3 Weeks in Kharkiv
When I got off the train in Kharkiv over 3 weeks ago, the first thing to greet me was an air raid siren which, however you want to look at it, is a sign of coming home. It's taken me a little time to adjust to some of the changes in my volunteer coordination role, but what hasn't changed is the warm welcome and affection every day in Hell's Kitchen. From that perspective, it felt as if I never left. Winter is finally changing to spring. It's difficult to describe the daily difficulties and stress of a hard, cold winter, even without the war - wearing enough layers of clothing, boots, crampons, always looking at your feet to avoid slipping (again!) on refrozen snow, the shrinking of life because it's really too cold to go anywhere. One of the foreign volunteers put it eloquently: "Perhaps one of my biggest takeaways this time is the snow. The hardship of winter, the fragility of life/injury due to nature not aggression." Now the first bulbs can be seen, the...