Full Transcript
Olga:
I had to be here. There was no other place in the world that I could be at this moment.
Jeff:
Please welcome returning guest Olga Mahler.
Olga:
I can’t just sit here and complain and cry. I just need to do something. So I’m blind, and I imagine being there in Ukraine, I’m like, and the bombshelling as a blind person.
Jeff:
Helping the blind and visually impaired refugees from Ukraine receive accommodations for long-term shelter.
Olga:
She arrived by herself, she has even no cane on her. She was pretty much just passed on from one person to another. So my parents are both completely blind. They leave Kharkov, it’s nonstop bombing and shelling, and yet they’re afraid to go. They’re saying, we will not make the journey to Poland. We will die here. I’m not saying, you know, we are able to help hundreds, but those few families that we are and will help that still matters because every life matters. Every single life matters. The fundraiser is Help Us Shelter Ukraine, is going, we’ve been able to raise about $4,000. It, you know, it’s significant help.
Jeff:
And without further ado, reporting live from Warsaw, Poland, please welcome Olga Mahler. We hope you enjoy.
Olga:
I feel incredible gratitude to all those people who are helping. And then at the same time, I feel so angry at people who caused this. ‘Cause why do those poor people have to leave everything behind? And now they’re begging for the, you know, space on the floor and a bowl of soup. It just, like lives are just destroyed, you know, it just, absolutely. It’s just unfair, you know, unfair.
Jeff:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Today we have a special cast, a special caller coming in from Poland, originally from Ukraine, coming in from Australia to Poland, there because of what’s happening. And please welcome Olga Mahler. Olga, thank you so much for taking the time and for doing what you’re doing.
Olga:
Thank you. I had to be here. There was no other place in the world that I could be at this moment because I feel very, very passionate about what’s happening right now in Ukraine and Poland, as a consequence of people fleeing from Ukraine to the neighboring countries.
Jeff:
And you were born in Ukraine?
Olga:
Well, I was actually born in Russia. If you tried speaking Ukrainian to me, I would be able to understand you, but I wouldn’t be able to really say much. So I consider myself Ukrainian, but if you start really digging, I’m Russian, just grew up in Ukraine, but you know, all those rumors about, you know, conflict among Russian-speaking, Ukrainian-speaking groups in Ukraine is rubbish. It’s not true. Like I lived most of my life in Ukraine as a Russian-speaking, as a person who is originally from Russia, both my parents as well. Never, ever, I had any issues, nowhere. So it’s all lies and made up stories. So yes, I was born in Russia, grew up in Ukraine, and I went to the Boarding School for the Blind in Kharkov. And today, unfortunately, the boarding school is destroyed just like most of my, Kharkov City, where I grew up, where my first son was born. It’s very sad.
Jeff:
Oh, I bet, I bet. And you jumped on a plane and flew to Poland to help out.
Olga:
That’s pretty much how it happened. The war was, I wouldn’t be able to say a complete surprise, because the whole world saw it coming with the Russian troops building up on Ukrainian border. But the surprise was that Putin straight away attacked Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. This is something like personally I didn’t see, I didn’t expect. And then the magnitude of the war was clear. He was going for the whole country, and then he made his statements, and it was clear it would be a very horrible war. And the first two days in a complete state of shock, I was just glued to the TV, to Facebook. I have a lot of friends, family, in Ukraine, and I just was looking at the posts on Facebook. And I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t believe, you know, like just innocent civilians already then from, at the beginning, were targeted, you know, so I was so sad. And then one morning, I turned on the news, I was crying as usual, and then it just hit me. I can’t stay away. I can’t just sit here and complain and cry. I just need to do something. So I’m blind and I imagine being there in Ukraine and I’m on, like, and the bombshelling as a blind person, imagine people running to a safe place, but what do you do in the noise, in the chaos. As a blind person, you are going to be definitely more likely to get injured. Plus gauging supplies when everything is in shortage, you know, huge lines, everyone is for themselves. It’s a crisis, you know, and so once I saw that there were so many people fleeing Ukraine, sleeping on the floor, lying in the freezing cold, I said to my husband, look, we have to go there and help out with refugees. If I was sighted, if I didn’t have children, I would have done more. I would have taken a gun and I would have joined Ukrainian forces. In fact, I had a lot of trouble holding my Australian husband and my 15-year-old son back from doing exactly that. I said to my husband, you have no right. You have a five-year-old son, you can’t do that. So I guess coming to Poland to help Ukrainian refugees was a compromise. And I wouldn’t say it felt safe to do that because unfortunately I feel we are on the brink of World War III. It can happen any time. And yeah, Poland is just way too close to Ukraine, like potentially providing airplanes, or not, I don’t know. I’m not really following politics because here, I’m for humanitarian reasons, yes, coming to Poland was as safe as we could agree on, that we can still help and feel like we are not doing something ridiculous.
