Overcoming Adversity
An Interview with Diana Madzharova, my neighbour from Ukraine.
“It is happening.” These are the first words Diana tells me that her father uttered as they watched the news on 23 February 2022 in their home in Vinnytsia, Ukraine.
Russian troops were now driving through Donetsk.
I was driving to the orthodontist a few weeks ago and I had arranged to speak to Diana an hour before my appointment in the car park! Moments before I arrived at my destination, there was a radio news segment about the Klitshcko brothers, one of whom had spoken in what was believed an inappropriate way regarding the ceding of territory to Russia.
I wanted to ask Diana about this as soon as we began our interview. What did she think of this Klitschko brother, I wondered? She was not happy that an official person was speaking this way.
Diana is sitting at home in her family home, staring at me wide eyed and smiling in Ukraine. She looks like she is in the kitchen. It is mid morning and she has just returned to live in Ukraine. To be precise she had flown to Poland from Bristol, then taken a bus to Lviv and then a train to Vinnytsia. It took her about 36 hours of travel because Kyiv is a no fly zone.
The kitchen looks like something you would see in an Alpine setting. As a mother, it is hard not to shed a tear looking at her.
When war broke out, Diana was only nineteen at the time, she had a ten year old brother and a secure life. She had stayed in Ukraine when the war had begun, and then a few months later she was jettisoned into doing what every young person would want, in the worst of circumstances.
Her parents had suggested that it was safer for her to leave and become a refugee.
It is at that point I ask her if she knew English at the time. She tells me that although she spoke good English at the time, at the time she also had no awareness that it was good. In her mind language was going to be a barrier.
Our interview is conducted in two parts, this was partly on purpose, but also because Diana is a very busy young lady. Despite only just returning to Ukraine to live, she was about to travel to Azerbaijan for a conference. We spend part one focussing much on that first day of war.
“Children get up, the war has started!” Can you imagine waking up to those words? In the next few hours, her parents both went to work leaving her with her understandably very upset younger brother. From the outset I am drawn to this little brother of hers. A young ten year old having to process what is happening.
Later that morning her father calls her, and begins to tell her, “Diana, the key for this is here, if you need this look there.” This is a man preparing his eldest daughter for what to do in case he does not return home. Her mother does not drive so she understood the assignment clearly- if he did not return, she would be driving the family.
They pack bags, pack documents, water and food. When they received the text “air,” they went to a shelter nearby as it meant rockets were in the area. And from that day on, she describes a life of being at home with her brother.
Her parents did not want to leave. Some wider family members headed to Poland and she watched others depart. But they stayed. She played table games with her brother.
She remembers the first two days of war clearly, but thereafter March was a blur.
When she mentions her wider family leaving, I immediately ask her what crossover there is in the family with Russia. I am aware of people who were half Ukrainian and Russian, and I knew that it was common for Ukrainian families to be divided over the war. Diana tells me that indeed her grandparents had siblings who moved to Russia. In the next breath she tells me that she wants nothing to do with Russia.
Diana is a bright girl. She had already studied Linguistics, Public Management and Administration and had worked at the Vinnytsia Trade and Economics Institute prior to the war. She had been on exchanges and in 2021, visited Italy. She presents like every young girl from a loving supportive family where work and education are a priority.
We talk about how she passes those initial months. Not working, not studying and watching young men go to war. The conversation comes to a natural point where she mentions how the brutality inflicted on Ukranians increased, and how it became apparent that Diana needed to leave.
Diana seems relieved that when she tells me about the atrocities and torture that her family were beginning to see on the news, that I instantly mention Bucha knowing the violent massacre and death inflicted there. You definitely get the sense that she is gas lit into thinking others may not know about the terror, or maybe she just feels that she has to justify it to me.
And essentially it was that violence and the fact that she was a young woman with a life ahead of her, which framed how her mother and father suggested in May that she go on a website called Opora.uk and scope out looking to live with a family abroad.
A massive decision.
Wanting to go overseas and further yourself is the most natural thing for a young woman and yet coupled with leaving a war zone and having to leave family behind - that is a dilemma. This is evident in Diana’s voice and demeanour even as she describes it a few years on. She still thinks what she did was selfish. This is sad.
And what if it went wrong? I recall reading news articles on how some Ukrainian refugees came upon some terrible UK hosts. In one case the host asked the family to pay bills and in another, a married man fell in love with his host tearing the family apart!
This could have all gone very wrong.
