‘They understand that they have to move on’
UKRAINIAN MOTHER TALKS OF TRYING TO STAY POSITIVE THROUGH THE PAIN OF BEING SEPARATED BY WAR
A UKRAINIAN mother made the heartbreaking decision to leave her husband behind in the war-torn country in order to bring their two children to safety in Farnham.
Anastasiia Zavorina, 35, made the journey with 12-year-old Sofiia and 10-year-old Illiia in May and they have been embraced by the community they are temporarily calling home – and they still speak online with dad Vitaliia for an hour every night. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine raged this spring, Anastasiia and Vitaliia made the choice to flee their home in the city of Kharkiv, which is in the east of the country and has seen very heavy fighting.
The family was matched with a woman in Farnham who agreed to offer them accommodation as part of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, and they had spoken with her via WhatsApp and video calls several times before being able to travel in early May.
“The journey was stressful and emotionally it was hard,” said Anastasiia. “My husband took us by car to the capital Kyiv, and from there we travelled by train to Warsaw. There, thanks to Farnham Rotary Club, we were accommodated in a lovely hotel where we could rest for a little bit.”
In Warsaw the family had to wait for three weeks for their biometrics to be ready so they could be issued visas. Once that had been resolved, they flew to Heathrow on May 21 and were picked up by their sponsor, whom they have lived with ever since. Anastasiia said the local schools were not prepared for the influx of Ukrainian children, as more than 100 families evacuated to Farnham in the months after the fighting began.
Eventually, after writing dozens of letters, she was able to get both children enrolled into a local school in time for the last six weeks of the academic year. The children still find it difficult to be without their father, as they are both old enough to comprehend what is happening back home.
“They understand that they have to move on, and that’s it,” said Anastasiia.
“I explained to them that this situation, where they have the opportunity to live here and study in an English school, is of huge value – especially when we know lots of people who had flats, houses, cars, businesses left behind in Kharkiv, and had to leave with nothing but their head and their hands.”
The family expects to stay for at least the next academic year. Even if the fighting was to stop, Anastasiia said there are not enough schools left in Ukraine because Russian forces have destroyed them with constant shelling. She added that the Ukrainian government is trying to organise online learning for the children who have fled the country, but that the difficulties inherent in learning through that method were made clear during the pandemic. In the meantime, the family has been able to benefit from a scheme by Barracudas, a company that runs activity day camps for children during the summer holidays. With help from the charity Mail Force, Barracudas has been able to offer Ukrainian children up to two weeks of fully funded places on its camps. Sofiia and Illiia accepted two places and are enjoying their time at the Farnham camp at Edgeborough School.
Their favourite activities so far have included swimming, archery and motorsports, while they have also been able to enjoy other sports, arts and crafts, and performing arts. Gini Harrington is the camp manager for the Farnham site.
She told the News & Mail’s online sister publication SurreyLive that they have been welcoming around 10 children per week from Ukraine so far during the summer holidays, and that the scheme will run again at some sites during October half term.
She thinks the programme has been beneficial for the children, and said: “I think they’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve definitely seen if a child has been here for two weeks, sometimes they start a little bit shy but actually by the end of the two weeks you can see they’ve really socialised, they’ve made friends and their English has improved. It’s wonderful to see them having so much fun, and I think it’s really brave of them to walk into a camp where people aren’t speaking their language.”
As well as sometimes having help from parents such as Anastasiia, who volunteers to assist the children with communication, they are also provided with a series of visual icons at which they can point to so that camp staff know what they are trying to express, such as if they feel hot or if they need to use the toilet.
The camp also uses tablets into which children and staff can speak, with the computer automatically translating between English and Ukrainian.
In addition to its Farnham location, Barracudas also has sites in Woking, Godalming and Cobham this summer.
We know lots of people who had flats, houses, cars, businesses left behind in Kharkiv... Anastasiia Zavorina