Jeff:
What was it like dropping into Poland? What was the atmosphere like?
Olga:
It’s really overwhelming. Full with people everywhere. People sleep on the floor in the railway stations, people have nowhere to go. There are people with luggage, kids everywhere, the trains are so full, like everything is just absolutely bursting with people. There are lots of stations for refugees, Polish people, I knew they were amazing people from my previous experiences growing up as a blind person in a boarding school. We received a lot of aid from them then, but now I see, oh my goodness, this is just incredible. They opened their homes. There are a lot of stations for refugees where they can get food, drinks, medication, lots of stuff, or animals, people bringing animals. That’s another thing that I know, just cats and dogs in those special carry bags for animals everywhere. People didn’t want to leave their animals behind. Accommodation is very scarce, even if you’re prepared to pay. It’s simply not there. Like we’re really struggling accommodating people, because that’s mainly what we are doing, we’re renting accommodation and helping blind people. So we meet them at the railway station or wherever they arrive to, and take them to temporary accommodation and help them to find a long-term solution. Mainly it’s going to another country like Germany or Sweden. And that was another miracle that happened to us in terms of finding the plan of actual award we would be doing here. Back in Australia, when we made the decision, booked the tickets, we actually had no plan, absolutely no plan. We knew that we could help. We sold some gold that we had for a gloomy day, we figured that’s the gloomy day. So we sold gold and took money with us, and thought well, we will do what needs to be done, whether it’s cooking soup and distributing it to refugees or whatever. The very first day when we arrived, obviously we were very jet-lagged, so sleeping was very difficult. So 3:00 AM my husband says, okay, well I need to work on my business. Make phone calls, just some emails, I’ll go to the business center downstairs in the hotel where we were staying and I’ll work from there, so I’m not in the room in case of, you know, Michael, our five-year-old son who came with us, would want to take a nap or whatever. So, and then we did fall asleep with Michael finally, and then Anthony comes and drags me out of bed and said, go, go, go quickly, downstairs. I was like, what? Luckily we could leave Michael sleeping in the room because given the conditions you would imagine, there was already a refugee lady sleeping with us in the room with two of her cats. She was the mom of a friend, and so, like, it just happened that she came, she was sitting there and crying and we were like, of course we can take you in. So it was just a very unrealistic coincidence that she was there. Very, very, you know, helpless and we took her in, but it was very good for us because she helped us to babysit Michael while we went downstairs, and met, as it turned out, that’s what Anthony wanted me to do, to meet with some Swedish people. They are a non-government organization who bring buses of humanitarian aid for Ukraine. And then they take those buses full of people, I think it’s four to seven people fits in the bus, and they take them to Sweden. And they said that Ukrainians actually don’t know much about Sweden, yes, Germany, yes, France, you know, but Sweden, where is that? What is that? So far, so cold. And they were like, we actually struggle with communication. We have volunteers, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming and we’re like, well, that’s something that we can definitely help with, with information and finding people who would really, really appreciate the shelter of Sweden, because Sweden is offering all the social benefits to refugees from Ukraine as they do to Swedish people in the same circumstances. So all the health benefits, schooling, you know, payments, everything, and they even sort of build in quickly some accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, and obviously the fact that this organization is providing transport, helping them register with immigration, putting them in temporary hotels, feeding them, you know, like, it’s awesome. Just like that, our plan, our mission in Poland evolved. We help blind people from Ukraine with temporary accommodation, and help them register with a Swedish organization if they want to, and send them off for a better life, you know, in Sweden. And that’s how our relationship evolved, the organization is called Demand for Action. And we’ve been there every single day, bringing blind people and helping them with accommodation, with meals, registering animals, because obviously Sweden wants, pets have to meet all the requirements of the European Union. We’ve been flat-out, but once we met those people, we had a clear plan and they were so happy that we could provide not only, you know, temporary relief, but actually a long-term plan, and life-changing things for people in need.
Jeff:
How did you meet up with the blind people coming from Ukraine? You had connections?