Diana shares that initial requests on this website to host her came from creepy strange men. But the long and short of it is that having signed up to the website at the end of May 2022, and obtained a visa, that by the 7th of June she met my neighbours via video chat. By August she arrived in London, having just turned twenty, and began a life in South Wales, by the sea, with my neighbours, Geraldine and Martin.
And so this is how I know her.
And to this day when I think of my neighbours and Diana, I cannot quite believe Diana’s luck. My neighbours really are very good people. I learned that prior to leaving Ukraine that they had weekly video chats meeting her parents etc., and that my neighbours made it clear that she would be like their daughter. And they honoured that.
I later learned that Diana who went on to get a job in Wales settling refugees, also saw firsthand how so many refugees had much worse experiences.
But before we dissected that further, I wanted to understand what her emotions were like as she set to leave Ukraine. And understandably this was a very difficult time. She talks about an “attack on my city centre” which killed twenty nine people, including three children, with two hundred and two people injured, just two weeks before her departure. This was in a place that she told me she regularly visited and stopped for a coffee. It made her cross. It also made her want to stay.
I ask her about the day she left and I get a scene of “four of us at the bus station,” and her brother is crying. My heart sank. Diana’s parents are roughly my age and I cannot begin to think about how they must have felt giving over their daughter. Her family was about to be separated by war.
Saying goodbye - Diana, her parents and brother.
We parked the interview there as I knew it would be emotional. Diana goes off to Azerbaijan and we agree to talk again approximately two weeks later.
A part of me wonders will I see her again?
PART 2
We met up online a few weeks later. This time I am at home and we are speaking at night. I am relieved to see her smiling face, back with her family. In the time we speak India and Pakistan are in a form of war and nothing has really ameliorated for Ukraine.
I asked Diana to think about what she really wanted you the reader to know about her experience, in our time apart. I knew that when we last spoke that she wanted the piece to be empowering. She wanted people to know that if she can come to the UK and learn English and build a new life, so can others overcome similar adversity.
We start however by chatting about her family. I learned that Diana was an only child and only granddaughter for a long time. We end up talking about the effect her departure has had on her brother. Not only did he lose a sibling when she left, but he also missed out on physical school. He had distance learning but life changed dramatically for him.
We instantly come back to the guilt Diana has. She mentions a friend who was twenty when the war had broken out and who was studying in Eastern Ukraine. He was a third year student at the military academy. I learn that he is now twenty three and is at war. This boy comes home from war once every eight months. She sighs as she tells me that he has no opportunities, no travel, no life. This is not the life you expect a twenty three year old to have.
She tells me that earlier in the day a soldier from her village died. A Hero.
I am interested in what this war has done to Ukrainians in terms of their solidarity. Living in the UK I see Ukrainian families. My children have met a few Ukrainian refugee children. Have they come with their fathers, I ask. It is unclear. I ask Diana about how she feels about men who left Ukraine given her father (who is young) stayed to protect his land.
It is fascinating that she has an immediate answer to give me. She does not begrudge any disabled man, nor any man with three or more children leaving Ukraine. You can fill in the gaps on the rest. I ask her if Ukraine will welcome back those who left and she says yes we will. This is a natural segue into her UK work which was settling refugees. And so I learned that she did not begrudge men leaving Ukraine with three children or more as this is a girl who by settling refugees saw how hard it was for families to settle here, without two parents.
In one case she told me how a Ukrainian woman called up as she needed to leave her accommodation immediately as she had had a disagreement with the host. In another story I learn that the hosts put cameras in the living room to watch the refugees. In another, the host family were nice but they had too many pets causing the refugee child who had allergies to become unwell. I welcome these stories as we cannot romanticise this process.
Imagine what your child may need tomorrow if they were plunged in similar circumstances? I shudder as I think of all the things my children would need to subsist.
Meanwhile Diana had a wonderful experience. My neighbours gave her a room and a bathroom full of products, towels, flowers, everything she could want for. And then the conversation turned to Germany and Poland and intolerance. Diana tells me how she so welcomed the diversity here in Wales and how she felt welcome.
We joke about how funny that is. Wales is literally looking at a looming Reform majority and yet people were very nice to her. Conversely she tells me that despite Poland and Germany being seen as positive takers of refugees, with “good” governments, that people she knew there living as refugees are facing discrimination.
Poland in particular is a place she seems keen to tell me does not make her feel comfortable when she passes through. And she is keen to tell me that these refugees are paying taxes in these places.
I can’t help but see that all people like her, and I am like this at times too, need to justify and protect people by stating all the good they do. I welcome her advocacy for refugees in Germany and Poland.
