#Ukraine – Part 8 – 23rd July 2022
This is a new blog format attached to the website for James' new project - Ukraine Chain.
This last week the story of Ukraine Chain to date has been written up in our local paper The Henley Standard'.
We haven't seen it, as we are on holiday in Scotland but from several phone calls we have gathered
'It is a lovely picture of James' and 'I should be very proud'. which of course I am !!!
And as this post is about resettling our personal Ukrainian guest and her four Yorkshire Terriers in the UK, it all works neatly together.
As soon as the Henley Standard article appears online I will post it here but in the interim - We are 10 weeks into hosting Ekaterina and it is 'a moment' for an update. According to my hero Professor Lucy Easthope, the data collected shows that at 10 weeks hosts and guests can be getting fed up with each other .......
Last week I posted on our what’s app for Gallowstree Common
‘Gallowstree Common needs you!! Specifically on Wyfold Road which has an egg collection problem……are there any persons interested in keeping an eye on the various hens and a rooster and collecting and keeping the eggs?? Please DM me - thanks so much Jane Mather’
We had 3 valuable replies and bingo, neighbour Roger’s sizeable hen brood and my solo hen and Rooster are cared for in the community. I put all this down to Covid and the war in Ukraine. Covid produced a what’s app group and the war in Ukraine plus quite a lot of effort has cemented it ….does Putin realise ?? It might make him think again.
‘How is it going? asked my friendly neighbour once we had established I only had one hen and a Rooster to look after and she wasn’t enquiring about their egg production. She is one of the valiant volunteer drivers for our Ukrainian guests and her husband was sort of adopted by Ekaterina, as her personal chauffeur which was fun, until E forgot to turn up where agreed and scared the entire village until we tracked her down in Henley. She had forgotten about the arrangement…….
Phew !!!
Losing a foreign guest in South Oxfordshire was not good for morale and both E and her chauffeur lost confidence after that….probably a good thing as once we had finally managed to secure bus passes, the bus service is perfectly reliable.
So onwards and upwards, to answer my neighbour, it is going pretty well.
At the moment E’s daughter, is in Texas. She went there on a ‘flex programme’ aged 16yrs and now aged 19yrs, has done 2 years of her degree at an American University. As she is more than 18yrs old she cannot, under the terms of her American visa, travel to and from the States. If she chooses to join Anfisa then it’s a one way ticket. Reading University is prepared to consider taking her for a business degree. But she would have to repeat the two years she has already done in the USA…..big decision. And it is her decision, though of course E would love her to come. That’s tough. We have sent the Reading University Prospectus and are awaiting a decision. Like mother like daughter.
Meanwhile all of E’s possessions are in a windowless flat in Kharkiv owned by an absent Latvian landlord who really has little idea…..
The gist of several phone calls are as follows -
Landord -
‘Ekaterinaa - why aren’t you paying me rent ? When will you come back to Kharkiv? Please mend the windows at your expense so you can come back and pay rent and I can have an income again’ followed by a threat
‘If you don’t start paying me rent I will throw all your belongings onto the street’
So Anfisa has been working out how to get back to Kharkiv to retrieve those precious memorabilia of her late mother who died two years ago. So stressful - you can see it in her face as she remembers what is left behind.
As for the Landlord. We have both agreed that no way is he going to get to Kharkiv where bombs are still dropping to do anything with E’s belongings but the holes in her flat where the windows have been blown out can’t help.
There are people travelling back to Ukraine all the time, both residents and volunteers but spaces in vehicles are limited and fellow Ukrainians want to visit their relatives and ‘have a holiday’ en route. They don’t really want a random fellow passenger even a Ukrainian.
‘There are a lot of rich Ukrainians over in the Uk’ said Anfisa. ‘They have cars and money and they can travel where they want ,when they want.’
She didn’t complain about her own situation. She didn’t need to. Money gives people more choices. It always did. It always will.
Finally I am the grateful recipient of several rather nicely made second hand or maybe third hand garments. E is size 8-10. On a good day I am size 10-12. I get the ‘too large for me’ items that E selected unable to try them on at the time. All are linen or cotton or cotton plus linen. They are quality brands and on the whole rather my style - my conscience tell me that these garments were not intended for hosts. But on the other hand, it gives us both so much pleasure, not to let anything go to waste and it is still recycling isn’t it ?
Harold in the kitchen and Speckledy poking her beak through the door.
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