Marharyta Marakhovska (27)
Through a cascade of miracles, Marharyta has its own bath
The house in Kharkiv where Marharyta Marakhovska (27) grew up and lived until the Russian invasion has been in the family for generations. Her grandmother, who is now 88 years old, also lived there when it was attacked during the Second World War. As a little girl she was injured by a shrapnel. “She has a big, deep scar on her leg from that war. But she refuses to flee during this war,” Marakhovska said in mid-March in the Hungarian border village of Beregsurány. She herself left after much doubt and sleepless nights – at the insistence of her mother and grandmother. “I didn’t want to leave them behind.”
Marakhovska – dark hair, hazel eyes – hitchhiked and stayed overnight from the eastern city of Kharkov to the far southwest of Ukraine in seven days. After that grueling journey of 1,300 kilometers she was received in Hungary with tea and pancakes. She waits in the spring sun for the bus that will take her that same afternoon directly to her destination: Prague. “There lives an old classmate where I can go, for the time being.”
Marakhovska worked in Kharkiv as an accountant while studying psychology at the same time. She hopes to find a job in Prague soon to be able to send money home, she says. But like all Ukrainian refugees, her first concern is to have a roof over her head. A safe haven for something longer than just the night to come.
“It was chaos in Prague,” Marakhovska says over the phone over a month later. Not only did she knock on her classmate’s door for housing, but half of her family was also there on the doorstep. “An aunt with two children, her brother’s friend; we all slept in the living room, where her partner also had to work. I didn’t want to be a burden to them anymore.” But finding an alternative in Prague seemed impossible. The mayor had already warned that the number of Ukrainian refugees in the Czech capital was becoming unsustainably high.
So Marakhovska decided to get help from the only other friend she has in the EU. “I didn’t want to go through what had happened to me in Prague again, so I asked her if I could stay with her alone for one month. Then I would make sure I could stand on my own two feet.” Via Warsaw she traveled by bus to Tallinn.
Estonia is further north than the logical Ukrainian escape route, but there too the housing market is murderous and office work for someone who does not speak the language is scarce. “I thought it would be easier here, but that was disappointing,” says Marakhovska. “I can hardly plan a day or a week in advance, but in a year I hope to be back in Kharkov a long time ago.”
Despite all the setbacks, she sounds overjoyed at the end of April. Due to a cascade of miracles, she has recently found a job and a place of her own in Tallinn. To improve her chances of getting a better job than cleaning, she signed up for both an Estonian language course and an English refresher course. The provider of those free classes asked her if she had a job or a place to stay. “One more week,” was her honest answer. Then he introduced her to a British friend who runs a four-star hotel in Estonia’s capital. He offered her a well-paid job as a receptionist and a “huge” room of her own. “I even have a bath!” exults Marakhovska.
From her first salary, she has just paid her family’s electricity bill in Kharkov. But going back to the only house that was once her home is out of the question now that the Russian war is targeting eastern Ukraine. “I can’t even go into my own room anymore,” she says with a laugh. “My mother and grandmother took in two women and a dog there from a district where it is even more dangerous.” They stay in the bedroom where her grandmother was injured as a child.
Marat Shabanov (14)
His friends were in Waterloo, so Marat wanted to go to Belgium too
Marat Shabanov (14) spent three weeks in a bomb shelter under the flat of his aunt and two nieces, but when the bombs continued to fall on Mariupol, his mother Angela decided on March 14 to load the turquoise Lancia and flee. Via Zaporizhzhya they drove to relatives in Dnipro, friends in Vinnytsia and acquaintances in Khmelnitsky. There Angela sold all the make-up stuff she could have gathered in her beauty salon. She refueled with the proceeds.
In a shelter just across the border in Hungary, they were given “a lot of food.” Marat hasn’t been hungry once since he went on the run.
He is in touch with his friends on WhatsApp. They are scattered throughout Europe. Two of them ended up in Waterloo. That is why Marat also wanted to go to Belgium.
They drove through Austria and via Nuremberg, where the Red Cross arranged a hotel stay, to Brussels.
Finally, in the Brussels municipality of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, they were paired up with Michael and Natalie. Their children have just left home and the bedrooms were empty. An end date has not been agreed.
For the first time in a month and a half, Marat does not have to share a bed with his mother. He has his own room. On his desk are his laptop, headphones, and a mouse. He likes to game. shooting games.
Marat says he’s fine. Sometimes he is startled awake by a plane. The town where he skated until dark no longer exists. His mother makes him think positively. There are new opportunities in Belgium. Starting at school. He’s nervous for that.
