With war on their doorstep, Romanians are rushing to help their Ukrainian neighbors
Last month, I was commissioned by Upworthy to write an article on the current situation in Romania related to the nearby war and the burgeoning refugee crisis. The piece was published here. Today I’d like to share the slightly longer, unedited article with you here.
It is veering towards evening on the tenth day of the war, the light in the mountains over the Jiu Valley turning golden and misty, when we finally slam the trunk of our red van and hit the road east, direction: Bucharest. We will spend the night at Raluca’s cousin’s apartment, and continue on east towards the border the next morning.
I’m lucky to have friends who are up for most anything at a moment’s notice. Balu and I had started discussing a trip to one of the refugee camps just one day prior, and on the morning of the very day we wanted to head out we called Raluca to see if she was game. She was, though at the moment she happened to be snowboarding with Pilu on the slopes just above the valley. He wanted to come too. “Just give us time to get off the mountain and get changed, and we’ll meet you in Vulcan.”
Just a week and a half ago, I was on a bus heading towards our region’s Immigration Office when I found out that the war had started. I went through the rest of the day in a sort of haze, going from office to office to organize the paperwork that I, an American expat, needed in order to renew my Romanian visa, catching glimpses of a bombarded apartment bloc on the office televisions, and thinking: that looks just like where I’ve been living the past four years.
Since that day, my friends and I have gone about our daily schedules and our normal routines, but the knowledge of war so near to us has a sort of gravitational pull on all of our thoughts. It is strangely unsettling to go about life as normal. While our day-to-day activities are continuing relatively undisturbed by the chaos unfolding over the border, when we see footage of bombed neighborhoods, or families crossing the borders into countries foreign to them, or civilians suddenly turning into soldiers, we are overwhelmed by this unshakeable awareness: it could be us.
And it really could be. Not only in the sense that the place and circumstances into which you are born can make all of the difference in the world in times like these—though this too is an important truth to recognize. But also in the sense that here in Romania we really could be facing our own set of trials and tribulations in the not-so-distant future. The day before we leave for the border, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, offered this grave encouragement to protesters in Europe: “Do not be silent. Support Ukraine. Because if Ukraine does not survive, the whole of Europe will not survive. If Ukraine falls, the whole of Europe will fall.”
While Romanian officials reassure the public that Romania is not likely to be under direct attack anytime soon, there is still an overwhelming sense among us all that anything is possible. My friends and I have started talking about how to prepare in case of power outages or food shortages. One of Raluca’s police friends forwarded her an old pamphlet on what to do in case of a nuclear event, and she heard rumors that pharmaceutical companies are starting to manufacture potassium iodide for the government to have on stock. Just the other day I filled all of the empty bottles in my apartment with tap water and started packing a bag that I could grab and go if the need arose. I pulled open the door to my bloc’s basement for the first time since moving in just to make sure that it was unlocked and accessible.
When we reach Raluca’s cousin’s apartment in Bucharest late that night on our way to the border, our living room conversations are backed by the low but present hum of television reports, and footage from Ukraine turns our eyes to the screen every few minutes.
The next morning we continue our way east. Ukraine is big enough that it wraps around Moldova, our Romanian-speaking neighbors, and thus shares two separate borders with Romania: a sizeable one to the north and a smaller, nearly forgotten one to the east 300 kilometers away from Odessa. It is towards this smaller border that we are heading, mostly because we have a contact in nearby Tulcea: the pastor of a Baptist church who has become heavily involved in working with refugees at the border crossing in Isaccea. We need to drop off some money to him that was raised by one of the churches in our valley, and we hope that he will be able to direct us towards the biggest needs that we might work towards fulfilling—not only for this trip, but even more so for the longer run. We are sadly aware that the refugee crisis in Romania has only just begun.
Pastor Adrian Dordea and his wife Lidia are aware of this too. When we arrive, they sit with us in an upstairs office at their church in Tulcea and explain the situation at the border. The vast majority of refugees are in transit towards other countries, if not towards other regions of Romania, and so there is a constant flow of people for whom they must coordinate housing, transportations, and basic provisions. They tell us that hundreds of people arrive on a single ferry—sometimes upwards of 700 refugees arriving at one time. The majority come on foot, either abandoning their cars on the side of the road before reaching the border, or not having one to begin with.
When the refugees arrive, many are quite nervous or afraid of what awaits them in this foreign country. Many do not speak English, let alone Romanian. Many are women who are traveling alone or with their children. And, as Dordea explains, unfortunately their fears are not unfounded. Human trafficking is a major issue in wartime, and there have already been report of people disappearing. For this reason, all of the organizations involved at the border are striving for complete transparency. Nothing is done without the knowledge of the local authorities, and personal data of both refugees and volunteers is meticulously recorded.
