RAYA

Yesterday, Friday, was my eigth day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. I feel it was the first really tough day. I suppose the feeling is mostly psychological, because only about a dozen kids registered in, and a most…

Last night a couple of the other volunteers and I went to see a film at a local cinema here in Przemyśl. It’s an old theatre in a big stone building, with a huge (six inches thick), creaky wooden door that reminds me of a castle gate. The cavernous theatre also has a squeaky floor…

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…

Today, Monday, was my fourth day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. Only six kids registered into the safe space today. There were three volunteers, so we volunteers were able to interact closely with each of the kids, and…

Since volunteering to work with Ukrainian refugee families in Poland, I’ve been studying as much Ukrainian as I can fit into a busy day, hoping to be able to exchange greetings and a bit of verbal goodwill. At this point, I have a vocabulary of a maybe a few dozen words (on a good day),…

Today is Saturday, my second day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Przemyśl Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center. In contrast to yesterday, today is almost completely uneventful. There are very few refugee families in the center today, and we only had one refugee child visit us in the…

Today, Sunday, my third day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Przemyśl Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center. Today we have about half a dozen kids in the space. There are two volunteers working, Agnes and I. Agnes is from a city in the north of Poland, near the…

The kids we see at the at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland seem like one big family — on several dimensions. First, it’s not uncommon for a single nuclear family to have 4 or 5 kids. Second, these families are…