14 Dec 2023
Homebound: The horrendous journey of close to half a million…
On a sunny but frosty day, the DRC teams wait for the internally displaced persons at the YaMariupol Centre located right in front of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast administration in western Ukraine. Today, they distribute hygiene kits and clothes for children and register IDPs for cash support aiming to cover essential needs.
Vitalina, 33, came here today to get humanitarian aid. She looks exhausted, her tired eyes reflect the terrific experience she has had. Ten years ago, she worked in a tax office in Donetsk, now a non-government-controlled city in eastern Ukraine. When the conflict started, she left the city and headed to the village nearby where her parents lived. But soon Vitalina and her parents were captured.
“Then they [armed troops] began to extort money. When we paid them, they gave us time to flee, and we left [non-government-controlled area] through the mined fields. We never returned home,” she says with a bitter voice.
Vitalina found a new home in Mariupol, a city in the Ukraine’s South on the shore of the Sea of Azov. Her tax office was relocated there after Donetsk was out of the control of the Ukrainian government. In a city with endless sunrises and sand beaches, she falls in love and gets married having no idea that in eight years she will evacuate from this city being pregnant with her second child.
The war made her leave her home a second time. Vitalina took Yehor, her older son, and dashed to Dnipro city in the centre of Ukraine.
“Yehor had to go to school, and I was pregnant. But in Dnipro was very dangerous. One morning, we came under a shocking shelling, there was no alarm. It was so petrifying that Yehor* started stuttering. Then, I decided that children must be saved and moved to Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine’s west,” says Vitalina, clenching her fists.
“It's hard for me here, I’m alone with two children, one is a newborn. He is 2 months old. I’m grateful for any support. I did not even take valuables from Mariupol, I had a fur coat and leather goods. We left everything behind because we were rescuing relatives and pets, there was no room in the car.”
Children are growing, they need new clothes every year. Vitalina also needed to buy a crib, a stroller, and other stuff for a newborn. In addition, both of Vitalina's children have kidney problems and she is saving money for treatment and surgery which Yehor will undergo soon.
YaMariupol Centre in Ivano-Frankivsk coordinates the different humanitarian aid for IDPs from Mariupol city and its outskirts. Today, Vitalina came here to receive DRC’s kit with diapers and other hygiene essentials and a pack of basic winter clothes for a newborn.
"In western Ukraine, we are going distribute 1,050 such kits. They are designed for children under 3 years old. The clothing set, for example, includes warm overalls, which will be handy given the cold Ukrainian winters," says Gennadiy, a Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance officer at DRC.