For Those Who Stay Behind
A look at the organizations helping the people in Odesa, for whom leaving was not a realistic option.
The start of the war hit me hard. It was seeing what was considered at the time to be one of the world’s most powerful militaries invade a much smaller country. It was hearing the stories of Russian troops not being told they were going to invade until right before they did. It was the videos of armored vehicles heading toward cities full of innocent civilians. These were things that reached deep inside my soul and twisted the bits of shrapnel I have lodged there.
As a child, an absent father left me with the responsibility of crafting my own masculinity. Which I eventually outsourced to the United States Marine Corps. Some shitty slogan like “Go big or go home”, “If something’s worth doing it’s worth doing right”, or “No risk, no reward” must have seeped into my subconscious and made me choose the Marines over the other branches, and a machinegunner in the infantry on top of that. They offered to mold my chubby, hairless teenage body into the chiseled man on the recruitment posters, send me around the world to places like Japan, Thailand, and Australia, and pay for me to get a university degree when it was all said and done. It was an offer too good to pass up.
Several months after I signed on the dotted line, news of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 woke me up through the speakers of my alarm clock radio. I was 17 when I entered bootcamp, 2 weeks after I had graduated high school. I was 18 when they called me home from Christmas leave to get on a ship bound for Kuwait. Even as we staged ourselves on the desert border I thought, “This is probably all that will happen, a big show of force as a political tactic.” The ridiculously little information I knew about Operation Desert Storm in the early 90’s made me think this was just another one of those, certainly there wouldn’t be some big massive invasion by a global superpower, that was the stuff of history books. It wasn’t until about a week before we invaded that it started to dawn on me, how real it was about to become.
Now I know Saddam was a genocidal dictator, much more the Putin type than the Zelensky type. However, an invasion is just about the worst way possible to remove a bad leader from power. The impact on civilians is horrendous, not to mention all the WMD and oil money nonsense that encompassed the entire operation. The guilt of having been part of an invading military force in a foreign country is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s a trauma that will hang much heavier on me than the scars from the RPG blast that sent me home.
When I saw the first images of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, I couldn’t look away. I cycled through news articles, reddit forums, twitter threads, and telegram groups. It was difficult to think about anything else as a multitude of emotions bubbled up. Continuing in this manner, simply watching the carnage from my couch in Berlin, and feeling uncomfortable anytime I looked away was not going to be a sustainable option. After a few days I was able to gain my composure enough to craft an email.
“Hello, I am a US citizen living in Berlin. I have experience in combat zones. I have been a chef, and am currently working on photojournalism. I can handle all of my own logistics. I speak English, German, and French. If you could use some help, or know of someone who could, please let me know.
Thank you,
Lenny”
I sent this copy pasted email with some slight modifications to every aid organization I could find that seemed likely to be moving in the direction of Ukraine. If I could provide assitance to people being invaded, it was something I felt I needed to do. In all honesty, I thought the most likely outcome would be that I would end up on the border somewhere chopping onions, cooking food for refugees crossing over. Instead, the first person I was put in contact with was Robert Gamble, founder and director of the aid organization This Child Here. Our communication was brief and effective. He could use a photographer, and he had a contact for me in Galati on the Romanian border. That was all I needed. I took the weekend to pack and prepare, and headed out.
After a journey that encompassed many of the stories in my previous posts I ended up in Odesa. A quick internet search had told me that This Child Here worked to help orphans in Ukraine find families. It wasn’t until I arrived that I realized the scope of the aid Robert was responsible for. Almost everybody I met doing anything there seemed to have some link back to him.
I would like to share with you a bit about the organizations I came in contact with. I will try to describe some of the heroic work they are doing and share some photos. At the end I will provide links for anyone that feels drawn to make a donation.
За Одессу (For Odesa)
The first group I joined, and the one I spent the most time with, was За Одессу. The leader of this operation was a lady named Maryam who I was told was “the most well-connected person in Odesa.” She is actually someone that Robert had found and helped when she was a child. She now dedicates her time to helping those is need in the same city. She’s one of those people that is so incredibly dedicated and capable that you almost wanna pull them aside and say, “Hey could you tone down the badassery a bit, you’re making us all look bad.”
Her team of volunteers are also a bunch of rockstars that work incredibly hard to provide much needed assistance to the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and families with many children. All the people that couldn’t easily pack their bags and leave when the country was invaded. The tireless, selfless efforts of these volunteers remind you what it is about humanity that’s worth fighting for. Because every once in a while a baby will turn into someone like them.
