We thought Russia was our brother.
We stood on a little spit of beach, and looked out across the water. Not the beach I was used to. There, in front of us, was Russia. And just behind us, was a village, that had recently been bombed by them. We were there to bring some essential aid to this broken community. The only safe way in was now along an almost impassable muddy track, which the soldiers called the Road of Life.
This was my 4th trip with Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) since the invasion. Felix and Conrad travelled with me on the last two visits. This time Amory joined me.
I’ve worked with GEM for a number of years. I want to be useful, I want to be involved, boots on the ground not just a seat on their board.
I’ve watched Michael Capponi grow his foundation from the tiny bud of a disaster relief agency into a full blown humanitarian organization. He took the traditional ideas of charity, shook them up, scattered them out and pieced them back together in a shiny new and powerful way.
This is not just about immediate aid, this is about long term help. Not just handing a child new clothes and coloring books after a hurricane has destroyed their home and obliterated their school but actually rebuilding their home and their school. Not just offering food boxes to displaced persons during a war but employing local farmers to cultivate the food that goes in those boxes. Farm to Frontline. Getting the most amount of aid, to the most amount of people, for the least amount of money, in the least amount of time, Michael always reminds us.
Constant threat
We spent a night in Kyiv. The city is bustling with life again. We stayed with Antonia and Micha, who are part of the GEM team. Antonia is scared to be in Kyiv. But also understands being here offers her the opportunity of work. Vera and Andre were living here the last time I stayed. Vera is also scared. She and Andre have been with GEM since the invasion. A missile exploded close to their home and Vera now suffers acute PTSD. She wants to move every night, she feels safe no where. Despite therapy the terror still exists in her mind.
Kyiv may be bustling but its under constant treat. We spent several hours that first night in an underground bunker, sirens wailing above us. Missile warnings lit up on everyone’s phones. Putin’s nightly game to break the Ukrainian resolve. When it was over we wandered back to the apartment, dawn was breaking, birds were chirping. Another day fighting for freedom was beginning.
In the GEM HQ Michael walks us through the stats. As a Board Member I am interested. Amory was more interested in the window program. After a missile hits a building, explains Michael, the explosion will shatter the windows in all the surrounding buildings. If this happens in the winter, residents have to buy wood and board them up, which is dark and miserable or they move out becoming homeless or refugees. If their windows are fixed pronto then they can stay in their homes. Brilliant.
To the chaos of the front line
From Kyiv we head out to the Zaporizhzhia province. I have not been here before. I had been in Bucha after it was freshly liberated and that was fairly shocking. The smell of death thick in the air. The town blasted to nothing. A stunned woman shared a photograph of her husband, lying dead on the ground outside their home. His eyes had been gouged out by Russian soldiers.
But in Zaporizhzhia heavy fighting persisted and we were in bullet proof vests and helmets most of the time. GEM are one of the few humanitarian agencies consistently serving this province. In the ghostly city of Huliaipole we were the ONLY volunteer group. There are pass words needed to get through the security posts protecting these towns “We are going to pick apples” our driver says. Don’t worry, these secret phrases are changed daily, perhaps even hourly. When later I saw the pin on the intelligence map of where we were, I understood. The front line was right there.
For these humanitarian missions the GEM team has military support, sometimes even hiding the GEM sprinter trucks and traveling in camouflaged armored vans. Before entering the town we would be met by a local brave resident, who would guide us in through back roads and take us down dark staircases into hidden underground bunkers, where life is lived in darkness and fear.
Life in darkness
Some of these bunkers had twenty or thirty people living in them, some had only a few. But every bed, every spot, was valuable. Underground was safe. After our first drop-off to these bunkers, my peaceful, gentle son, Amory, came out into daylight shocked and angered. How could people be living like this? He imagined his own grandmother down there, underground, with no power, no kitchen, no running water, and perhaps most heartbreaking of all, no privacy. When they needed the bathroom there was only a bucket, behind a curtain.
These are proud people. They don’t want to always be receiving free aid, they want to be offering something in return. They want to thank us. Hot tea is boiled using their valuable water, soup in anticipation of our arrival is made, kept warm under thick blankets, flowers freshly picked by someone courageous enough to venture out are propped up on a rickety table. One of the ladies had an injured foot, where does she get medical help I naively ask? There is no doctor, no dentist, no medicine. There is a war raging above them. They are all the casualties of this war.
Even when we travelled to more peaceful parts of the province the need was still great. A crowd of thousands would gather in the hope of receiving one of the GEM boxes and GEM is managing to deliver 150,000 of those boxes monthly, using an intricate network of insiders.
Vitaly, whose heart makes up for his driving
Vitaly, is the director of this initiative for Zaporizhzhia, he is a true humanitarian. We travelled with Vitaly, we laughed with Vitaly and we learnt from Vitaly. Just after a near-by explosion went off he reached for my arm “the scare has very big eyes.” he said, trying to reassure me we were safe. And we were, with our close knit bodyguard of soldiers, tapping their watches reminding us not to linger long. “Life is boiling here, when the sunny day sets” Vitaly said, meaning the bombing was relentless at night. But we were the lucky ones, we had our vests and helmets, we had inside intelligence and as Michael also likes to remind us, we had the Grace of God.
God is everywhere in Ukraine. The people believe, and the people pray. Churches and faith stand tall in this rubble of war, gold domes glint, and the answer to the question “what can we bring you, what do you need?” is always “we need God to bring us peace”
I had tea with a group of beautifully educated women on my last afternoon, with one young mother, Anna, translating. We ate home made cheese blintzes and fresh strawberries picked from wild overgrown gardens. Their town had been bombed by Russian ‘terrorists’ as they called them, only a few weeks ago, and they were people in pain, not just the pain of fear and loss, but also betrayal. “You see, before the war started we thought Russia was our brother.” Anna said quietly “But now it is not.”
Thank you for sharing this. We need to be seeing these truths, and your work is felt.
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