Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
Annika Brown is a Connecticut College student studying abroad this semester in Denmark. Below is their account of a day they spend assisting Ukrainian refugees.
This semester I’m studying in Denmark at DIS Copenhagen. Before Russia had invaded Ukraine, I had planned a trip to Budapest with my best friend from home. Once Chernobyl was taken over by Russia, she decided Hungary was “too dangerous” due to its shared border with Ukraine and decided to stay home. I had to make the decision of whether I wanted to go alone, or if I’d rather stay in Denmark. Many of my friends told me not to go, but my parents’ advice was if I’m not anxious about it, I should go. I chose to travel alone for the first time.
I anticipated seeing protests or refugees sitting on street corners due to how the media had been portraying Hungary. In my first day, I didn’t see anything of that sort. It seemed like any other city. I sat in a tower at the Buda Castle wondering where in this city were they putting the 91,000 Ukrainian refugees. For scale, New London has a population of 27,000. Think about three times the amount of people in New London, thrown into a new city where no one speaks their language and they cannot go home.
One quick Google search later, and with the help of Google Translate, I found information on Facebook about trains arriving from the Ukraine border. I navigated my way to the train station, not really sure what to expect.
I walked up to the station and police officers were everywhere. There were 3 buses running in front of the station ready to bring people to the airport or provide warmth for the refugees. In front of the exit stood a hundred people waiting for people to arrive. I saw one group of Hungarians handing out bags of food and just as I was about to ask them if they needed help, I saw a man in a Hungarian Red Cross jacket. I approached him and asked if he needed help. In response he said “no English” so I made the motion of lifting boxes and said “I help.” This he understood and he brought me into the station, behind the wall of police officers.
The Red Cross had so many things ready to be distributed, from diapers to blankets to toilet paper to groceries. I spent the afternoon helping distribute these goods to war torn families.
Many were very grateful, and some just took the goods with no expression at all, either too exhausted or numb. I spoke to so many mothers who left behind their husbands in Ukraine. One woman was with her two children who appeared to be under 8 years old. She mentioned that her husband came to the border with her, but was not allowed to leave because he was asked to fight. She spoke steadily with no sense of emotion, but spoke about her husband as though he were dead. Her children did not understand why they left their dad, their dog, or their home behind. Women were often travelling with neighbors or sisters, with all of their children together. A little boy with a giant gash on his face said it was from when “the windows started flying” and somehow, he seemed relatively unbothered by it. On the train was a group of Nigerian college students who had to walk 16 hours to the border with no food or water because no one would transport them because they were not white. One man talked about how he made a fire using his suitcase as a fire pit.
We see these stories in the news and on our social media pages, but there is a disconnect for many of us. After spending an afternoon assisting Ukrainian refugees, the whole situation now feels so much more devastating. Hearing these stories from real people made them more real than the news ever could.
I saw a young woman with 9 children seemingly under the age of 5 in the parking lot, and she was crying while holding two babies. This was the only adult I saw in tears during my time at the station. She couldn’t have been much older than me. The kids were kicking around a half-empty water bottle, enjoying the fun it brought them, but also getting dangerously close to getting hit by a car on a busy road. I ran across the street to get pastries from the grocery store. Compared to Denmark, everything was so cheap, so I bought 20 pastries for $5 and went back to the station. The young woman was still there and the kids were still in the street. They didn’t speak much English but I handed the pastry bags to the older children and waved at the woman before walking off. It felt like the best $5 that I have ever spent.
The train finished unloading for the day and a family needed to find a hostel that was housing refugees for free, but didn’t have a working cell phone. I used my Google Maps to navigate them to the hostel, but in silence as they did not want to talk much, and I didn’t know what to say. When we arrived at the hostel, the man tried to pay me with some of the groceries he received from the Red Cross. I could not accept, but that gesture in itself made me feel as though my assistance mattered.
All I had was one afternoon in one city. I went back to Denmark the next day.
Please consider donating to funds for these refugees. In Hungary, a bread roll is 10 (American) cents, so one dollar can give 10 people bread. Please consider making efforts to help these refugees, no human deserves to suffer like this.
If you’re in Europe, join Facebook Groups or follow humanitarian groups to see how you can help, whether it is donating items, helping with funding, or volunteering your time. If you’re anywhere else in the world, donate what you can and help raise awareness to encourage others to donate as well.
I hope my story can bring this crisis closer to Conn. This is a global humanitarian crisis, not just a European problem.
