Unimaginable: Volunteering for Ukrainian Refugees

By Holly Winter Huppert

Four months after Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Holly Winter Huppert traveled to help the millions of women and children who were fleeing war. She volunteered in a free shop in Poland.

 

She had a lot to learn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Winuply Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9780998385297

Holly Winter Huppert

Holly Winter Huppert is a teacher, a writer and a photographer who lives in upstate New York. She is known for teaching writing workshops to children around the world. When the world wide pandemic hit, Huppert sat down and started writing Hans Helps: A Coronavirus/COVID-19 Story to help children deal with the pressures of a changing world. The book as been received as "Essential" and has been read around the world. Her book Write Now: Ideas for Writers, introduces children to a fun way to write their wildest stories as well as their factual reports. Photo prompts for both fiction and nonfiction encourage originality, thoughtfulness and even silliness across all genres. Children are reminded, “When you are the writer, you are the boss,” so hand this book to your child and let years of research do it’s work as your child writes and writes. And writes. Be sure to check out her edited book of true stories written by children in a public Montessori school in upstate New York. "Caution: Do Not Read This Book" received rave reviews from near and far. Essays written by third and fourth grade students teach the rest of us about what children today are thinking about. If you like upbeat, fun reads, then you're going to love her memoir about living with two forms of amnesia: "Unlikely Memories and Two Amnesias" which was a bestseller on Amazon.  She edited a book of essays written by chronically ill middle school students, "Everything is a Song: Our Stories" which highlights the issues teens care about. Connect with Holly on her website, www.hollywinter.com,  on her publisher's website: www.winuplypress.com, on Instagram @mshollywinter or on Facebook @mshollywinter. For more information about her books, go to www.winuplypress.com.

Book preview

FORWARD

I never planned to visit Poland. I wanted to return to Asia, or South America or find my way to the Philippines; Poland seemed a little too ordinary for my interests.

But after Putin started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and many thousands of Ukrainians fled to Poland to seek safety, my interest in the friendly neighbor grew.

Russia’s bombs fell indiscriminately on apartments, malls, and children’s centers. There were rumors that children in occupied territories were kidnapped and placed in Russian families, permanently.

What? How could this happen? Why was the world quietly watching?

Was I the only one screaming, Noooooooo?

Was there something we could do to help?

We had to help.

No. It was more personal than that: I had to do something.

I had to help.

Donating money to organizations wasn’t enough to quench my need to help.

I would go there.

Would Russia retaliate against people like me who stepped in to help the very people it was trying to destroy?

Nobody knew.

Researching organizations around Europe that helped displaced Ukrainians, I found ten organizations and emailed each one, asking if they needed volunteers.

Three responded.

I replied with another question; two of the three organizations answered. One gave a detailed, well-written answer.

The question I most wanted to ask was, What’s it really like there? There was only one way to find out: I signed up to volunteer with the NGO that gave the detailed reply, A Drop in the Ocean, also called, Drop.

I would be based in Kraków, Poland. There was an ugly war raging right next door. Would I be safe? What if Russia dropped a bomb on Ukraine, would the radiation reach me in Poland?

Yes. It would.

I thought carefully about traveling to an area close to a war. There were so many things that could go wrong.

I considered travel insurance for the first time in my life. If I paid for the top tier of services, it would cost around $400 for my seven-week stay.

But what did that cover? I read the fine print.

If there were a medical emergency, the insurance company would airlift me to a hospital in the US. If the war spilled into Poland or if I were kidnapped or some other such travesty presented itself, the travel insurance would assume responsibility for my safety, get me out and get me—or my remains—home.

That’s a bargain for $400. Sold.

Could I focus on helping, and keep myself safe, too?

It was a relief to know that the Drop in the Ocean organization had many protocols in place for my safety, and several requirements.

I would have to carry my phone on me at all times.

My phone was to remain on.

I was to check my phone for messages throughout the day.

I was to especially pay attention to the text message group I was placed in called, Emergency Evacuation.

