Day 226.
Dedicated to Oleksandr Mostipan, 1993-2022.
Hey everyone.
Please share this story by @khvylova as widely as you can, and translate it into other languages. Thank you to Max (Ukraine DAO Translation & Writing Pod) for preparing the translation.
Original thread by @khvylova:
Today at work there was a panel about refugees. An anthropologist from Sweden said that 20 women from Mariupol, who stayed there for 3 months and barely managed to escape, were offered to record a video greeting to Ukraine for August 24 (Independence Day).
They hadn't met before, but they went out and without talking to each other started to sing the national anthem of Ukraine together. And they couldn't finish, because they instantly burst into tears.
And while people on Twitter are bitching about how good it is for women to leave Ukraine and live comfortably abroad, this is what happens there sometimes.
"This is a phenomenon when the community, through tears and post-traumatic experiences, starts discovering itself like never before. Usually, immigrants in Sweden spend 10 years looking for their first job. Currently 85% of Ukrainian refugees are employed. No one simplified the procedure."
"In Sweden, there is a rule for foreign students: they are assigned a person who speaks their native language. In March you could count the number of Ukrainian teachers in Sweden on one hand. So Sweden decided to look for russians as assistants for russian-speaking children. But their parents refused."
"No one was prepared for people who do not want to label themselves "refugees", who are ready to return home any day, who want to work and do not want to assimilate, who have an identity built on shared ideas. In Sweden they want to do a Ukrainian evening with vyshyvanka and rushnyk, but it is too expensive, so they just get together, because it is impossible to share this experience with anyone else. But they still invite Swedes to borscht. No one is even realizing what lesson Ukraine is giving to the whole world right now."
A priest of the UGCC in Poland: "A woman from Izyum came and told me that she lived across the road from the church, but never thought of going there. Then she asked to be baptized, as it was the only thing that reminded her of her home."
Romanian deputy from Ukraine (their national minorities are an important and mandatory part of the parliament): "In the first days we were collecting humanitarian aid at the border areas where Romanians, Ukrainians, and Roma live. Grandma came up with a bag of potatoes: «We need to help them. Let it be easier for them.»"
Situation in Romania is interesting, because there is an indigenous Ukrainian population + immigrants. They rejected the term "refugees" altogether. Only "immigrants".
"Perhaps, this is precisely the point: our suffering is literally saving the whole world. Many of our soldiers say that in war everyone becomes real. This war shows who we are. We show the world what they have long forgotten. Somehow this is the price to get everyone to rethink themselves. This is a huge price which we cannot measure in any way, others - even more so."
This is horrifying: according to statistics, 10 million left. Just think about: 10 (ten) million Ukrainians.
A little more about Sweden: "Our Ukrainians are starting to ask questions that the Swedish services are not very used to. They're not asking about bread and water, but: "When will I be able to validate my diploma?", "When will I be able to work?"
"As anthropologists, we examine experiences, subtle processes, imperceptible at the start. I conducted 40 interviews today: most of these are people from the eastern parts of Ukraine, people who survived, escaped the occupation."
This incident with the national anthem is very revealing, because Ukrainians do not know Swedish, and Swedes do not speak English very well. There is not even an intermediary language. Therefore, self-description had to be carried out through rituals, images, paintings.
"Ethnic communities are created through markers. We have rushnyk, vyshyvanka, and other categories to which we appeal through "we". While the political community is a nation that imagines itself through some shared ideas. This story, when they didn't know each other, did not discuss in Ukrainian nor russian who they are. But at that moment they already knew who they are. This was a request both from the outside and from the inside. This is the moment the community is born."
To conclude, I will also mention the speaker from Poland: a particularly critical moment has come for russian-speaking children. Before, they were bilingual, Ukrainian was the secondary language, mostly used at school. Now the school is Polish, they are bilingual again, but there is no Ukrainian. How do they keep their identity now?
I just really wish that more of such stories were shared, so that we do not close ourselves in the shells of our own experiences, assuming them to be the most important ones. All this is really about us. And this is important and necessary, even if it is painful.
Thank you for reading, I was so touched by this, I wanted to share it so that it becomes a part of a bigger context!!!
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