The war is (still) here
I was in Poland a year ago lending a hand. The people of Ukraine still need our help and our attention.
A year ago today, I was headed to Poland. I take you along for the ride that still enters my dreams.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is eight weeks old. Ukrainians are fleeing in droves, boarding SRO trains for the slow ride to Poland. (Between February 24 and April 22 of last year, more than 2.8 million Ukrainians fled to Poland, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.)
The first stop out of Ukraine is Przemysl, a small Polish town about eight miles from the border. Przemysl (Shem-ish) is where World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit founded by chef Jose Andres, has set up a production kitchen. A kitchen where volunteers from around the world, like this one, make thousands of ham and cheese sandwiches a day. Where cold salads get tossed and hot stews simmer in gigantic paella pans on wheels, are packed up in cambros and loaded onto trucks. Those trucks deliver food to several spots in town, including the train station, where weary travelers disembark two, sometimes three times a day. They queue up in lines that snake for a few blocks just to clear customs. The first thing waiting for them is a bite to eat. The hell of their lives can wait.
My friend Marek (whom you can read about here) meets me at the Krakow airport. It is my first time in his country, without a word of Polish in my pockets. He can see right away that I’m tired from my three-flight journey. But unlike the women lining up for a cot in the Krakow train station, my fatigue is temporary, my troubles not even in the same league.
Over my first-ever plate of pierogis, Marek lays down four words: The war is here. I actually ask him what he means because it seems so simple, so obvious. It can’t just be the banners we see and the demonstrations in the square, the women lined up for a cot, right?
Right, said the philosopher.
It’s everywhere, overnight. You’ll start to see it and feel it.
He was right, of course.
As I board the train to Przemysl, Marek assures me that the station is walking distance to the studio I’ve rented. But fret is what I do for three hours. As I make my way off the train, the station building is packed. I’m surrounded by people with much bigger problems.
Just outside the doors, I spot people milling in and out of a World Central Kitchen tent, where tables and chairs spill onto the cobblestones, where the scent of home cooking hangs in the air. Volunteers from other aid organizations are in the street, wearing their tell-tale vests, assisting with luggage, speaking into walkie-talkies.
The war? Oh, yes, it’s right here.
The volunteers I meet first thing in the morning come from all walks of life — airline pilot, judge, school principal, retired engineer, film director, country music singer-songwriter. A priest from Baja. An accountant working in New York whose parents refuse to leave Kharkiv. There’s a handful of us who know our way around a chef’s knife. Our differences in age, geography, religion, education are irrelevant. We are random strangers who have flown thousands of miles to southeastern Poland with a common purpose — to cook for people who have been forced from their homes, their communities, their country.
Here in this kitchen, the war is here. Our assignment is to assemble 3,000 sandwiches (sometimes more), with plenty of seasoned mayo so that everything sticks to the bun. So that there are plenty of calories for someone who may not have eaten in a while. Our assignment is to peel and mash 400 pounds of bananas for trays of banana bread. So that others may have something sweet to offset the deep well of sorrow and uncertainty.
The food we make is scaled up but it is still homemade. It’s the same food we eat for lunch. It is the opposite of institutional chow or MREs. It is good food. It keeps us going. Because the war is everywhere you look.
At the border one day, I lock eyes with a babushka with piercing blue eyes and a hair coming out of her chin. I place my hands on her shoulders. She is taken aback.
“Valentir?” she asks. [Volunteer?]
I nod yes.
She points her finger at her chest.
“Ukraine.”
I do the same.
“America.”
“Dyakuyu,” she says. [thank you]
I give her a bear hug. I can hardly see straight, my eyes flooding.
At the Krakow airport on my way home, I’m in line behind a young man, his dog and his cat. They are all from Ukraine. The search for documents to get out of here reminds me once more that the war is right in front of me. And then again from my window seat where I watch the crate with the big white dog being loaded onto the cargo hold.
Four hundred twenty-some days since the invasion began, the war is STILL not over.
Keep the people of Ukraine in your hearts. Give when you can. And please let’s not forget them.
Thank you, dear Julia. We cannot forget them.
Beautifully written piece on the unwitting victims of an inhumane Russian atrocity