If I needed anything, I was to contact one of the coordinators either by finding them in the center, or by reaching out to them on the messaging app.

I was also instructed to carry an extra phone battery, that was charged.

Could a woman safely travel alone to a foreign city that was close a war zone?

Yes. No. Yes. No.

Who knows?

Ten days before my plane was scheduled to take off, I committed. I bought a plane ticket to Kraków and paid for the travel insurance. I emailed Drop with the date I would arrive for my mandatory induction training.

As an elementary school teacher, I have the summers off. I would be gone for seven weeks, or most of my summer.

This trip was funded with the proceeds I made from selling my book, Cheese for Breakfast: My Turkish Summer, about my solo travel adventures through Turkey the summer of 2020, before the pandemic started.

I packed, dropped my puppy off at my mother’s house and made copies of my house key for my niece, who would water the plants and invite friends over to kayak with her on the creek while she housesat and basked in my air conditioning.

A perfect arrangement.

I would fly to Kraków several days after school let out for the summer, just over four months from when the war started. During my stay in Kraków, I would write a column each day about volunteering for refugees, life in Kraków, and the things I saw, and post it on my website so people could follow my journey.

Over 10,000 people read my columns each day.

This book is a compilation of the daily columns I wrote for seven weeks. The only difference between the columns I posted each day on my website and the columns in this book is that these have been lightly edited for clarity.

I also added an ending chapter that includes some stories that didn’t make it into the daily columns, including the horrific story that gave this book its name, Unimaginable.

DAY 0: JUNE 29, 2022

I’ve packed my journal,

several COVID tests and a thermometer. Oh, how travel has changed in the past few years.

My puppy is suspicious.

My puppy is suspicious.

On the Pre-Arrival Call Zoom meeting today, I met the Drop recruiter, Sofia, and a woman from Seattle who is also preparing to volunteer. The Seattle woman asked if there was something past volunteers wish they had brought with them.

What a great question.

We waited while Sofia leaned her head forward in thought. She told the three of us on the call that she would ask around and get back to us.

She sent us an email twenty minutes later. A sweater. Volunteers wished they had brought along a sweater.

I wondered if there was some kind of secret meaning in this; I’d already packed a sweater and a light jacket. Could there be a certain kind of sweater that I will long for when I’m there?

I added one more sweater to my suitcase.

I am going to volunteer for Ukrainian refugees. How will I help them?

No clue.

Perhaps I’ll distract the children while parents collect free clothes and household items from the Drop’s Free Shop. Maybe I’ll create a curriculum that helps refugees assimilate into Poland. I might work in their warehouse doing warehouse things which hopefully don’t include lifting heavy boxes.

I’m not that strong.

How will I help them?

Don’t worry about me; I’ll figure it out.

I am ready to go.

Tomorrow, I fly.

DAY 1: HEADING OUT

I ran

around the house at top speed so I would be ready when my Uber driver showed up.

Eat breakfast? No. Park my car in the garage. Put away the keys.

Eat breakfast? No. Take out the trash.

Eat breakfast? No. Wipe down the bathroom counter.

Eat breakfast? No. Pack the computer and the cord and the surge protector.

Eat breakfast? No.

I was out of breath when my driver showed up.

He told me his name was Jim as he lifted my suitcase into the trunk of his car. I asked him several questions, then sat back to hear his stories about being a family court reporter/stenographer before he retired and started driving.

I love collecting strangers’ stories when I travel. What were the courts like?

Aggressive fights. Terrible stories. Kids crying. Such sadness. Sometimes he would stop the testimony to get people with heavy dialects to repeat themselves. He said the unruliness and fighting got worse as years went on and they could expect a fight every single day in court.

He dropped me off at the Trailways bus terminal when his GPS said, Drop Holly off here.

I think it’s the first time a GPS knew my name.

The Trailways bus terminal is usually my first stop before I venture out. The shock of dirt and germs in that bathroom always helps to prepare me for the germy life on the road.