They have been operating since 2009, offering a wide variety of support from small aid packages to more substantial long-term assistance. However, their efforts have kicked into overdrive since the war started. The economic situation of people already disadvantaged is exacerbated when most of the people vanish and the shops close up. Food is one of the most direct and immediate forms of aid needed. In response, За Одессу has been working in an endless 3-part cycle:
Day 1, purchasing groceries in bulk. Which is kind of like that old game show, Supermarket Sweep, if you swapped out the capitalistic values for humanitarian ones. Instead of trying to get the highest dollar value into a shopping cart, you are trying to the get the highest caloric and nutrional value into a shopping cart, for the lowest dollar amount.
Day 2, sorting the groceries into individual sacks which can be easily delivered. Each bag contains pasta, flour, rice, sugar, oil, and a packet of tea; and costs around 220–240 UAH, or about 7 dollars. Extra volunteers (mostly named Sergei) come in on this day to fill the bags. The more permanent members of the organization spend the day on the phone reaching out to new people, and people already on their contact list. After which, they organize an optimal route to deliver bags to the most people possible.
Day 3, the vans are loaded up and driven around the city.
Delivery is one of the aspects that sets За Одессу apart from other aid organizations I witnessed. Others used a collection point model of aid distribution which is more efficient for an organization. They gather all the aid to be donated at a publicly announced location, and people are free to come get some if they want it. This method, however, is more optimal for the organization than the people receiving aid. For people with mobility issues or lots of children, traveling to receive their aid package is less ideal. That is if they are even made aware about its existence.
Direct Aid Ukraine
When the war decended on Ukraine, the team that started DAU were people who were not currently in Odesa. They did, however, have a deep connection to the city and a background in humanitarian aid. They felt the call to action and immediatly stepped on the gas. DAU is a completely volunteer-run operation. It is set up to receive international donations, which can be difficult for small on-the-ground initiatives already overwhelmed and overworked. DAU helps fund organizations like За Одессу, as well as giving directly to individuals or families.
Some examples are Raina who lost her leg to diabetes, and found herself homeless and unable to afford her medications when DAU came to her rescue. Andrey receives support from DAU to help care for women in his building which include a bed ridden neighbor and his 90 year old mother Lyuba, a surviver of WWII.
Sing It Bukina
What do you do when most of the students who normaly frequent your music school flee the country? Well, turn it into a donation center for refugees of course. Anastasiia has transformed her business and her life to provide assistance to those who have come to Odesa from much more dangerous places out east. The stage of her musical school is full of bags with clothes and toys, brought to her by members of the community. One of the rooms has been turned into a day care center of sorts, where Anastasiia’s daughter, Mira, spends time playing with the children that come through.
Donations have even become a method of payment for music lessons still being offered there. Anastasiia holds up a bag of lentils, “This is what my last lesson was payed with.” In addition to the donations provided by the community, She tries to solve as many problems as she can for the people that come through her school, including sourcing hard to find medicines for heart and blood pressure issues. When the danger of staying in your house outweighs the danger of having access to necessary medication, difficult decisons get made. If places like Sing It Burkina can provide some help, enough to hold them over till they get where they are going, it can save lives.
This Child Here
There is an immense amount of help being directly and indirectly applied via Robert’s charity. It provides financial assistance to За Одессу, as well as many other people and organizations in Ukraine. There are poor families in the rural areas outside of Odesa that have been receiving aid from them for a long time.
My trip with This Child Here to deliver groceries to these families, and items for children such as puzzles and art supplies, was an emotional experience that these photos only scratch the surface of communicating. It took place on a day that Russian warships were shelling houses on the shores of Odesa. We could hear the concussive blasts as volleys of fire between the ships and the Ukrainain coastal defenses echoed in the distance.
These families often have many children to feed, and suffer from the lack of resources and support typical of rural poverty. For example, there is only one bus that comes once a week for people in the villages, should they have the need to go anywhere else.
The families have given permission for these images to be shared for fundraising purposes. Please respect their wishes and do not repost them.
How to Help
The failed Russian blitzkrieg is shifting into a war of attrition, which will naturally mean the eyes of the world will begin to look away. I understand that as the lines of refugees fleeing the country shorten, and as the videos of cities being bombed reduce in number and in the shocking impact they had in the early days of the war, the tendency is to let situations like this drift further away from our thoughts. I also understand that there are a number of other tragedies taking place all over the world equally deserving of aid and attention, and there will continue to be long after this one is over. But if you got some juice left for this cause, here is how you can help.
To donate to This Child Here visit: https://www.thischildhere.org
To donate to Direct Aid Ukraine visit: https://www.directaidukraine.org
To donate to За Одессу: They do not currently have a easy way to receive international donations, but you can donate to one of the two above and mention that you would like your donation to be forwarded to them.
To donate to Sing It Burkina: You can send money via Paypal to Anastasiia at singitbukina@gmail.com
