Perheentalon sunnuntaikokoontumisten perustaja Tamara Polyakova kertoo tässä artikkelissa kuinka Perheentalolle päädyttiin. Artikkeli on viime keväältä ja englanninkilelinen, mutta se tullaan päivittämään suomenkieliseksi.
When the war started, I was absolutely devastated. My outlook on life has been strongly shaped by the large body of anti-war literature that has been written in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Writers like Vasily Grossman (Life and Fate) showed with absolute clarity that every human life is infinitely meaningful. And now my country, the one that taught me about the evils of war, was itself waging a senseless,
meaningless, terribly cruel war, killing thousands of human beings.All I could do was to read the news, terrified of what I saw.
This is when I noticed that meeting with like-minded friends and talking about the war and our feelings really helped me keep my sanity. And when Ukrainian refugees began arriving in Joensuu, I tried to help them by talking with them, and getting them to talk. Icouldn’t invite everyone to our home – there was not enough room for the growing refugee community. So I decided to contact the staff ofPerheentalo, where I have visited with my own children several times before. A large percentage of Ukrainians are women with children, so I thought that it would be nice to organize meetings where the mothers could talk, and the children could play together – for this,
Perheentalo provided the perfect space. The staff of Perheentalo – Mervi Tahvanainen and Mia Ylhäinen – have been very helpful with organizing the meetings, and Pelastakaa Lapset have sponsored some of them, for which I am very grateful.
I have also been in contact with Hannu ‘Hane’ Vähäkoski, a tireless organizer of aid for Ukrainians in Joensuu and in Ukraine itself. Hane has started a WhatsApp group for Ukrainians in Joensuu, and this is where I advertised the Perheentalo meetings. The first meeting was a little awkward – people just silently sat at the table. No one has yet met the other refugees or the volunteers, everyone felt uncomfortable
in their new environment, so it took some time to get the conversation going. But now our meetings are very loud and chaotic, everyone has already made friends and acquaintances and has a lot to discuss with each other. Some weeks more than sixty people would come! People talk about their experiences in Joensuu, their new lives. Sometimes they also talk about their old lives, the bombings, the explosions, the
dead people they saw, the relatives that they had to leave behind. Sometimes they cannot talk, silenced by the horrors that they have experienced.
Last Sunday, one woman told me about her new house that she and her husband have built themselves, and just moved into the previous year. “We were so silly,” she said, “we went to all of Kharkiv’s stores looking for the perfect upholstery for our couch. We ended up ordering it from Italy and had to wait weeks for delivery.” They only spent one winter in their new family home – after the war broke out, it has been first robbed of valuables by the Russian soldiers, then irreparably destroyed by bombing.
I still find it difficult to believe that this war is happening – so violent, and so absolutely senseless.
One thing that all Ukrainians agree on has been the wonderful way that they were received by the Finnish people. They have often expressed to me their thankfulness for the help that they have gotten from host families, from educational officials, and just from people they encounter in stores and on the streets. Most of them have never been to Finland before, and they were amazed to discover this wonderful country and its people.
I plan to continue organizing the meetings in Perheentalo. I have a job and family of my own, and sometimes it is hard to make time for volunteer work. But I think that this is the least I can do. And maybe this will help at least a little to atone for the guilt of my country toward these people.
For our weekly meetings, I try to buy some snacks to have with coffee – candy, cookies, fruit, which I buy with my own money or with donations. Sometimes people bring some dessert that they have made themselves. If you would like to donate some money or some food for these meetings, please contact me (tamara.polyakova@uef.fi) and we can arrange this.
