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You couldn't make it up!
Sep. 23rd, 2022 06:25 pmUkrainian updates
Jul. 14th, 2022 07:52 amKyrill (Kyryllo) continues to do well. His English was already very good when he came, but it's becoming more fluent and with a widening vocabulary.
He and my husband are currently holding long geeky conversations about the latest photos from the James Webb telescope.
We're expanding his knowledge of board games - Wingspan yesterday. He enjoyed that one. He occasionally struggles with the detailed instructions on the individual cards, but picked up the game very well overall.
He's enjoying his job, and is now earning enough to pay taxes. I suspect he's already a net gain to the UK economy.
The thing that worries him most, is of course the war. He phones his parents every evening without fail. I've learnt not to ask him about his family - it feels rude not to, but it makes him very stressed.
Ukraine is attacking back to try and retake the Kherson region. They have advised civilians to evacuate. Kyryll's parents have decided to stay. they own a clothing shop (though their income is way down - Kherson is a tourist region and there are few tourists this year. Getting stock is difficult as well). Their home, their fruit trees, their shop, they could lose everything if they run. Including their lives. They're older. Living as a refugee is hard for the young, even harder for older people. They know what the situation is like in Poland and other countries.
HIs younger brother hopes to escape.
My Ukrainian friend, Inna, escaped just after the Russians invaded. She and her 11 year old son, and a friend with a small baby and another women, all in one car. All she took with her apart from her son was a change of clothing. They left her husband (a very painful parting -she wanted to stay with him, he wanted them to be safe)
They knew they would be shot by the Russians if they were caught out after curfew. They left around 2 in the morning driving hard. Only the mother with the baby could drive, and she had to stop every few hours to breast-feed her baby.
They made it to safety. Inna, who speaks some English decided to aim for England purely because it was the only foreign language she could speak. She found a host and arrived about six weeks ago in my village. She's a very determined and pragmatic women.
She's a degree in Finance and was working as an independent financial consultant before she fled.
She applied for any work she could get, knowing full well that her English was not good enough for office work, though one local firm were kind enough to give her one week of office experience.
She's now working for McDonald's in Poole. As she says: "They wanted me".
A woman yesterday complained to me that Ukrainians were taking our jobs. I told her about Inna. She shut up.
We currently have more job vacancies than people looking for work. We have shortages right across the economy from doctors and nurses, agriculture and hospitality, all the way to IT.
The good news is that I found a local women willing to act as host to Inna's husband. He followed her out of Kherson a few weeks later, driving with friends on a horrendous journey across Russia, though numerous checkpoints. I think he's bilingual in Russian and Ukranian (many people in that region are). That may have helped with the checkpoints.
The family can't all be in the same home, but they will be within easy walking distance of each other, and that's massively better than having bombs falling on you.
The big problem for all the refugees will be when the host payments cease on the 'Homes for Ukraine' scheme. Hosts have to commit to at least 6 months, and the government will pay for upto 12 months.
This leaves two basic options - reach a new agreement with the host regarding rent (but that rent will be taxed unlike the Homes for Ukraine scheme), or move out. The second is obviously a desirable option, but we all know what the difficulties are in finding affordable rental places in the UK.
My fear is that they may find they are unable to live in the area where they currently work and are making friends and roots in the local community.
I don't know any solutions.
If the war ends, then they will be able to return home. But I think this may be a long war...
Ukrainian Catch up
Jun. 12th, 2022 07:45 amApologies for not posting in ages.
Severe sciatica has been limiting my keyboard time, and much of what I have has gone on maintaining a Facebook page for local hosts for Ukrainian refugees.
The good news is that Kyryllo (spelt Kirill for English speakers) has arrived, and settled in very well.
While not a veggie himself, he's very happy to eat Richard's veggie and vegan food and enjoys it.
He's getting used to English foods like peanut butter which were carefully avoided when he first arrived.
