Of the Wealthy Ukrainins Who Come in Their Jeeps

This is a story of Sylvia Stumpf - volunteer at the Coordination Centre for Ukrainian Refugees in Varna

A huge black SUV covered in dried mud and weeds approaches the parking lot in front of the Coordination Center.

One, two, three long-haired kids pour out of the doors. They are between 10 and 15 years old, one with white-blond locks in her long black hair. Two boys and a girl, they look as if taken out of an American teen movie, beautiful, nice clothes, maybe they've only got their jackets mixed up. Hah, the tall girl is wearing a sling! A baby? Or a dog? A hunched woman comes from the other side. They're close to me now and I can look them over. She is beautiful, haggard. Slender, maybe 40? A woman with no age, with hair that has until recently been been cared for by a hairdresser. They come in bunched on top of each other.

"You have coins? I collect!" Asking in Russian. It's a boy, ten years old, with a ponytail, gathering his carefully styled hair.

People who were rich until yesterday, it's obvious.

The lady opens the sling, inside is a baby, about a year old.

I sit down next to them.

She is tired, asks me how much to pay to get her a packet of biscuits for the children. I give her the whole bag of food, carefully prepared by the volunteers. The children don't want to eat, even though they haven't eaten since the day before. Only the baby is sucking the biscuit with flushed cheeks.

I tell her we can take them to a hostel, all of them in one room. There are no more places at the hotels, we filled every room with the last buses. We even sent a bus to Tarnovo. She nods. 'Wherever, I can sleep on the ground, if only we can be in one room together. Thank you very much." She says that she has some money, for about ten days, and that she has to think about what she can work, because until yesterday she was a housewife with a big house outside the city. I start up some idle conversation as we fill out paperwork.

"You have great kids, how are you managing with 4?"

"5. They were 5, Vova, my oldest is 19, and they took him. With my husband. Can I put the car for rent here? Where's the info on that? I'm afraid to sell it. I have nothing else."

One of the volunteers walks by and yells, "Hey, how come we don't have amy volunteers to clean a hotel and open it tomorrow?" The woman says to the older girl holding the baby, "Let's go clean, if you want, MAYBE THEY WILL GIVE US MORE FOOD."

I rush to bring the little one back, who is going around the desks collecting pennies for his collection. He explains to me, "Mom took my box of coins when we left, I have nothing, I've been collecting them from all over the world."

I send them off. The jackets were not theirs. They couldn't take any clothes, the bombs were heard very close and they rushed, at the border a woman gave them some of her luggage. She turned and asked me for elastics for the long-haired boys. "How much does it cost to cut their hair? It's too much to bother now."

The baby grinned and sent me a kiss from his mother's retreating back.

From the rich Ukrainians who come in jeeps.

Damned be the murderers.

And those who are stingy even for coffins.