By Yuliya Shilnikova
Transcript
The Rock of Cashel is lit up in blue and yellow. We gather in the darkness in the car park at the foot of the Rock. We form a circle, wearing our national Ukrainian dress or blue and yellow. There is a big crowd. It is Saturday, 5th March 2022. We have Ukrainian flags and banners. We sing the Ukrainian and Cossack anthems.
We start to walk from the Rock to the Plaza. It isn’t just Ukrainian people here, there are many supporters from different nationalities. I want to thank them and Cashel Arts Festival for helping to organise this march of solidarity. I look up at the Rock of Cashel, lit in blue and yellow, and I remember when I first came to Cashel seven years ago and the support I felt then too. It feels so peaceful here and such a lovely place to be.
Two weeks ago, on 24th February, my husband’s friend rang at around 5am to tell him that the war had started. We couldn’t believe it. For weeks the army had been gathering on the border of Ukraine but none of us believed that they would ever cross it. We didn’t know what to do. We watched Ukrainian TV to follow what was happening – all the channels were showing the same thing.
I rang my sister in Kiev, my mum who lives near Melitopol, my aunt in Dnipro. My husband contacted his family as well. I was so worried about my sister who was alone in her apartment in Kiev with her two-month-old baby. I asked her to ring me every hour to let me know she was ok. I went online to look at the webcam to see what was happening in Kiev. I can watch but if something happens, I will be totally powerless. I didn’t sleep.
I told my sister to go into the basement. But it was very hard with a young baby and her husband was away so she just stayed at home.
Where my Mum was, it happened so fast – they soon took control of Melitopol. But it was more scary in Kiev.
I rang my friend Viktoria, also from Ukraine, who lives in Cashel too and she said we need to get my sister out of there. But my sister was hesitating as her husband wasn’t there and she didn’t know whether to go or not. Viktoria’s cousin in Lviv helped my sister and organised volunteers to get my sister and my nephew on a train to Lviv. The train was packed with people. Nowhere to sit. A man helped my sister get a seat and my nephew slept. It took 13 to 15 hours as it was an evacuation train and it was very slow. She had to change his nappy on her lap in the crowded train.
At Lviv, Viktoria’s cousin collected my sister and baby and took her to their home. It was safer there. I started to arrange for her to come to Ireland. First to travel to Poland and then stay there until my husband came over and helped her to reach Ireland.
She was coming with nothing, but people arrive at my house and suddenly I have a pushchair, a cot, a playmat, clothes and other things for the baby.
They arrive and I meet my nephew for the first time. My sister looks very tired. She only has one t-shirt which is dirty with baby milk. She comes into the house and showers and we take care of the baby together.
There was huge support from the community in Cashel for Ukraine, from Cashel Arts Festival who also helped organise the Fundraiser night at Brú Ború on 17th May, ‘A Night of Film and Art for Ukraine’, where I played bandura (a traditional Ukrainian instrument) and we watched a film The Earth is Blue as an Orange. My Aunt, who has come from Dnipro with her grandson, had an exhibition of her paintings. Everyone tries to help us in any way they can. It means a lot.