Nina Spodin (41)
Nina went with her family to Ter Apel, but slept in the car there
Nina Spodin (41) arrived in the Netherlands at the beginning of March. With her husband Roman and their two children, a nine-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy, she had come from eastern Ukraine driving their old Skoda. After a short visit to Ter Apel – where they slept in the car – they ended up in a youth hostel in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Afghan refugees and the first Ukrainian refugees were received there.
Two months later Spodin lives with her family in a room in an old care home in Huizen, in ‘t Gooi. They have their own kitchenette and bathroom. They feel safe, Spodin says via the translation app. The other residents are elderly – “very nice” – and there are still nursing home staff.
The family doesn’t have to pay rent, it’s probably just a temporary place. Several former nursing homes, from Winterswijk to Huizen, which were nominated for demolition or renovation, now serve as shelters for Ukrainian refugees. Spodin hopes to find a real home in Utrecht, where she has found work. She got after an interview in NRC offers to live in beautiful, temporary, houses [van lezers buiten de Randstad, red.] to stay, but was eager to find a place through government channels.
Finding a job was the most important thing for Spodin, she said upon arrival. She does not want charity, but wants to be independent. She was an ophthalmologist in Ukraine. And now she works four days a week at the Eye Association, in Utrecht. She is very happy with it. But getting there takes almost two hours, because she has to take two buses. The children also go to school by bus – a primary school for refugee children. So not a school around the corner.
Ahmed (35)
Dorien’s clothes racks are in the corner of Ahmad’s room
The Syrian Ahmad (35) fled from Ukraine more than a month ago, having previously fled Syria. In his blue Skoda Fabia, he traveled through Slovakia, Austria and Germany in six days to arrive in the Netherlands. He doesn’t know anyone there, so Ahmad ended up at the emergency shelter in Harskamp. He was given “bread and a great deal of cheese,” but he did not sleep there. “I slept in my car, because the shelter was very full.”
After a night in the car, Ahmad decided to look for accommodation via Facebook. Eighteen-year-old Dorien responded: Ahmad could visit her and her parents Arend and Trea, in Emmen. He has been living there for over a month now.
The terraced house is not large, but space has been made for Ahmad. In a room with floral wallpaper, a bed, a cupboard, a nightlight and a suitcase with second-hand clothes have been placed.
Ahmad thinks Emmen is beautiful and the people are nice. Yet he is looking for a new place. “I don’t think it’s good for the family if I stay here for a long time. They don’t say it, but sometimes I feel it.”
Ahmad’s wife Alina and daughter Milana are in Kalush, Ukraine. Ahmad wanted to pick them up, but was stopped by the Azov battalion, because he is “Syrian”. He wants to go to Ukraine to try again to bring his family to the Netherlands.
There is no room for all of them in Arend and Trea’s house. “I want a house where I can be with them. I miss them,” he says. There is a silence. “It doesn’t matter how big the house is.”
Only then can Ahmad be ‘really at home’ in the Netherlands. At the moment there is mainly unrest. “Every day I think: how long will my family be safe?”
Oksana (44) and Alina Maksakova (19)
In the garden shed, Oksana and Alina give the dog snacks
Oksana Maksakova (44) and her daughter Alina Maksakova (19) packed their suitcases in their modern apartment in Kiev. The morning of the first bombs, they got into the car, heading west to Ukraine. Father Stanislav stayed behind, they traveled on to Hungary. “That’s where we learned how inconvenient it is not to speak the language.” So the choice fell on the United Kingdom. Alina speaks good English, Oksana is a bit more insecure and wants to take lessons.
In the UK, Britons offer shelter to Ukrainians voluntarily, in vacant rooms and holiday homes. Such a connection with a Brit – or having Ukrainian family in the UK – is even a prerequisite for getting a visa. Through Facebook, Oksana and Alina found a sponsor family in Leeds, and they now live with them in the garden shed.
Oksana and Alina share a bedroom and have their own bathroom and kitchen. Which is nice, because they don’t want to be too much of a burden to their host family. “They have already done so much for us and are always asking if we need anything. They had also bought all kinds of toiletries for us. Everyone is so respectful and friendly.”
The two were the first Ukrainian refugees in Leeds, which they find quite funny. “There was a meeting for Ukrainians, but we were the only newcomers.” They can stay in the garden shed for at least half a year. Alina, a law student, tries to enroll in an English university. Oksana is an architect and interior designer and will try to get commissions here. Sometimes they feel ashamed, Alina says, because there are moments when they don’t think about the war. “It’s all so peaceful here. We seem to lead normal lives.”
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