A church in Zhytomyr we have been supporting, is caring for 100-120 families a week who are displaced. Many are from Mariupol. They need to tell their stories. We need to hear them.
This is the horrific story of one family who fled Mariupol. (**Warning, distressing**).
"We are refugees from Mariupol. This is our history of war.
We had 2 apartments, 2 cars. We were happy. My granddaughter lived with her family apart from us, and my daughter and son-in-law lived separately. I have a great-granddaughter, she is 6 years old. She danced, sang, and drew and most importantly, she had a happy, loving family. We dreamed, travelled, rejoiced, worked, made plans.
And so it came on February 24. Something terrible happened - the war.
On March 1, they turn off heating, electricity, water, gas. On the street cold, snow, in the apartment. We live in jackets and hats.
And the real hell begins.
Shooting, explosions, planes, flying bombs. At first we hid in the vestibule, 5 of us. We sleep, if it can be called a sleep: sitting, legs are numb, you can not straighten, there is no place. The child is afraid to enter the room because they are bombing all the time, the house is shaking. She holds her mother's hand with her cold pen and asks, 'Aren't we going to be killed? I don't want to die.'
We need something to eat. We light bonfires on the street, break trees, cook some soup with dirty hands, try to make flatbreads because there is no bread, And we are constantly bombed, we throw bowls and run to the basement, there is no food. We went for water for 3 blocks, and stood for 4 hours.
When we managed to bring water, we were happy. We even had to collect snow in buckets, it melted and we could wash our hands. Cooking became less frequent, it was scary. People went out to cook, exploded from shells, corpses lay in the yards, buried right in the yards.
We understand that we are dying of hunger, cold, bombing. 14 days of hell. Clothes are torn, dirty.
We say to ourselves: '"We must live! We have a child!"
And we take a risk, we come out of the basement. I have a small bag with documents, a bottle of water and all that. We quickly run into cars, do not have time to leave the yard, the bombing begins. My daughter shouts to me, "Mom, faster." And I'm 81 years old.
I raise my hands to heaven and shout in a loud voice, sobbing, "Lord, where are you? Can you hear me? Save us and save us!"
I look around, our cars are broken, they are gone. I hear a shout: "Get in the car!" A car without windows is on the move. This is the car of granddaughter's friends. After driving a bit, we saw a convoy of cars, join and leave the city. We arrive in Zaporozhye.
After halfway, we run out of cars and fall to the ground in a ditch, clasping our hands around our heads, everyone screams. I thought it was all over, get out of Mariupol, and we'll die here.
At one checkpoint, they wanted to not let us through because there were no documents for the car. And we understand that this is the end. My daughter is hysterical, she screams, cries and they felt sorry for us, let us go.
Along the way, volunteers gave us bread, water and food in the window of the car. The windows were taped up, but it was still torn. It's cold in the car, the wind is blowing, we value it.
In Zaporozhye, a stranger fed us and left us for the night. In the morning we went to the Dnipro. In Dnipro they gave the broken car to the relatives of the owner of the car.
What to do next? Where? We have nothing, one handbag, which I press to my chest.
We were again helped by friends of my granddaughter we met at the station and we settled in a building where we stayed for 14 days. There we washed, took off dirty, torn clothes, people brought clean ones.
Now we are in Zhytomyr. We rented a house, we are helped by volunteers, the church. Thanks to all the people who meet on our way and help.
With God's help, life goes on."
