A few days ago I drove Zoriana, the Ukrainian refugee I took in after the Russian invasion, to her new home in North London.
I have a small cottage in North London with two bedrooms and a loft room which I use as my office. I have a very small bathroom, a sitting room, dining area, downstairs toilet, diminutive kitchen and a garden. I could provide a safe haven for a mother and one child. My first task was to find someone who would be comfortable in my small space.
She told me about a woman called Zoriana Zvir who had one son and was desperate to leave her small town not far from Lviv in the west of Ukraine. We agreed we would somehow manage. Thanks to Zoriana’s command of English, we achieved visas surprisingly quickly and, on April 27, 2022, I was waiting for them at Luton Airport. They arrived exhausted, but at that first encounter, Zoriana hugged me so gratefully I knew I hadn’t made a mistake.
We found the Home Office department, deep in the City Of London, where biometric visas were issued to last 36 months, and we travelled to Barnet Council for a gathering of hosts and refugees where information about Jobcentres, banks, accommodation and navigating the transport system was shared. Finding work for Zoriana and education for Ustym presented the first real difficulties. We found two nearby infant and junior schools who would take Zoriana on as an unpaid assistant.
I took them out to dinner for his birthday. It was a Turkish restaurant with wonderful grilled meat and delicious baklava for pudding. I’ve never seen a child more unhappy at the celebration of an important birthday. He would have greatly preferred to be back home with his friends, even if there were bomb alarms going off on their phones on a regular basis, the electricity would frequently disappear and they would be spending a great deal of time in their basements.
It would last for a year. She would study business management and hope it would lead to full-time study for a degree in 2024. I came home, still in a great deal of pain. I couldn’t manage to sleep in my bed. I just sat in a chair in the sitting room. I was a misery, as was Zoriana, constantly worried about her son as her phone picked up the air raid alarms he would also be hearing in Lviv. We couldn’t go on like this.
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