One day, among the refugees, she met a person from a children's aid organisation, Terre des hommes, and this person offered her a job as a translator. So for several months Anna has been translating, but she does much more: individual support for lost or endangered mothers, connection with other organisations or institutions that support her compatriots here in Bucharest.

"I was impressed by two boys from Mariupol who told me that their family lost their house after the bombings. It was the house that their great-grandfather and grandfather and father had built, a lifetime project, so it was somehow a symbol of their family and very important to them... And I can find myself in their story, although I didn't lose the house, but I left everything to come here and to be safe", says Anna.

Then Anna talks about Anton, a boy so caught up in his passion for drawing that he probably forgets about war when he's alone with his tablet. But even though he is 17 years old, he is aware that he left to save his life, and he dreams of returning. Paradoxically, because before the war he really wanted to get to the USA, where he has an aunt. Anna has met Anton in a foster home where Terre des hommes provides psychosocial support for Ukrainian children without parents. Most of the teenagers had been living in a space run by a Ukrainian high school and led an independent life until the war. Now they are "trapped" in a place they don't know and where the future is very uncertain.

There are two kinds of attitudes that Anna met: on the one hand, there are those who want to stay here in Romania, in the long run, and those adapt. On the other hand, there are those who struggle with lack of experience in another country, do not adapt and are scared because they do not speak the language (and theirs is so different), so they want to leave – either go back in Ukraine or in other countries.

"Me? I want to stay, because I have found a place where I am useful to others. Me and my husband left Ukraine on the first day, February 24, but in fact we had been preparing for a while. For a few weeks I was watching the flights and I almost bought once or twice, but I would change my mind when I got to the payment and I thought: what am I doing, am I crazy? I have a life, a business, a family here. There was no war then, but the tension was palpable..."

Once here in Romania, Anna applied all sorts of strategies to convince her mother to come too, because initially she did not want to leave at all. "First, I convinced her to move out of town with a relative. Then I convinced her to come closer to the border and then, because she was still close, just to come and visit me in Bucharest... Then her mother thought of going to her sister in Berlin, as she is ill. And so she did, but the "surprise" was that her sister was watching Russian channels and she wanted to show her the "reality" too...

In her current reality, Anna struggles with uncertainties and contradictory feelings. "I am grateful that I am safe, but I often feel guilty when I look at how I live my normal life, as if nothing is happening at home. I look at people in the street here in Bucharest and I think that we were like that too, we went out in the city, to the cafes etc..."

The Terre des hommes intervention supporting Ukrainian refugees is made possible through the participation and financial contribution of the  Crisis and Support Center of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, the City of Zurich, Oak Foundation, Z Zurich Foundation, and Swiss Solidarity Foundation.