After six months of war, a long, hot summer of youth camps and a three-day journey from her home in Western Ukraine to catch a flight out of Budapest, Husband’s cousin Lesia has arrived. We are preparing to travel to the north of Spain, to walk once again together on the Camino de Santiago. Our last trip together was in 2018. Pre-pandemic, pre-war, we walked from Porto in Portugal to Santiago de Compostela. It was a much simpler time.
There were moments we thought this might not happen. When she called us from the bomb shelter, the sound of shelling in the background, death felt close. Nevertheless, here we are, gathering again. It feels fitting to make another pilgrimage. To give thanks to whatever forces have kept us all alive up to this point.
Lesia takes a shower before sitting down to eat, displaying, for now, only the gratitude of food and cleanliness after a night sleeping in a hostel and one at the airport. She is talking about the camps she has been leading for children in Ukraine. Other organisations moved their camp holidays to Moldova or Poland but her organisation felt it important to host these much-needed vacations in Ukraine. “There are many children still living in Ukraine” she says. ‘And we are, after all, Ukrainian.”
She has brought us a flag, hand-stitched in the blue and yellow now so familiar around the world. We will take it with us and hold it high along the Way, so she can carry her country with her. Her stories have ten days to unfold and we are not rushing her, but some words come tumbling out anyway.
“War is not for girls” she says.
Lesia is not yet forty, but is already head of her organisation in Ukraine. Despite her obvious abilities and experience, since the war began she has been sidelined from any decision-making. “In wartime, men make the decisions”, she says.
“What do women do?” I ask.
She gestures behind her. “They go to the back. Volunteers, children, the caring roles. Some women are now going into the army but the generals don’t like them there. It’s like on a ship. They want them to leave.”
She does not say “sinking ship.”
She shows us some videos of young men in full combat fatigues, balaclavas over their faces and mouths, driving army vehicles along narrow country roads. They are singing along to the radio, to each other and to the camera. “They are enjoying this job” she says, shrugging her shoulders. Little boys are given guns to play with. Little girls are given dolls. This is what we learn to expect.
She tells how the young men are hopped up on adrenaline and how when they come home (if they come home), they cannot integrate into civil society. “Since 2014, we have lost so many men between the ages of 18 and 40. I am afraid that my mythical husband (she gestures into the air) is already dead.”
“300 years of this struggle for independence” she says, before she heads off to bed. “I hope this is the end of it.”
We are sitting in the morning sun, watching a plane go overhead. I often wonder how people who live in war zones ever get over the fear of aeroplanes flying above them. “In the beginning when I left Ukraine I could not relax. Now, it’s a bit like when there has been a loud party last night and you wake up and know that it is finished. Now, I can feel safe. Until I go back.”
We agree how important it is for our nervous systems to have a break. We are not all at war, but life in these times makes us all anxious, doesn’t it? Looking out at the forest, seeing the sun rise through green, we experience a moment of peace.
“I’ve learned to seek them out” says Lesia. “These magic moments.” I nod my head, calm in her gentle acceptance of how things are.
