War unfathomable: ‘Does life
Ukrainian woman Valeriya Horyayeva says her priorities have changed since leaving a war zone.
She’s heard the street-fighting, the planes, and the bombs of the Russian invasion. She’s run from gunfire with her 41⁄ 2- year-old daughter, Tereza.
She’s watched news reports of her fellow countrywomen being raped and children being killed.
And she has crossed the planet in search of refuge.
‘‘The war changed a lot of values, of life, of time, of spending time together,’’ she said in her new home in Nelson.
‘‘Of course we have traditions in our family. But sometimes I worked 14 hours, sometimes at the weekend because I liked my job, and it wasn’t something terrible for me.’’
Things have been different since she escaped in March.
The 29-year-old marketing entrepreneur no longer incessantly checks her social media for work at meal times.
Before she fled Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine, her friends told her to go back to her apartment to pick up her things. She didn’t want to go; her first need was simply to stay alive.
‘‘The most important thing was our life, not stuff.’’
While Horyayeva is now safe with her mother and Kiwi stepfather in Nelson, she’s still feeling the effects of the war.
‘‘Sometimes we are afraid of planes,’’ she said, glancing at a jet overhead.
The noise of a heavy clanging metal pipe falling while she was at Christchurch airport in transit sent her ducking for cover.
She learnt how to protect herself in a war zone, in part from Israeli guidelines – hiding in the corridor of her apartment building, carrying her daughter in front of her in case she was shot in the back, covering her ears to avoid shellshock from falling bombs.
It was the kind of knowledge she said she never thought she would need.
Fleeing across the border to Poland, where her sister lives, Horyayeva wrote the name and phone number of her sibling in the crook of Tereza’s elbow, so if she was killed or injured they could be reunited.
After a nerve-racking trip, Horyayeva and Tereza arrived safely in New Zealand a fortnight ago. Her mother, Natalya, is married to Kiwi Craig McNeish and has been living here for two years.