With help from a friend of mine who knows lots of people in IT firms, he's already found a good job with a small local firm that specialise in web applications - he'd been doing an online course on creating web pages before the war broke out - hadn't completed it, but he'd made a fair bit of progress. It got him the interview.
We did a lot of mock interviews with him - helped him to be a lot less stressed about it and helped him think about answers to questions that were likely to arise.
He did the interview (one of three candidates) and got the job.
He's now cycling to work in Wimborne (on a bike kindly donated by someone local) and is enjoying it.
He keeps in contact with his parents every evening (2 hour time shift). They're in the occupied region near Kherson and are stuck there. Communications go down sometimes, and are under Russian control now, but it's very good that he's able to speak to them most of the time.
He's also a Dr Who fan (yay!) so we're having a joint rewatch of Jodie Whitaker's seasons.
All in all, he's very easy to have around the house, always uses earphones to listen to music, shares our meals, had a mock sword fight with balloons with our granddaughter and ended it by playing out the sequence from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where his limb's go chopped off one by one!
The payment to hosts from the government doesn't include anything for food though we've been happy to include that until he got a job.
We're now asking £4 per day, which he's quite happy with.
But I'm aware of one local Ukrainian family using the food bank - I guess for a host on a low income, feeding two extra people can add up.
And benefit payments are slow - Kyrilll has been here nearly a month and his benefits haven't kicked in yet. He has an appointment this week, which will thankfully be short, as he has a job, so only needs to ask for the back payment.
Government payments to hosts are slow also. We're still waiting. Everything is paid in arrears, and has paperwork first.
However, I certainly don't regret being part of the scheme.
Kirill fits very well into our household - we used a matching site and exchanged messages with questions and had a chat over Discord before we made the decision to invite him. I think that was key to this working so well.
He's becoming a friend. And that's good.
Ukrainian refugees
Apr. 28th, 2022 02:49 pmWe're getting to know our prospective guest a little better. We're both on Discord and we've had a couple of chats now. We'll probably touch base again sometime over the weekend.
I know of one visa locally that came back in only four days, but I'm warning Kyryllo to assume it could easily be a fortnight. Better not to have hopes too high. It is generally quicker for single people than for families - if any family member hits a problem - like a child not having a full Ukrainian passport -then it holds up the entire family.
But before I rant too much, I have to remind myself that it isn't always petty bureaucracy. Some of it is there to prevent people abducting refugee children, claiming to be their parents and then going into sex trafficking. It happens.
Sometimes a delay is to protect others.
Ukrainian refugees
Apr. 25th, 2022 07:24 pmRichard is working, with someone who we hope will be our future Ukrainian guest, to fill in the visa application.
It's a long job. 25 mins so far, but we're expecting it to be several hours....
Looking for a refugee to host...
Apr. 7th, 2022 05:20 pmIf anyone here knows of a refugee (either a single young adult or adult, or a mother with a child around age 7) who would like to come to England, then the system for getting here is gradually improving and visa applications are getting easier. Still not perfect, but people are actually arriving now.
We're intending to host as soon as we can actually make contact someone who would be happy with us.
We're a slightly odd family, so we've avoided 'blind hosting'. There is (as of several days ago) a matching service up and running, but it all takes time... We're registered with it, of course.
We're vegetarian (apart from very rare occasions), serious about minimising our carbon footprint (Ie. slightly obsessive about things like minimising hot water usage, not flying - except to escape from bombing... - closing doors to keep heat in, etc.) We're also dead serious about wanting someone who will respect LGBT people.
On a more relaxed front... We enjoy gardening, board games, folk dance, astrophysics, knitting, weaving, researching Mars, going for walks, more board games, and playing with our 7 year old granddaughter.
We only have a single room to offer, and it would be shared kitchen and bathroom facilities, so it will be fairly squashed. But we're friendly, willing to help our guest discover the local area, guide them through paperwork, help with learning English, and there are other people where we live who are also hosting refugee families.
