Do one thing every day that scares you. Or so the phrase goes.
It’s March and my friend Stewart is telling us about a local team heading out to the Ukrainian border with Romania to help refugees.
The conflict in Ukraine has been eating me alive. “That’s great”, I think to myself. “Now we can actually help by supporting someone we know.”
I have no idea what’s coming next.
As it turns out, there’s one place left on the trip and Stewart says they’re looking for a woman, with a bit of life experience, who’ll feel at ease with mums and kids. Apparently, the team is a bit “man-heavy” and nearly all the refugees are women and children.
“You have to go”, says my husband. “You’re the right person.”
“You should go”, says my sister. “You’re intrepid”.
“Well done, love”, says my dad. “See you when you get back.”
What’s wrong with them? I can’t believe they’re not more concerned. This is the edge of a war zone we’re talking about.
I point out that I used to be intrepid. These days I’m in a constant state of angst over the BBC news and have barely left the house for two years due to a global pandemic.
What will I even be doing? What if I can’t cope and I’m useless and cry all the time? Is it safe?
What if I don’t come back?
For a reason I don’t understand, I ring the organiser and say yes.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton
10 days later, after a 3 am start, a radio interview at the airport, 3 hours on a plane and 5 hours in a car, we’re there. The building where we’re based is more modern and well-equipped than I’d imagined.
On the first morning our team is sorting through masses of medical supplies, bound for Ukraine. One of the Romanian volunteers bustles in and when we ask if she’s ok she falls into my arms and starts to sob.
This is not an operation like the Red Cross. These volunteers have spent the past few weeks making up the answers to an unexpected crisis on their doorstep - and they’re shattered.
Another of the Romanians gives us her own brand new pram, still unwrapped in its plastic cover. She’s young and glamourous, with a frilly top and immaculate, dazzling nails. She’d look at home on a magazine cover but she’s here with her two young children, translating from English to Romanian to Russian and back again.
Some of our team set to the cleaning, others disperse to the border to go and pick people up. Me and Stewart set up a makeshift craft club for the kids and play some games.
A slow, steady trickle of international volunteers and locals and refugees and medical supplies and food flows through the front door and passes out again. This is the gentle daily rhythm of our bizarre new normality.
Morning turns to afternoon and afternoon turns to evening and at 7pm, everyone comes together to eat. It’s pasta, basic but tasty enough. We mingle and chat as the children wander about with felt tips and play-dough, still not finished with their games.
I’m sitting opposite a very tall man with a gentle face, round black glasses and wavy dark hair. He’s from Germany and he’s driven for 30 hours, leaving his wife and children at home to come and do what he can.
A couple of days later I will see this gentle giant quietly help to pack an entire family of women, old and young, children and cats into the back of his van so that he can drive them out to make a new life.
I am in awe of this place. A tragedy created by a handful of men is bringing out humanity’s deepest kindness.
What is a post about going to the Ukrainian border doing in a newsletter about brand copywriting?
For all my love of brand and business, I still work the world out by writing things down. Until I get this Romania thing off my chest, this newsletter appears to be stuck, an elephant in the room that’s blocking the doorway to business as usual.
As a small, creative copywriting agency we’re far from perfect but I hope that writing about this shows that when we say we’re driven by our values, we’re good for it.
“The way you get to know yourself is by the expression on other people’s faces…” Gil Scott-Heron
To be honest, the UK team we’ve got is a dream. If you need shelving or lifting, it’s Dan. Translating or driving, it’s Marku. A cupboard to sort, find Lesley. Unbelievably, whatever arises, there seems to be someone who’s willing to take it on.
Because of the language barriers, the women around us are tactile, offering hugs and hand-holding where words don’t work. I can’t put up shelves or drive on the wrong side of the road but in this department, I feel ok.
A Ukrainian grandma has huge tears rolling down the wrinkly folds of her face. She’s 88 and on her way to live with relatives in America. Her grandson is still in Mikolaiv and she’s desperately worried about him. She sobs and sobs and pours out her heart but I can’t understand. I hold her hand, imagine what she might be saying and try to reassure her in English. Back and forth we go until she finally kisses me on the cheek and shuffles away.
