The opportunity of a lifetime?
Iwoke up on Wednesday morning to the negative, senseless, and meaningless comments of ignorant people on social media, who felt the need to criticise the unfortunate students who are stuck in Ukraine during this war. When did we become a people who could not empathise? Who made us judge over other people’s circumstances anyway?
My heart broke when I read the comments of people condemning our students for a decision to pursue better and not settle for the limitations our own local context presents.
So the students are being treated with disdain because the view out there is that they refused the offer to fly home on a ticket that would place them in debt to the Government — a loan some of them were probably not even sure they would be able to repay. Well, as a mother who is blessed enough to have brought my daughter home just ahead of the invasion, albeit with my own private funds and assistance from my family, let me tell you how this works.
The decision to bring my daughter home after she had only been in Ukraine for about three months was not an easy one to make. In fact, for me, there was only one option, but yet the decision to get her on that plane three months after starting medical school was simply one of the toughest I’ve made, ever. There were several factors to consider and each one was important.
First of all, when I gave the “come home now” instructions to my daughter, she had not yet received her residency and her student visa had expired by about a week. She was waiting to receive the Post Vidka and was being told it would be ready “any day now”, but every day was taking us a day closer to the anticipated start of the invasion. She basically ended up flying home without any legal documentation to support her stay and so she was fined by Ukrainian immigration.
To put this into context, a decision to return home may mean she would not be able to fly back unless she redoes the entire extended application process that got her there in the first place, with red tape, bureaucracy, and months of undue delays.
Not only was she without her legal documents, but the university basically made it clear that any student who chose to leave without there being “justifiable cause” would have dismissed himself or herself from the academic programme of study. In other words, they were risking everything they had worked for up to this point if they did the responsible thing of heading for safety in their home country. In fact, for the schools, regardless of the warnings, it was basically business as usual until the missile strikes started.
Another concern was the fact that, while the residency documents were being processed, the university was in possession of all documentation for the students. It meant that, in order for the students to leave for home, they would need to request the documents from the school and that, too, would likely be interpreted as a decision to discontinue processing for residency
When my daughter boarded the taxi from her hostel to head to the airport on Monday, she left most of her friends behind. She was in tears for fear she was throwing away an opportunity of a lifetime, and I was in tears for fear I was crushing her dreams. The only thing I knew was that I needed my daughter home safely. Nothing else was clear and, quite frankly, nothing else mattered
and, indirectly, enrolment.
Then, to make matters worse, students were being told they needed to schedule an appointment with the school to request the documents and then return at a later date to pick them up. All these are factors that had to be considered, and we haven’t touched the finances yet.
A number of the students studying in Ukraine were doing so not because they were curious about moving half way across the world into a volatile region for the hell of it. In fact, that would have been the greatest fear in deciding to accept the opportunity presented. Our students mostly decided to move to Ukraine to study because it presented the most affordable alternative to the ridiculously high fees for studying medicine here in Jamaica, the Caribbean, or even in the US.
Did we know the region was volatile? Yes. Were we prepared to deal with that? We thought so. Did we care about the safety of our children? Yes! But we were willing to take a chance to help them live their dream of becoming something, in this case, a doctor.
The hesitation by the students to take a loan stems from the fact that they would, more than likely, not be able to afford the plane fare to return to Ukraine in the first instance, should things improve, let alone find money to also repay a debt for the ticket that got them home.
Remember, despite preparing for the worst, not many people would have expected this outright war to be the reality in the short term.
We hope the students will have an opportunity to resume their studies in the near future. It was not about the freeness for many of the students and their parents. It was about the fears born out of their realities.
When my daughter boarded the taxi from her hostel to head to the airport on Monday, February 21, she left most of her friends behind. She was in tears for fear she was throwing away an opportunity of a lifetime, and I was in tears for fear I was crushing her dreams. The only thing I knew was that I needed my daughter home safely. Nothing else was clear and, quite frankly, nothing else mattered.
She left everything behind: all original academic documents and even her very birth certificate; all appliances/furniture she purchased living on dorm; and, most of all, the investments we made to get her there in the first place.
She was on her way home. All she had was her luggage and her passport because she had not yet turned it in for the Post Vidka.
All I’m saying is, you don’t know until you know.
Refrain from condemning our students for trying to beat the odds and better themselves. Refrain from criticising the parents for listening to the hearts of their children while trying to decide what’s right for them. If you don’t understand it, just leave it alone. Do not judge in ignorance!
Instead, please say a prayer for our Jamaican students and their families. My daughter forged many friendships while she was there and so now we are constantly checking with them for updates and living in prayer that they, too, will get out safely. I feel such anxiety and my daughter is home. I cannot begin to imagine the anxieties of those parents whose children are not yet home.
Find the heart to stand with our fellow Jamaicans in this, man. We can do it. The Jamaica I was born in would do it.
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