By Natalya Bucuy • Cardinal Managing Editor
“Unity is the rock on which the entire edifice of a nation is built.
Without it, the strongest of structures will collapse into rubble.”
Nelson Mandela
At 4 a.m., Cristina woke up to an emergency siren blaring through the pre-dawn city. Fog covered the buildings outside. “Everything stood still, with that siren blaring.” Up to that point, Cristina only knew war from books. Now, it was at her doorstep, in her hometown of Lviv, Ukraine.
That morning was the last one at home for Cristina, her husband, and two pre-teen children. Expecting their third child and uncertain of the future, the family grabbed their passports and a few necessities, and went out the door.
“We always liked having our car clean and full of gas at all times,” Cristina recalls. That saved time, as the family bypassed all the lines and crowds at the gas stations. Soon, the four of them crossed the border to Poland. In six months, they joined Cristina’s parents in Pennsylvania under the United for Ukraine program.
Since then, as the conflict in Ukraine continues, the family extended the stay for another two years. Back home, friends and neighbors try to live their normal lives between the sirens, bomb shelter retreats, and military draft notices. They go to work and to school, dealing with the physical, emotional, and mental affects of the war. Cristina wishes she could at least visit, if not go home for good. She doesn’t know when that will be possible.
Cristina Yaremchuk, 35, tells me her story in Ukrainian, as we sit in a cafe in Bucks County. I try to keep up, as her Western Ukraine dialect is closer to Polish than to Russian, my native tongue. I understand most of her words. When I’m not clear on something, Cristina slows down and repeats or finds Russian words to use. Her body language helps as well, hands and facial expressions aiding the narrative. In our conversation, I try to use some of the Ukranian words I hear. In the end, we understand each other. Most Russians and Ukranians do, unless the prejudices of war get in the way.
I met Cristina last month at a fundraiser for Immigrant Rights Action (IRA), a Doylestown-based non-profit that supports immigrants through their transitions by connecting them to resources. The agency provides advice, legal support, paperwork assistance, and translation help, among other services. The organization helped Cristina when she first arrived in America and needed help enrolling her two older children in school.
The event, A Night of Unity, aimed to bring people together through advocacy for immigrant communities. Heidi Roux, the Executive Director of IRA recalls meeting the late-term pregnant Cristina for the first time. “I was hoping she wouldn’t go into labor, right here in my office,” Heidi laughs now, two years later. Today, Cristina volunteers at the organization and helps newcomers adjust to their new homes, whether temporary or permanent.
“People are people everywhere,” Cristina says. “They all have similar problems, they all love their families and their neighbors. Wars are not about people like us, wars are political.”
In that sentiment, we unite.
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