Today, Wednesday, was my sixth day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. When we arrived in the morning, the center was very quiet and there were no kids waiting for us. We spent a couple of hours vacuuming, cleaning and sorting bins of building blocks and other toys. Children started trickling in during the late morning, and by early afternoon we had close to a dozen kids. I expect we’ll probably see most of them again tomorrow, because I think the next train to Hanover, Germany leaves tomorrow evening.
When I went outside the building for a mid-day break, I saw some people active around a little gray Land Rover SUV that has been parked in the Reception Point parking lot since I’ve been in Przemyśl. Curious, I walked over to see what was going on. Turns out, the SUV belongs to a team of humanitarian aid workers who were using the Przemyśl aid center as a base as they assisted with evacuation operations from Ukraine earlier in the year. They are part of a small, privately funded NGO based in Finland. They went home for a 4-week re-group, and now they are on their way back to Ukraine, tentative destination Kharkiv. They drove a large van across Europe to Przemyśl, planning to pick up the SUV, which has been parked here for four weeks, as they head back into Ukraine. Unfortunately, they can’t get the SUV to start, so they are delayed here while they try to find a service technician who can troubleshoot the problem with the vehicle. None of their team speak Polish (there are only three people), so our Ocalenie Foundation coordinator, who is Polish, helped them contact a couple of local service centers.