We passengers lined up politely for the bus, but the bus didn’t come and was far from fashionably late. It was over an hour late due to a mechanical problem. I was torn between feeling lucky that I wasn’t on the bus when it broke down and annoyed that I would have less time at the airport and grateful that I would still make my flight.

A woman sat on the bench outside the large window at the bus station. I sat next to her and asked her for her bus prediction: sooner or later?

She picked later.

Sigh. She was probably right.

Ann moved upstate with her husband several years ago. She told me about books she’s written, organizations she supports now that she’s retired, and her husband’s medical scare. She was on her way to the city to visit him in the hospital.

I worried that he wouldn’t be okay.

He’ll be fine, she said. He’s built like an ox.

She warned me that there were no buses going from Port Authority to the airport, but I dismissed her information, thinking that she didn’t know. I have taken that bus many times.

When my bus finally found its way to us, the driver apologized, and we anxious travelers climbed on board. I settled into a nap; one of my superpowers is sleeping during travel. I got a full two-hour nap on my journey.

I wished Ann well, then went to find the bus to the airport.

I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find the sign that said to line up for the bus. I stopped a young man wearing an orange vest.

No buses to the airport. So few people needed the bus during the pandemic, they cancelled the bus.

Ann was right.

Darn Covid.

I paled. What was I supposed to do?

The young guy said he could help me get a taxi.

Right. A taxi is always an option in New York City.

He walked me up to a man standing on the sidewalk. The taxi driver said that he could take me out there for $100 cash.

What choice did I have?

The driver, Jose, was delighted to have an hour-long ride; I was glad to have a driver who could drive. Jose said, I got you, you got me. That’s how things work out for the both of us.

He told me the story of the public defender lawyer who helped him out when he was 15; I reminded him of her. She saved his life and kept him out of jail. Then I heard about the courtship, marriage, and divorce from a woman he had known for five years before they dated and later married.

She’s psycho, he said. How was I to know?

He’s been married to his second wife for over thirty years and never lets a woman ride in the front seat of his taxi out of respect for his wife.

He asked if I believed in God, then went into his life’s dissertation on how he firmly believes that everything you do comes back to you energetically. So, if you want good things in your life, do good in the world and good things will come back to you.

I told him that I subscribe to this ideal, and that his reasoning explained how I was lucky enough to have him as a driver today.

He pulled the taxi up to the Arrivals door at Terminal Four and I handed him a hundred-dollar bill.

He hesitated.

I breezily wished him well, grabbed my suitcase and found my way into the airport.

Did he cheat me on the price? Why didn’t I take an Uber?

Didn’t think of it.

On the security line at JFK, I met Kassandra, who was also flying to Amsterdam for the first leg of her flight. She was unsure how to go through security, so I gave her tips. Take off your jewelry. Take off your belt, now. Get ready. Take off your shoes.

She recently graduated college with a degree in psychology. I tried to buy her a congratulatory lunch—because I didn’t want to eat alone—but Kassandra said she didn’t know me well enough to let me buy her lunch.

No. She wouldn’t explain this reasoning. But she did tell me stories about commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan for classes. She said I shouldn’t worry about eating in front of her, because she loves those videos of people eating.

That’s the whole video? You watch someone eating?

Yes, she said. Where are you from?

Woodstock, New York.

Never heard of it.

While I ate my very first Shake Shack gluten-free cheeseburger, I gave her a lecture on the Woodstock Festival: the music, the hippies, the times.

She laughed and said, I remember now. I had this in a class at college. All about the festival.

My uncle Rudy, who was a hippie and attended the Woodstock Festival all those years ago, would probably say that it was trippy that the Woodstock Festival is now fodder for college classes.

She snuck off and bought me a bottle of my favorite kind of water, a larger bottle than she bought for herself. She wouldn’t accept any money for the water.

I tried to tell her that we didn’t know each other well enough for her to buy me a giant bottle of the most expensive water at the airport, especially when she was a poor college student.