Diana is so very keen to tell me that despite it sounding Utopian, that she does not want any war or conflict. She reels off all the places in the world where children and people are being killed and she says it feels like we are already in a third world war.
I ask her about some of the friends she had made as I am aware that alongside working, that she was also studying an MA at university here, and her face lights up when she tells me how many people she has met from different backgrounds.
She mostly only knew Christians in Ukraine and Wales enabled her to broaden her horizons. Her hosts also went out of their way to explain culture and phrases that she would encounter in the UK which I think helped her “make friends with everyone.” I am proud to be able to speak to Diana and showcase the good nature of her white hosts and share that Brits are welcoming refugees, despite what we read in the press.
Diana also made her transition to a refugee very real to me. She explained how hard it was to get a bank account. I think of how hard it was for me to get a bank account in New Zealand and then how hard it was for my children to get bank accounts in the UK and we weren’t dealing with the trauma of war!
She tells me of the benefits she was entitled to and in the next breath she tells me how she found a job. She started at Mcdonalds (like the best of us) and lasted there two hours (again like the best of us) as she could not cope with the smell, yet her hosts did not judge her, and shortly after, a trip to the library and a career’s fair put her in the direction of the job she eventually had, settling refugees.
“I study public policy to regulate all this stuff,” which is a clear indicator to me that she is using her experience to bring peace. I then bring the conversation on to the future of Ukraine. Diana supports President Zelenskyy and looking back she remembers watching TV in 2013 when she believed that the tide turned making for a Russian invasion.
Despite being very young Diana made the most of her time here. She attended an Open Day at the University of Swansea which led to her studying a course, and she also went to Texas to study as part of her studies, she worked in the UK, bought a car and she helped people advance in circumstances harder than hers. I would like to think that most refugees make the most of their time like she did.
Her host joined her at the University Open Day, fulfilling further their promise to treat her like a daughter. She also tells me how she drove to Swansea that day and I marvel at how brave she was to be driving such long distances in Wales!
Bank accounts, driving, getting jobs, understanding cultures and accents, these are the very hard barriers refugees and migrants face. Her host even took advice from a driving instructor as to how to help Diana understand how to drive in Wales!
In the media we mostly see foreigners coming here as problems, but Diana’s story shows determination, courage and good things happening collectively and individually, behind the scenes.
Geraldine and Martin, the lovely people who hosted Diana. Yuvi our half Swedish, half Kiwi Cocker Spaniel, loves Geraldine in particular too and is known for making a dash across the hallway and barging through her door when he can make a run for it!
And fascinatingly in all of this she did not once complain to me about a thing. Instead she is keen to tell me about her friends, their names and the amazing education she received here.
On her last night in the UK, she knocked on my door and presented us with a waffle cake, something she would eat in Ukraine. It was a fantastic cake and I told her how I shared it with my parents too who also loved it.
One waffle cake merging Ukrainian, Welsh, Indian, South African and New Zealand tummies.
Diana’s story is one of war, resolve and bravery. For me I remain very relieved that this young girl did not come in harm’s way when away from home.
But Diana is also a poignant reminder that despite the differences over religion, skin colour nationality and land that in all of this, in every situation it’s the same structures being attacked and threatened - Diana could be from any background and I would not want any young girl or woman to go what she went through leaving family so young, or any mother to go what her mother went through.
Approaching twenty three now, I am hopeful that she is using this experience to help the world come to peace.
Diana (above) and Me (below). Yes it took a few takes!
But finally, whilst I had the privilege to live next door to Diana and share her story, the gem in the story is her little brother. At the end of our interview I ask her to bring him to the camera as we can hear him in the background. It is clear that their living part has not changed the dynamic behaviour you see only between siblings.
In my culture they say cousins are siblings but I disagree. Only siblings are siblings. In their very little interaction he looks happy to have his big sister back and she looks happy, proud and annoyed by him all at once!
A wide eyed near fourteen year old boy, looking much older than the photo above, she told him to say hello. He looked at me in marvel and I looked at him in exactly the same way.
As I have grown older and met many parents, it never ceases to amaze me how many families with sons seem to have so many war mongering political views. Where else do you think your intolerance is headed but war? Given it is largely men mostly expected to go to war I struggle to comprehend why as a parent of a son you would want war and violence and risk burying your own son, or want someone else’s killed?
So I looked at this boy and the last thing I wanted was for him to go to war. He has been through enough already.
I am glad his sister is doing what she can to contribute to a world without war.
Thank you Diana for sharing your story with readers across the world.
Ludology