Ukrainian woman finds refuge on the Valley Isle
Family she stayed with while attending King Kekaulike takes her in
As a foreign exchange student at King Kekaulike High School 18 years ago, Vladlena Bugay would have never imagined her ties to Maui would save her from the war in Ukraine.
Bugay, formerly known as Vladlena Chopa in 2004 while attending the Upcountry high school as a junior, has found refuge with her former exchange program hosts, whom she has visited and kept in touch with for years.
Retired Judge Barclay MacDonald and his wife Kathleen of Kula are housing Bugay and her family, who are all from Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.
Seeing signs of possible Russian invasion late last year, Barclay MacDonald in December floated the idea of having Bugay’s family come to Maui for a vacation. He admits he was unsure that a real war would break out, but the signals were there. At the time, his wife felt things would be fine, and so did Bugay.
“In our hearts, all of my family’s heart, we were very sure and believed nothing would happen,” Bugay said earlier this week.
She noted that threats from Russia are not new and conflict has been ongoing with Russia since 2014 when it annexed the Crimean peninsula off Ukraine’s southeastern coast.
“Now we understand (that) Kathy and Barclay literally saved us,” she said from the MacDonald home earlier this week.
The MacDonalds are also relieved to have Bugay and her family with them.
Knowing the long history of Russian occupations and slaughter in Eastern Europe especially under Joseph Stalin, Barclay McDonald said he and his wife did “realistically fear having to helplessly watch the violent destruction of Vlada and her family.”
“That was too much for us to permit,” he said, noting he told the family they would at least cover the cost from Ukraine to Maui.
“Now seeing that almost exactly that murderous history is being now inflicted upon Ukraine, but that Vlada and her family is absolutely safe on Maui with us and the many friends and supporters they have on Maui is a spectacular relief,” he said.
Bugay, her mother Olena Chopa, and her 5-year-old daughter Milana arrived on Maui on Jan. 29.
“There was a tense situation with all the threats in our country, but it was very safe and we were just living our normal lives, having vacations and making plans for (the) future,” she said.
Her father Igor Chopa and her husband Sergiy Bugay later followed. They were initially scheduled to take a monthlong vacation from their jobs. Igor Chopa is a manager for a car repairing business and Sergiy Bugay works at a marine port as a manager in a commercial department.
Traveling was more complicated for the men, who left days prior to the invasion on Feb. 24. Facing the closure of airspace over Ukraine, they instead took the bus and luckily crossed the border from Ukraine to Moldova before the state of emergency began.
They went through several Euro
pean countries and caught a plane from Istanbul to San Francisco, arriving on Maui on Feb. 27, skirting the start of the invasion by mere days.
“It was a miracle,” Vladlena Bugay said.
Watching the war from afar for the first three days, she and the family “were in a deep shock,” and still are.
“We were desperately hoping that was some kind of mistake, or a nightmare and we would wake up soon and hear that everything is okay,” she said. “For the long 10 days of war, we were hoping the invasion would stop, and we will still go back to our homes as we planned.”
“We left our homes as tourists, with each having one (suitcase) with deep belief we would come back to our apartments, jobs and normal safe lives again,” she added.
Her normal life meant running her travel agency, Aloha Travel. The name is a nod to her stay in Hawaii.
But even if the war were to end today, she said tourism wouldn’t be back for a while.
As the war rolls beyond two weeks, she said she and her family have “cried all our tears out” and are constantly in touch with friends and family.
“We are very afraid for them,” she said.
“Every morning here we wake up to the news on how the day was in our hometown and pray that everyone is safe,” she later added. “My in-laws are there now. My grandparents are there now. Some of our friends had to leave the country to save their kids from constant sounds of missiles, rockets, (sirens) and danger to their lives.”
In between keeping in touch with friends and relatives, the Bugays and the MacDonalds have been catching up. Since Vladlena Bugay’s time on Maui, the two families have grown close and have visited each other.
Vladlena Bugay first came to Maui via FLEX, or Future Leaders Exchange Program, a highly competitive, meritbased scholarship program funded by the U.S. Department of State.
It was created from the belief of former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley that “the best way to ensure long-lasting peace and mutual understanding between the U.S. and the countries of Eurasia is to enable young people to learn about the U.S. and Americans firsthand, and to teach Americans
about their countries,” according to its website.
The MacDonalds volunteered to take in an exchange student and ended up hosting 15-year-old Vladlena Bugay, who attended King Kekaulike for nine months.
She participated in drama classes and recalls the teacher back then being excited about having an exchange student from Ukraine. So, the teacher picked out a play reflecting the general European area. Vladlena Bugay even sang a song in Russian as the students put on a performance for parents.
While attending the school, she said students were inquisitive, asking her about her life in Ukraine.
Barclay MacDonald said it was a learning experience for both families.
“We had no idea where Ukraine was and had to look it up on a map,” he said. “Vlada and her family had no idea where Maui was and were searching for it in the Caribbean, when Vlada’s mother, Olena, spotted it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
“They were flabbergasted and seriously reconsidering sending their 15-year-old daughter, all alone, to such as strange place and where they would have no control over what happened to her,” he recalled.
He pointed out that back then, almost no one in Ukraine had a personal computer or internet connection.
Even a phone call seemed prohibitively expensive, he added.
“Vlada’s stay went very well for all of us,” he said.
The families continue to enjoy each other’s company while on Maui, but Vladlena Bugay said they are struggling to determine what to do next. Will they need to get jobs? Will they have to enroll Milana in school?
“We don’t know how long we are going to say here on Maui,” she said, adding there are so many questions but no answers.
But, she said, “we understand we are safe and that’s the most important thing.”