Too late, she said as we headed to our gate. She had a seat on the left side of the plane, mine was on the right side. I didn’t see her again, but we connected on WhatsApp so she can tell me about her very first time in London where she was meeting her sister for a visit.

For me, travel is all the people I meet along the way.

DAY 1: FINDING MY WAY: KRAKÓW

After many hours of waiting,

standing in lines and flying, I arrived in Kraków.

A sign that says Krakow airport.

The train station at the Kraków airport.

I managed to figure out how to find the train from the airport to the city center and even bought the train ticket with my credit card, no small feat when the process was mostly in English but used terms like End to end for one way.

When I gave the conductor my ticket, he told me in broken English that I wasn’t holding a ticket. It was a piece of garbage that was a part of the ticket.

So I left the ticket in the machine and carried the garbage. Good thing it was only a two-dollar ride. I paid again.

I walked all over the central train station in search of the tram but gave up when I figured out the tram system has many lines that go in every direction. I had somehow thought in my preplanning that there was one tram line that went in one direction: from the center of Kraków to my hotel.

I took a taxi. The driver didn’t tell me any stories: he didn’t speak English.

No stories.

DAY 1: HOTEL

My hotel is

a three-star hotel in an American hotel chain. Clean. Modern. Air-conditioned. Roomy. It is the only recommended hotel on the list given by A Drop in the Ocean. I paid for the first week and hope that I can find a Polish hotel after so I might help the local economy.

The good news is I didn’t fry the electricity in the whole hotel when I plugged in my surge protector. When I told the front-desk clerk that my lights wouldn’t work, she insisted I didn’t put the card into the wall slot correctly.

You must do it again and again, the woman said, unapologetically. You must do it again, so we know you really tried.

My obedience comes in spurts. I rode up and down in the elevator as the clerk demanded until she decided the electricity was, in fact, not working:

Yes. I do think they find it entertaining to force tourists to do unreasonable things, such as riding up and down the elevator to test the electricity which they likely knew was not working. But I thought it might be best not to cause a scene on my first day at the hotel, especially since I was the one who fried the circuit.

It wasn’t a surprise to me, but sometimes you have to wait for people to catch on to what you already know.

With a flip of a switch at the front desk, my lights worked.

I tried to familiarize myself with the area around the hotel, but it was confusing. The city planners from long ago—for this northern side of Kraków—must not have liked the typical grid system for laying out roads.

There is a series of parks that are gated off and roads that stop at houses or the parks or for no reason at all. The GPS sent me down sidewalks and dirt footpaths as I navigated the neighborhood.

Since all roads led to the park, I went and sat in the shade by the Vistula River. I’m in Poland. I’m in Kraków. I’m staying at a hotel. I start volunteering tomorrow from 9:00 – 4:30. I don’t know what to expect.

The breeze cooled me as I acclimated myself to this very moment and relaxed.

I have arrived.

A woman sits on a Bech

Resting with a view of the Vistula River.

I walked past a group of refugee women who might have been in their thirties. One woman wore a long, fancy dress, likely a dress worn to dance a traditional dance from her country. It was covered in flowers and tiny bells. The bells tinkled as she walked and provided a magical Tinker Bell sound to the conversation she was having with a few other women who were wearing long pants and short-sleeved blouses.

The fancy dress was grubby from many days of wear. The woman wearing the dress didn’t seem to notice that she was wearing something special, or that the dress was dirty.

I walked past a soup kitchen for refugees. It smelled savory, like meat. There were two signs in English that read, Free Food. Inside an enormous tent were picnic tables with food on them. I couldn’t see for sure what people were eating, but I saw piles of rice and piles of bread. There were apple cores and banana peels in the garbage.

It was mostly quiet as people sat at more picnic tables outside the tent and ate quietly or chatted with the people around them. There was a TV crew, interviewing people as they ate. That’s why I didn’t take any photos there.

