The volunteers who abolished the boundaries of carelessness in the Siret Customs

The volunteers who abolished the boundaries of carelessness in the Siret Customs

Text by Mădălina Olariu

The road from the main road that connects Botoşani county to Suceava and enters directly into the town of Siret separates just before customs. From there to the border crossing point is a straight-line road over a distance of three kilometers, studded with police cars and buses for transporting refugees. About 500 meters before the customs itself, the tents erected by organizations in the area begin to line up, where refugees find a few moments of respite. There they can eat or warm up for a few moments and receive information about the possibilities of transport or accommodation. The place looks like a mini-town, although it's not a destination. For the people who made dozens of hours through the cold to get here, the Siret Customs is just the beginning of a long journey.

On the day the war broke out, on February 24, in the Siret Customs there was only an oppressive silence, broken only by the noise of the full bags, dragged with difficulty on the asphalt by those who were fleeing scared of what was to come. The people crossing the border did not even know if they had stepped on another land different from that of their country. "How, I'm already in Romania? That's it, I've passed, I don't need any more checks?" wondered a blonde young man, with glasses, and with a backpack in his back hurriedly taken as the only luggage. He stopped the people he passed by to ask each of them how to get to a station from where they could take a means of transport and get to an accommodation he had booked in advance, together with a friend of his.

Now, as soon as they pass customs, people feel that they are not alone; they are even surrounded by volunteers, translators, people who fill their hands with casseroles with food, teas or scarves and blankets, to warm up. The atmosphere is sad, but they have there the feeling that no matter how great the misfortune in everyone's soul is, at least they do not have to go through it all by themselves. There are next to them volunteers from associations large or small, from all over the country, who came to customs with the first refugees and have not left until today. The Romanian state arrived at Siret — a few days later, which is right — and set up tents and camps.

"I keep saying I'm leaving, I'm leaving, but I haven't got it"

When the people from Casa Share settled in the Siret Customs, immediately after the outbreak of the war, they say that there was nothing around: no toilets, not even lights to guide people in the dark. After the mobilization of the authorities came, the flow that ensures the transport of refugees from customs to the railway station, airport or bus station has become a continuous one. "We've been and we're there, we're seeing the suffering and we're trying to solve it, and people are seeing if you're a robot or if you're involved. At first there was nothing, there were some buses of private people, they tried to take as many people as possible, but they did not cope, it was effectively chaos", recalls Bogdan Tănasă.

Bogdan Tănasă founded Casa Share to help, with the support of people with a big heart, families who did not have a roof over their heads to build a house. When the pandemic came, he began to collect donations from the country to the hospitals in Iasi, he carried masks when the doctors did not have. He also bought an RT-PCR testing device, given that there was only one such device in the hospitals in Iasi.

So as soon as he found out what was happening beyond Romania's border, Bogdan got in his van with the thought of carrying lighters of fire for the families and centers that were hosting Ukrainian refugees. Since then, however, Bogdan has not been able to give up at home. For him, as for all seven volunteers at "Casa Share", the days since the war began are a permanent "go-come", in an attempt to help as many families as possible. "When we arrived, there were very few people here, but it's incredible how simple people came together and all came to do good to these refugees who didn't know where else to go. I keep saying I'm leaving, I'm leaving, but I haven't got it, I wash my clothes in the sink and I stay another day. It's too painful what's happening here," Bogdan tells me.

Refugee crisis backpack

The image that impressed Bogdan the most was that of mothers crossing the border on foot, with a suitcase after them, holding their children tightly by the hand. Frightened, after hours of standing in a row at temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius, they need for the beginning a place to stay, at least for a while. "We are waiting for them 20 meters from the border, we are the first to make contact with them and first of all we have to earn their trust, because they are scared." – Nelson Mandela

From the very first days, the people from Casa Share have designed a "crisis backpack", which those who cross the border receive. In it they have a bottle of water, a sandwich, napkins, hats, stockings, disinfectant, as well as a card with credit included so that they can get in touch with those left in the way of the war. They say it was a kind of "survival kit."

Little by little, casa share have increased the size of the "crisis backpack" – they provide transport to an accommodation in Gura Humorului, where women can stay as long as they need, where they can eat and rest. "I made a circle of hostels with which I talked and I said to them 'do a good deed, open the guesthouse that we will help you warm it up'. It costs between 500 and 1,000 lei per day to heat a hostel, plus three meals a day for 40 people and man can not carry this burden indefinitely. So we carry food, we bring solid fuel, we try to help these people to resist", bogdan explains to me.

After more than a week there, Bogdan noticed that women begin to smile only when they realize that both they and their children are safe. That's when I take out the phone and show the people in the house where they're staying what happened and what they left behind. I tell the volunteers how they saw that their house was bombed or the school where their children were studying until recently. "People in Ukraine are not used to someone helping them, they find something very strange to be helped, only when they warm up, when they see the safety of that accommodation room and that we treat them nicely, as if they begin to easily gain confidence. You see them transforming from the women who stood with their heads bowed into women who seem to be blooming."