The church is currently housing refugees in transit at several locations, offering them a warm place to stay, a warm meal, and money for the road. They are helping coordinate their journeys onward, and they are sending volunteers to man tents at the border. Now they are starting to send missions across the border, bringing blankets and food to the hundreds waiting in line to cross into Romania, or even rescuing people from Odessa who are unable to make the journey alone. It is apparent that they are already exhausted by the sheer amount of work to be done and yet they show no signs of letting up anytime soon. The pastor shrugs modestly, explaining in the simplest possible terms: “we help with what we can.”
And they aren’t the only ones. When we get to the border, we are almost immediately handed bright vests and the previous shift of volunteers shows us how to manage the provisions tents. They are eager to leave to get some rest, as several of them only got three hours of sleep the night before, and it’s already 4PM. I ask them if they are from the area and they tell me that they are from Bucharest, there are thirty of them who have come for the weekend, and nearly all of them were strangers before they got connected online, united by the simple desire to do something to help.
“Facebook mobilizes,” one of them tells me, and I know it’s true. There is a Romanian/Ukrainian group that I joined the week prior called “United for Ukraine” that has burgeoned into over 250 thousand members in under two weeks. Every day, hundreds of posts crop up as people share resources and information, ask for advice and for help, or offer up empty apartments or rooms to anyone in need. Some posts are merely congratulatory: Ukrainians thanking the Romanians that opened their hearts and homes, or Romanians expressing a regained sense of pride in their own country and the ways their fellow citizens have stepped up to the present situation. In the words of one Romanian: “We may not be rich, we may not even be the most civilized, but we share our bread with those in need, and that is more noble than anything.” Motivated by a collective weight of responsibility, as Ukrainians rush to the borders of Romania, Romanians are rushing there too.
We get to work, giving people tea, coffee, sandwiches, snacks and sweets; toiletries and baby formula; pet carriers and collars; blankets, scarves, gloves, and socks; SIM cards and stuffed animals. We are told to encourage people to take as much of whatever they want and to reassure them that it’s all free. Translators bring the refugees to the large enclosed tents where they are able to sit down and warm up and talk to someone about their plan, if they have one.
As simple as my job is, it’s almost overwhelmingly emotional in the first several minutes. It feels surreal and almost absurd to be handing bags full of cookies and fruit and canned meats to children who have just fled a war zone. How can this be real? But I do my best to smile with them, and soon my mind comes to terms as best it can with this new reality.
I do not know at first how to speak with the woman. I’m almost embarrassed to ask “how are you?” but I eventually realize that they generally seem glad for an opportunity to share at least a small part of their stories. Two young women tell me that they waited thirty hours to cross the border. A mother tells me that she is here with her four-year-old daughter who will turn five very soon. She had been planning a big party for her, but now here they are. She doesn’t know where she will go. “Most people are wanting to go on to other countries, to Germany or to Poland,” she told me, “but I just want to go home to Ukraine. Every few hours we call our men. We are worried for them, and they are worried for us.” We both shake our heads in disbelief of the life that she is now living.
It is getting dark when another woman comes to get a sandwich and a tea. Even with limited English, she is anxious to tell us something. “I have a son who is…” she pauses, smiles apologetically at us as she reviews the numbers in her head, counting up from one to… “fourteen. Fourteen years old. I tried to tell him to come with me, but he said: no, I am a patriot. I will not leave my country.” She nods her head with a melancholy sort of pride. “He is a patriot.”
Even when I cannot talk to the people who come for provisions, I feel an overwhelming sense of camaraderie with them all. Oftentimes the only words exchanged are “спасибі” and “you’re welcome,” or sometimes we just both place our hands on our hearts and look briefly into each other’s eyes, and it’s like we know everything that the other wants to say. When my friends and I leave the camp in the middle of the night, we are no longer thinking “it could be us,” but rather: “it is us.” The borders are dissolving. We are standing side by side and we are connected in more ways than we know.
These hundreds and thousands of souls who have left their homes and crossed borders into unknown places are not engaging in an act of retreat. They are, on the contrary, advancing into the rest of Europe, carrying their stories, their resilience, and a deep love for their country into the hearts and homes of their neighbors. And around them, all of Europe, and indeed the entire world, unites for their cause. It is a different kind of front line, but one just as necessary. Ukraine will not fall—it is being fortified in this collision of humanity, and we can be sure that if Ukraine rises, the whole of Europe will rise too.