Let them eat. Let them eat.

I heard several babies wailing from their baby carriages, slow sad cries. When babies cry on the plane, it doesn’t bother me: babies are tired and gassy and want to be in bed with their soft crib sheets. And you can tell that the parents are embarrassed that their babies are bothering everyone. We know that their cries are temporary.

But the babies crying around this food tent unnerved me. Their cries weren’t hungry cries or angry cries or even tired cries. They were sad, slow cries and they made me feel slow and sad.

Were the babies sobbing against living in this place without their known comforts? From wanting to go back to their own soft crib sheets? The people around the children didn’t seem bothered or embarrassed by the continued cries nor did they try to soothe the babies. It was impossible to fix those tears.

I wanted to do something to help. Hold a baby? Feed a baby? Buy crib sheets for a baby?

I can’t stop a war. I can’t help the 7 million displaced Ukrainians. But I can be a witness. As far as I can tell, I am a 10-hour drive from the border of Ukraine. I am one day’s journey from a war zone.

Right now, at the end of this very long day, the sound that I hear echoing in my head isn’t the rushing sound of airplanes from my travels, the stories from strangers or the bells on that dress. I hear those babies crying.

And crying.

And crying.

DAY 2: INDUCTION

During my walk

around the neighborhood, I searched for the entrance to the Free Shop. I sent a photo of a sign to Giovanni, the coordinator who would lead my induction group, and asked if this was where we should meet.

He got back to me right away. Yes, I had found the right place.

I showed up early the next morning and sat on a curb. People were already lined up to get into the Shop. Mostly women lined up. Many had children of every age.

A man smiles from inside a clear box.

Giovanni is in charge of everything in boxes: logistic coordinator

For my induction, I met with two other volunteers who also started today, and the logistics coordinator, Giovanni.

I had read up on the Free Shop that offered humanitarian aid to displaced people. The Shop was run by A Drop in the Ocean and the Multicultural Center of Kraków.

In order to volunteer with them, I agreed to work full days: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, five days a week. I was secretly worried that by working full time I wouldn’t have time to get to know Kraków, hang out with other volunteers or write about my days.

I would post my writing on my website, as I have done before when I traveled. It’s a little stressful to promise to write when I have no idea what my days will be like.

But I really wanted to help. And so I agreed to work the longer days.

In the literature, it was suggested that we bring work gloves for lifting heavy boxes in the warehouse. I had no intention of lifting heavy boxes: I wanted to work with the children. In the Shop there was a corner where children could play while the (mostly) moms shopped.

The literature also suggested that we bring iodine tablets that would help with radiation poisoning in case Putin dropped a bomb.

That’s a first for me, bring protection against radiation poisoning.

One of the volunteers was a twentish woman from Norway who had worked for Drop before. The other volunteer, a man in his sixties, has also offered humanitarian aid around the world. He said he lived in New York.

Wait. Where?

Upstate.

Wait, where?

In the mountains.

Wait, where?

He frowned at my questions. It didn’t occur to me that he might want to be secretive about where he was from.

Finally, he answered, A small town.

I asked what small town.

He exhaled quickly and said, Lake Hill.

Oh, wow. I know that town. It’s a tiny town about twenty minutes from where I grew up.

I sat quietly for a moment and said, You live in Lake Hill?

He leaned forward, You know Lake Hill?

I told him that I grew up in Woodstock.

He leaned back.

The woman from Norway and Giovanni laughed at us. Imagine coming all this way to meet someone who lived twenty minutes away from me.

After a few minutes we figured out that my older brother is his mechanic.

Small, small world.

A vest that says ‘Humanitarian Aid’

All volunteers wear yellow vests.

We learned a lot about the war.

We were taught that refugees might be sullen or angry: don’t take it personally. The refugees can lunge and grab at things: back away. Only put out a few pieces of clothing at a time. Call for help if you need it, either with your voice or by calling the emergency phone number that rings on the manager’s phone.

Most refugees are