Today was a tough day for us volunteers at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. We had almost 50 Ukrainian kids registered in (close to 40 at once at one point during the morning), ranging in age from less than 1 year to about 16 years. The majority of them came from 4 just families — they had 6 or 7 kids each. These kids were a pretty rough bunch. The entire day they were fighting over the digital tablets (we have six tablets to share between all the kids that want to use them) and bicycles (we have three). Some of the kids sat quietly for a while and did some crafts or played games, but many of them seemed to be incapable of sitting still except to play with one of the digital tablets — especially the boys.
It was heart-warming to see how the the girls would swoop in and take care of the infants because their mother wasn’t around. Even the boys would help out a little. I was amazed as I watched one little girl, about 8 hears old I guess, carrying her infant brother around like a rag doll while she played and browsed the toy shelves.
The little baby was completely relaxed, didn’t fuss or bother at all. He almost seemed to be soothed by the crazy gyrations his sister was spinning him through. Then, her name came to the top of the waiting list to ride one of the bicycles. Coincidentally (what were the odds?) one of her brothers was before her on the bicycle, so as she grabbed the bike with one hand, she passed the baby to the brother with her other arm, as he was clambering off the bicycle. It was almost as smooth as a relay race handoff — with the baby as the baton. I was astounded. These kids are being raised rough-and-tough. But they certainly are difficult for us volunteers to work with.
I learned a small lesson today about how to confiscate bicycles when kids break the rules. At first, I was holding the bikes for five minutes, so the same kid that broke the rules couldn’t immediately take the bike back and continue fooling around. But today, there were a bunch of kids waiting to grab the next vacant bike. I wasn’t thinkin nimbly enough, so I still insisted on holding the bicycle for five minutes. The result was a serious meltdown. The kids who were waiting for the next vacant bike were already tussling, and when I wouldn’t let any of them take the bike, I became the target. To make matters worse, one little boy insisted that he would only ride the bigger red bike, he didn’t want anything to do with the smaller yellow bike. So when I gave the red bike to his older sister (who was first in line) and offered the yellow bike to him, he collapsed in tears. He bawled so hard and for so long, we eventually told the other girl that she could ride for five more minutes, then she’d have to give the bike to the younger boy, so he finally cheered up.
So many kids were fighting for the bicycles, we finally had to make a waiting list for them too.
After work, we volunteers all sat on the couch in our apartment and shared “war stories” from the day. Commiserating about the trials of the day somehow makes us more cheerful about facing the challenges of tomorrow.