Our 4th week started with a sad realisation that after all the practicalities are sorted and families settle a bit, it starts to hit them what actually happened. We were very proud to be able to provide work, accommodation and school for children in Walbrzych, Wroclaw, Krakow and Warsaw. For those who want to stay in Poland we got the registration sorted, waiting for some small government funding, of course that might take a while, but at least there is hope.
Then we started to hear reports of children waking up screaming in the night, having meltdowns looking at a wallpaper that had red design on it, refusing to go to school, to do anything because it’s not home and its all too strange. The settling in part is hard enough but dealing with emotional support and Post Traumatic Stress much harder. We got in touch with some Russian speaking psychologist, we hope to get the ball rolling but it’s a long road before them.
We also had a lot of sick children and mothers and a lot of elderly, some disabled and around 80 yrs old! As Poland is now overloaded with refugees ( over 2 million ) the doctors that were initially eager to help for free are now swamped and it takes 3 weeks to book an appointment to get a simple prescription. We needed to reach out to our EU crisis team, to our so very helpful Sukanti Radha in the UK, to sort out one urgent prescription. We are truly blessed to have her.
Warsaw is busier than ever. Lots of devotees are transiting through but wanting to stay for a couple of nights. Yesterday we had 35 in our temporary house, 20 in the temple and 17 scattered around Warsaw in various devotee homes. That changes daily.
We had a group of 20 devotees coming from Mariupol, some travelled to Germany, some stayed. We also just found that the temple in Lviv is being evacuated and they are all coming to Warsaw temple. First bus of 16 arrived last night. We managed to get some mats and blankets and put them in our main temple room. More are coming over the next few days.
Our cooperation with other EU yatras is crucial now. We had a lot of amazing help from Puspa Priya in Czech and SadaSiva in Germany, we sent groups to Simhacalam, Goloka dham, some devotees to Radhadesh and Sweden.
Wroclaw is setting up food distribution in a refugee centre with the great help of Parasurama Prabhu and Food for All. Dvija vara is spending a lot of hours sorting out all the health and safety checks, venue and gathering the team. We hope to see Food for All UK coming again soon to distribute prasadam at the border crossing.
Source: https://dandavats.tumblr.com/post/679963685253464064/iskcon-poland-viva-kultura-aid-for-ukraine
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