Hosting Refugees

Klaudia Kosicińska

The borshch. Photo taken by the protagonist of the text.

She stayed with them for three months. She emphasises that they lived together as flatmates, which was helped by the fact that they were of a similar age to their hosts. They invited her to get-togethers with friends, for a drink or a glass of wine. She often just listened to the conversations, which was helpful not only in learning Polish – she simply relaxed.

At first, living with strangers and feeling dependent on others bothered her, she felt uncomfortable, but she emphasizes that she always wanted to return to the apartment. “I just wanted to, for example, talk to them. I didn’t want to spend the whole day without talking, you know, because I’m just at rock bottom. Yes, yes. Emotionally. And that was okay. And everything was acceptable.”

One of her safe spaces in Wrocław was a salsa dance hall. She went there every Friday, which helped her make new friends and maintain at least part of her former life. “I used to dance in Kyiv. When I came to Poland, I decided that I would first get to know the salsa community and then everything else. Work, courses and so on. And I went straight to that community. As it turned out, we have quite a large community in Wrocław. I started going there and meeting people.”

The decision to stay in Poland was made a little easier by the fact that Wrocław immediately impressed her. She considers it a more cosy place to live than Kyiv, although she values both cities for their multinational character.

She attended courses at Fundacja Ukraina, took part in many other initiatives aimed at refugees, and asked Magda and Patryk for various information related to life in Poland. She had to find out what the process of recognising her psychiatry diploma would look like. She already had professional experience in Ukraine, but she wanted to be sure that she would not have to start all over again in Wrocław. Patryk and Magda helped her with official matters, and Magda also supported her in preparing her CV.

She was ready to take on any job, although she recalls that Patryk did not quite understand this – he believed that she should focus on finding a job that matched her skills. And that, as Anastazja says, is easier said than done. She did not know the language very well at the time. She decided that she had to accept her limitations.

And she worked – in a medical packaging factory and caring for an elderly, infirm man. She preferred this to tedious work on the assembly line. “I washed him, looked after him, cooked rosół for the first time. God, how to cook it, I didn't know. And he, I knew he was very grateful, because, you know. He was a good man. He played Russian music for me. Although I don't listen to Russian music, but yes, you know, he expressed his gratitude." Before she could return to her profession, she worked at a municipal institution supporting residents – she remembers this job best.

When I ask her what was the most difficult thing for her about being a guest, she replies that it was cooking borscht. She offered to do it herself, and then felt she couldn't back out. She believes that being able to prepare it for strangers is a real challenge. She lists the expectations associated with it and explains: “You know, it was my first time cooking it for strangers. You don’t know what to add to make it just right... It’s such a responsibility. Because I don’t really like cooking, you know? But you have to make borscht. That’s the way it is”.

Her personal preferences and lifestyle conflicted with her desire to be kind to her hosts and the expectations that may have arisen. It is unclear whether these expectations were related more to her gender or her position as a guest. “Maybe Patryk wanted me to cook more often. He likes borscht. And I didn't have the strength to cook borscht. Do you understand? (...) Or like when I once said that you have pickled cucumbers, and we also make pickled tomatoes. Patryk said to me: well, then you'll make us pickled tomatoes. And I said, yes, yes, I will, I will. So it was a misunderstanding.” She can’t remember any other situations where she would say that they didn’t quite get along.

If she could, she would continue to function in this arrangement, but after two months, the couple began to feel the need to live together. They also decided to get a dog, which Anastasia even met during a visit to the flat shortly after he left. They are neighbours, they see each other from time to time on the tram and occasionally send each other greetings via messenger. Anastasia still attends salsa classes.
‘Maybe I'll finally make those pickled tomatoes this summer and take them over to them.’
 

We are sitting in the Kino Nowe Horyzonty café, where Anastazja tells me about her experience of being hosted by a young couple in Wrocław a few weeks after the full-scale war began. I notice that during our hour-long conversation, she uses the word ‘safe’ eight times. My interlocutor searches her memory for events from March 2022. That's when she started living in Wrocław, accidentally meeting Patryk and Magda, with whom her friend had previously stayed: "They just offered me a safe space. And I felt very safe with them, really. I didn't know any Polish at the time, I had only just started learning the alphabet there and I couldn't get the hang of the language at all. And I was even more stressed because I couldn't express myself. We couldn't understand each other. And it was very... very... psychologically terrifying. But Patryk and Magda talked to me very gently and reassuringly and simply gave me the space I needed to adapt calmly. And that was important, wasn't it? At that moment, even more so."