After following the Russian-Ukraine war news from a far away distance, I was finally able to do something other than send wishes of survival and quick recovery to Ukrainian families.
I used to live in Romania, so I knew about the Parada Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1996 that helps Romanian street children through hands-on circus activities. After getting back in touch with them, I discovered that Parada recently launched workshops in a couple of centers in Tulcea (which is the entrance point for Ukrainian families entering Romania by the Danube River). This is where I joined their team to lead circus activities for children in camps and transit.
All paths were different, obviously, but there were distinct groups of attitudes in each center.
The first center was a big white tent at the border, right at the ferry’s exit in Isaccea, Tulcea. This place was the most unsettling to me. Parents (mostly mothers, since fathers were only allowed to come along if they had three or more children) would get up from their wooden benches every few minutes in hope of catching information about their next stop. There was one information point, and multiple stations of help, but many desks were empty or lacking Ukrainian speakers. Many food charities from all over the world were gathered around the tent, but the families were quite stationary.
When we first entered, after having done absolutely no circus workshop in my life, let alone lead any, I was immobile, to say the least. I didn’t know where to start, with the children’s faces gazing up at us inquiringly. Thankfully, Alina, who had been part of Parada for a while, jumped up and completely changed the atmosphere. She made balloons for the children, and soon it was easy to give out apricots we had bought along the road and set up hurdles for the kids to jump over. The children completely transformed, from prisoners of immigration, static and tense, to hyper kids eager to share videos of their dance competitions back in Ukraine. One of the boys was talking about an upcoming competition he had, refusing to jump too high in fear of hurting himself.
The second center was at the economic school of Tulcea. We would go at 10 a.m. and stay until lunch time. Most families had been there for two months already. The children here were easiest to occupy as they were numerous and we brought lots of equipment. A daily routine established, they would wait for us expectantly in the courtyard. We even created choreographies we were hoping to perform at the French embassy in Bucharest on national day. This center was the largest one, so another charity also came to help: two teachers taught Romanian basics to the children. Although the room was small, and the set up was limited–the material consisted of labeled coloring books and they didn’t speak Ukrainian, and little English–the Ukrainian mothers really seemed to appreciate it and many attended the “class” with their children, making sure they got the most out of it.
The third location was behind the Baptist church. This center was very suitable to welcome immigrants; there was a playground, trampoline, basketball hoop, and large lodging space. The children there were much younger and had a shorter concentration span, so entertaining them was a bit harder. Although we eased the burden of caring for children for a few hours, I wish I could’ve done more to help the mothers, who seemed stranded on their benches, talking amongst themselves.
All the children, no matter where we met them, made a point to show us the details of their lives, despite the language limitations. From split demonstration, video sharing, and drawings, they all desperately wanted to share their “normal” with us. Living through this exhausting journey, they fueled themselves through remembrances and activities.
In the two weeks I spent in Tulcea, I was able to collage some form of a journey through the many bits and pieces of individual stories. No experience was the same: a Kazakh women studying in Ukraine had to flee with her newborn, a Ukrainian art teacher hoped her three children would learn Romanian while she would join a nail salon, a family that had to leave their home town in Ukraine overnight after delaying their departure for too long now realized they needed to return to salvage their belongings.
Although the statistics, number of deaths, and geographical contest is covered and displayed for all on every news reporting platform, the people’s accounts rarely are. During my weeks in Romania, I was reading Nemesis, by Philip Roth, which recounts Bucky Cantor’s fight with polio from the summer of 1944 in New Jersey up until his later years. My experience with Ukrainian refugees with the book in parallel was quite interesting. It made me reflect on how big of a story, how many emotions, how many doubts a single person can have in a crisis, whether it be polio or in a war against Russia.