A birthday in the food tent

News of civilian massacres near Kyiv filtered through the food tent this morning and one of the Ukrainian volunteers at the fruit bar, here with her young son, broke down in tears as she described what she'd heard.

Another of the Ukrainian  volunteers (from Kyiv) was 16 years old today and actually turned up first thing, as usual. He had kept very quiet about his birthday but happened to mention it to me yesterday. We found a birthday card in Polish, hoping it said vaguely the right thing, and bought him a couple of cakes. Our group sang "Happy Birthday," which was taken up by everyone else in the tent. Alex, as he is known, later texted us to say that it was his best birthday ever. (Go figure!)

We completed a visa application for a woman and her 13 year old son, who will hopefully be going to the same school as Sam and we hope that he will be as well accepted.

We'll be working alongside another British volunteer, apparently with lots of money, who has employed 5 Ukrainian refugees to complete visa applications for Ukrainians wanting to come to the UK, of which they have 800 but have not got any sponsors yet. We're hoping to continue providing that personal linking between refugee families and sponsors, but on a much larger scale, whilst someone else does the tedious application completion. We could do with some more help.

We still intend to continue chopping for, and serving, fruit salad in the morning until 12. As we're usually there first we've assumed the task of picking up the large plastic bowls, chopping boards and knives from the posh hotel restaurant that washes them up every night for us. It's quite a different world, poking our heads into the luxurious restaurant where people are eating their breakfast buffet, then out into the cold of the square and over to the refugee tents... 

Children's drawings on the side of the food tent.

Comments

  1. Mum4 April 2022 at 15:30

    I hear on the BBC of the frustration of people here waiting for refugees and from you of refugees waiting to come here, what is going on?

    ReplyDelete

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