There are many life stories that intersect in the Caritas-Spes center in western Ukraine where internally displaced people find refuge. Since the beginning of the conflict – last February 24 – the Emergency Coordination of the Focolare Movement, AMU and AFN immediately started raising funds to support the reception actions of Caritas-Spes for those forced to flee. Among the many stories is that of a new mother, who had given birth only three weeks before when Russia invaded Ukraine: the young Olha.
The girl lived in a small village in the Kherson region, near the border with Crimea: “On February 24, our village was already occupied by Russian troops, who did not allow evacuation. When I heard explosions near our house, I ran with my daughter to the basement and stayed there for a long time. I was slowly running out of baby food. I had to pour some water into a small glass and heat it on a candle to feed the little one. Only after two months of occupation did we decide to leave at our own risk.”
Olha’s parents accompanied the new mother and her baby to Caritas-Spes and then turned back because their other son – a 21-year-old boy – had not been allowed to leave. As she tells her story, Olha gently rocks the little girl in her arms. The birth was scheduled for February 22nd, but it was fortunate that the baby was born almost three weeks early: “I saw a video of the hospital where my daughter was born. All births take place in the basement, because the surrounding area has been repeatedly bombed since the war began. It is the only hospital available within 150 kilometers of our village, so if I had given birth to my daughter on February 22, we probably would not have returned home.”
The operators of the Caritas-Spes centre have carefully followed Olha, this girl who had just become a mother was forced to leave her home and found herself facing the first few months alone, with small and large worries, such as the newborn’s weight loss; here at Caritas-Spes, she was not lacking in support: the centre’s operators accompanied Olha to a paediatrician to have her daughter examined and everything fell into place slowly solved, but the fear experienced under the bombings had resurfaced in the girl: “We are very well here, the most important thing for me is that my daughter is not hungry like during the occupation, when I had almost nothing to give her. She was not growing, she had remained very small, here fortunately she began to recover and gained two kilos in a month”.
(The text is a summary of the article published on the Caritas-Spes website from which the photograph is also taken)