Hedgehog day
Mar. 20th, 2022 10:05 pmToday was to be a day when we continue to get organised to welcome a refugee - we need new towel rails and a soap dish that isn't broken.
But I found a hedgehog, who was not at all nervous of me, sitting in a sunny patch of the garden in the middle of the day. Awake as well, I could see small movements.
Checked online - this is not good behaviour for a nocturnal hedgehog.
Followed the advice to pick it up with a towel and put it in a steep sided box in a quiet place with water and meat-based cat food.
Richard took time researching and contacting various hedgehog rescue places, most of whom were already full of sick/injured hedgehogs.
Eventually found one, and took hedgehog there. No obvious signs of injury, apart from some spines that had been broken at some point, but the lady agreed that the behaviour indicated that something was wrong, so she's taken him in for observation.
If he is fine in a couple of weeks, then he'll be brought back to our garden, where he already knows the territory. Will make donation regardless - these volunteers incur a lot of costs.
On a separate front, we had the Allotment Society AGM, and I got chatting to one of the Chair of the Council who has been really helpful to the allotment society.
He's been out selling blue and yellow wristbands to raise money for refugees, and he has a friend who is running regular trips to Poland with supplies.
We've given him details of the kind of person who would hopefully feel welcome and less stressed in our home, which he can pass onto his friend. I think it's really important to have a reasonable degree of overlap - this is a long term relationship and if the refugees don't feel safe with their hosts, then the effect on their mental health will be disastrous.
I also don't know what the refugee's situation will be if the hosting breaks down -will they still have the right to remain? Will they have to apply all over again with a new host? Will they be able to find another host?
I worry about how much support will be available to hosts...
I bitterly regret the fact that the government is doing nothing to help match hosts and refugees and is relying on already overloaded charities to do this. I can see a lot of things that could go very badly wrong.
Ukraine refugees
Mar. 18th, 2022 09:44 amWe've signed up with the government refugee scheme. Our spare bedroom isn't fantastic at present, but we're starting to give it a good clear out and remove all the stuff that's piled up in there.
It's a nice sunny room with a view over the garden - used to be Henry's room before he moved out to live with his fiancée.
I suspect a large number of hurdles ahead.- the government scheme does not look at though it's intended to make things particularly easy.
As far as I can tell, you need to contact your own 'named refugee', rather than them running any sort of pairing scheme. So we're signing up with a couple of charities that work with refugees.
It does strike me that trying to find people who mesh well is important both for refugee and host. Even such a basic question as smoker/non-smoker wasn't on the form I just filled in.
If I'm prepared to host a stranger fox six months, then we need to have some commonality or we'll drive each other crazy.
Likewise 'kid-friendly?'
To which the answer boils down to: "I love kids, but I would not accept an unaccompanied child. We looked after our granddaughter during the early lockdown when no movement between households was allowed. Dealing with a stressed child who missed her parents even with daily Zoom calls and grandparents there all the time. means I vividly imagine just how great the mental health stress is for a child with no family member present who has just escaped a war zone.
I don't have enough mental health or training to even begin to provide what that child would need.
With a parent? Maybe. But it would be two people squashed into one room. Though our two children shared that room for nearly 20 years.
I suspect I'm sounding awfully negative...
We want to help, but we also have to be realistic about what we can provide. If we over-commit and then back out, then we make a refugee's life even worse.
On a more positive note, I've already checked that Google Translate on my tablet can cope with Ukranian and convert English to spoken Ukranian (and hopefully the other way too)
Member X: I have been made aware of a job opportunity at Westland Hellicopters, Yeovil. They have some Ukrainian pilots with them training and are looking for Ukrainians who can speak good English, to work as translators. Good pay conditions.
If your guests are interested and have a good level of English, please email Person Y
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Member Z - Thanks Member X, my refugee is a qualified engineer, has a degree in translation and worked as an engineer in an aerospace plant in Zaporizhia. I have passed on your contact's info.
Needless to say, she got the job!