After a couple of days, I offer a coffee to one young mum and she ends up telling me her entire story too (thanks Google Translate). Something inside me clicks. The sorrow and despair for every person with nowhere to go wells up inside and I feel ready to defend her with my life. The team talks about whether we can help her get to the UK but none of us is under any illusions about how hard that will be. Just getting through the paperwork is going to be a massive challenge, let alone helping her to build a life here.
This trip is starting to get the better of me. I am worked up and emotional and the others can tell. Thankfully, Tom steps in.
“Martha”, he says firmly. “The way you’re getting involved with people is great but you can’t make everything better. Do you want me to join your conversation tomorrow, to stop everything from getting too emotional?”
I nod my head. I’m grateful he can see that compassion is about to fall off a precipice into cloudy judgement and poor decision-making.
When we stop talking and go outside, three trucks have pulled up in front of the building and they’re ready to be loaded for delivery into Ukraine.
I join the 20-strong international human chain as we pass nappies and water and parcels of medicine down the line to fill the trucks.
It’s good to be part of something, to know you can do your best and that others will pick up the pieces when you falter.
“Tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.” Lady Gaga
To be honest, I wasn’t that bothered about going to the actual border.
On our last night, one of the gang has mistakenly gone off with the key to our accommodation and Stewart and me, having drawn the day’s craft club to a close, are locked out. Just as we’re thinking about what to do next, we get a call. A woman who has carried her son from Kherson could really do with a pram. Can we jump in the hire van and deliver it to the border? It looks like, at the 11th hour, I’m going to get there after all.
Stewart, laidback and cheerful as ever, finds a car and off we go but within 10 minutes it’s clear we’re heading in the wrong direction. I get him to admit he might possibly be lost and we call Marku who’s gone to visit his sister. Although he lives in our city back home, Marku was born here and he knows these roads like the back of his hand.
Just as Marku arrives we get another call. Can we find more transport because now it’s not just the pram, there are 14 Ukrainians who need to come back with us to the centre? Within minutes, somehow Marku has got the keys to another van and the three of us set off in the dark, crossing the river on the car ferry, telling jokes and eating hunks of a cake Marku’s mum has made.
When we get to the border station it’s like you’d imagine: there’s a big white tent packed full of people, some beds in one corner, old ladies wrapped in foil blankets sipping coffee from plastic cups and some official-looking types with high viz jackets and clipboards. Despite the portable heaters, it is very cold.
We’re not there for long, perhaps half an hour or so, but it’s long enough to meet a local Romanian woman who works full-time in an office job, drives over here after work, spends from 6pm until midnight translating before heading home for a few hours sleep and doing it all again.
I step out of the tent and look the other way across the water. I can see the twinkling lights of Ukraine in the distance on the other side, a terrible and beautiful thing so close I can nearly touch it.
Moments later everyone who’s coming with us is rounded up and packed up into the transport. Between the Ukrainians who have crossed and all of our team, we’re a convoy of five vehicles, snaking our way back quietly in the dark through the Romanian countryside.
It’s close to midnight. I turn to the woman and her two daughters in the back of our car.
“This is Stewart”, I say, patting him on the shoulder. “He’s going to drive us back. You’re safe.”
After I’ve been home for a couple of days, my dad drops by.
“Your mum said you were back. I thought I’d come and say hello.”
We sit together quietly for a bit. There’s so much to say I can’t say anything at all. After a while, he puts his arm around me and goes away again.
A few weeks pass and the sun comes up on a beautiful Saturday morning. The garden is turning into a nice little sun trap and two kids are bouncing like maniacs on the trampoline. One of them is my son, but the other girl, she’s from Ukraine.
She’s from Ukraine, via Romania. And here she is in our garden.
I turn to her mum, sitting next to me on the bench and ask again,
“Shall we have coffee?”
If adventure calls you, say yes.
Simply wonderful.