Day and night in customs

"We have been there since the beginning, since all the tents in the area appeared. Since then, we no longer have a day and we have no night," says Viviana Hutuleac, a volunteer from Rădăuțiul Civic, an association formed since 2017 and known especially for local initiatives. The people from Rădăuţiul Civic were from February 24 in the Siret Customs and they organized themselves as soon as they could, together with those from the Red Cross, because, they say, "together we are stronger".

50 volunteers from Rădăuţiul Civic are engaged in the activity of the tent set up after customs, and over 20 other volunteers coordinate all activities: from intermediation of accommodation places to ensuring transport, receiving and sorting donations. From the beginning they devised a form in which people who wanted to provide accommodation could sign up and then centralized the data. The volunteers were day and night to help those who arrive in the country extremely tired and who first want to rest, before seeing in which direction they are taking it. "Each of us has done a lot more things, we can't say he's a man who just does something," viviana says.

In the tent they share with the Red Cross, the volunteers barely find a corner to sit in for a few moments. All the places, including the nooks and crannies, are full of products of all kinds that they have stacked so that they can make an aisle where they can pass. Inside are metal shelves loaded with baby food, diapers of all sizes, napkins, hygiene products, clothes and blankets. Also there, on a whole shelf is a mini-pharmacy from which volunteers take out, when needed, essential medicines for refugees. The most sought-after are treatments of all kinds for children, which will quench fever or various pains.

From four hours a day to ten

In front of the tent are placed food and especially sweets that are offered to children in exchange for a smile. "We have established how to arrange the products and we try to respect it that way for each shift. When we came here one day it was crazy, but now we know where to find them", tells me another volunteer, Manu, as his colleagues call Manuela Grigoraș. He invited me between the mountains of clothes and products, in which he tries to maintain order.

Manu says that the organization came gradually: if in the early days there was a "total chaos, a madness" in which no one knew what to do, now each volunteer has his role. Some of the volunteers have to ensure permanence at the customs tent as many hours a day as they can, others deal with organizational issues, such as finding accommodation and means of transport. Although theoretically it would be enough four hours a day, most of them are caught by the multitude of chores they have to do and also stay ten hours each. It is only when they feel that they can no longer move their hands and feet from the cold and fatigue that they realize that they have stayed longer than they should have.

Several volunteers in Siret noticed the same thing: the women who crossed the border were scared and distrustful, so any help received from the volunteers initially seemed to them to be a form of aggression. "There were two women with three children, who came with their own car, but who were very scared because a man approached them and insisted that he take them by car, although it was clear that they had their car. Women do not trust men very much, especially those with beards, the face does not help them in this situation", says Manuela with a smile.

"Approach them gently, do not stuff them into the net if they have not asked for them, especially if you do not know where they are going and if they can carry everything you offer them," is the call to the WhatsApp group where all the volunteers involved are gathered, immediately after the end of a meeting. Manu rarely reads the guidelines to understand better and believes that it really takes very good coordination to be effective. Volunteers say that since they settled into customs, every moment of the day they are faced with a case that impresses them. One evening, a family of young people with a one-and-a-half-year-old child who had just crossed the border asked for their help and those from SMURD, because the little one could not stop vomiting. They couldn't believe how the stress of going out of the way of war can affect even the little ones, who can't even perceive exactly what they're going through.

A refugee family with seven dogs has hardly found its place

The night before, Manu was in charge of accommodating a family consisting of a mother, a 25-year-old daughter and seven dogs, six of them large, 20-25 kilograms each, who occupied almost the entire women's car. "They didn't have any luggage, just the clothes on them and the papers. It was very difficult for them to find accommodation at hotel Mandachi in Suceava, where they stayed until I found them a house in the yard, of some good family friends who said that I can stay as long as needed", explains my volunteer.

Although many refugees cross the border with the thought of moving on, the two women said that their only plan is that they want to return to Ukraine when the war is over. The girl's mother asked for asylum, and the girl told volunteers she just wanted to return home. "I keep in touch with all the people and families that I helped to find accommodation, I asked for their phone number and I checked them if they are well, if they need something", confesses Manuela Grigoraș. He says he will go to visit the two women staying with their puppies 20 kilometres away to make sure they don't miss anything.

When they feel safe, refugee women begin to say that they actually do not know where to go, although initially, out of fear, they want to give the impression that they know very well what they are going to do. There are women who hope that the war will end soon and that they will be able to return to their home, where the family will reunite, but for most the Siret Customs is the starting point to a destination abroad. That's why volunteers help refugees and make a plan for further, talk to them and try to offer them advice. "What we're seeing now is a wonderful unity. If the pandemic has brought out everything that is most miserable from the people, made us quarrel among ourselves, now when there is war we see a total unity throughout the country, and this is fantastic", says bogdan Tănasă optimistically.