Olga:
I have a lot of friends in Ukraine who are blind because I graduated from the Boarding School for the Blind in Ukraine. Blind children don’t really go to regular schools, they still go to separate boarding schools. So I have so many friends, blind friends, because I went to the Boarding School for the Blind. Of course, people share your posts on Facebook, and my phone doesn’t stop ringing, and in fact, it’s something that I do more than anything else is coordinating, giving information, things like that, as well as translating. Polish is kind of similar to Ukrainian, but not exactly. Some people speak English, some people speak only Russian, it’s very handy, actually, to speak several languages in this situation when you’re trying to help.
Jeff:
What is it like when you first meet up with someone that just made it across the border? What is their condition? What is, what’s their state of mind?
Olga:
First of all, they’re extremely fatigued, because it takes several days to travel from, let’s say Kharkov has been one of the most severely impacted cities. A lot of refugees actually come from there. Normally a trip from Kharkov to [unintelligible], that is on the border of Poland, only takes about 20 hours or something. It would take people like three days until they make it to Poland, because trains constantly have to be stopped for safety reasons, because there is bombshelling, there is shooting. And so trains have to wait. Then when you come to the border, because obviously on the Ukrainian side they have to check everyone’s documents to make sure men who could be serving in the army are not leaving the country’s lines. Men, even though they can serve in the army, they still have to be checked very thoroughly, have special, you know, the relevant documents. So everyone gets checked very thoroughly. So there is a really long backlog of people just trying to cross the border. And then once people cross the Ukrainian border, they still have to go through control on the Polish side. And then, once they arrive to Poland, they need to change transport. There are lots of volunteers who direct people and yet trains are full, so like to make it to Warsaw, that’s another big journey for people. So the lady who we took in the first day, with two cats, she said she waited for eight hours in the cold, in the snow because she was just so overwhelmed. Like she was worried to move away from the platform where she knew her train to Warsaw would be coming, that she just was standing there, freezing. So first when you see people, they are just fatigued, extremely fatigued. And another thing I didn’t mention, not only that it takes forever to travel to the border, through the border, the trains that evacuate people are so full. So if normally, as a space that is designed for four people, at the moment it’s 15 to 18 people in that space. Imagine instead of four, 18 and a lot of children. So babies are lying on the floor because moms just can’t hold them for 20, 30 hours in their arms. And lots of people are standing, and then there is luggage. So people just put their babies on bags on the floor, like forever, on some sort of towels right on the floor. It’s very hard to change nappies, kids start crying because it’s hard. They’re in those dirty nappies, diapers, you know, like it’s incredible. And then obviously, you know, like food, water, all of that is an issue eventually because they’re traveling so long. I had a phone call from a mom who is traveling with her three-year-old for days now, they’re constantly getting stopped because the situation is getting a lot more intense, even in the Western Ukraine now, and her three-year-old for nine days, so initially they were from Kyiv, so they were in the bomb, you know, hiding from bombs, like in a cellar and then taking trains. So for nine days her three-year-old had a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. I’m sorry, I can’t convert it into Fahrenheit, but I’m telling you it’s extremely, extremely high. She had no medication whatsoever. No Panadol, nothing. So she said she was just using vinegar and water, trying to help the child to feel a bit better. So like I said to her, look, once you make it here, we will look after you. And she says, oh, all I want is just to feel safe. I said, look, if you’re interested in Sweden, we definitely can help you to get there, and she started asking sort of like where she would stay. I said, well, don’t worry, even if we couldn’t accommodate you for whatever reason, Swedish people offer sleeping bags in the conference hall that they’re renting, so like they can provide you at least with sleeping bags. She was like, that’s fine. So people are happy to sleep in the conference hall on the floor with children, with whatever they have, in the sleeping bag. And they say, it’s great, and you know, it is wonderful that all that help is being provided, and my heart is constantly feeling ripped in two. Yes, I feel incredible gratitude to all those people who are helping. And then at the same time, I feel so angry at people who caused this. ‘Cause why do those poor people have to leave everything behind? And now they’re begging for the, you know, space on the floor and a bowl of soup. It’s just, like, lives are just destroyed, you know, just absolutely. It’s just unfair, you know, unfair.
Jeff:
Oh my gosh, I can’t, it’s hard to imagine. And, you know, people were, we’re all riveted to the television and the stories coming out of there and you know, what we can do or something, and here you’ve actually picked up, made it work, got there to help, and seeing this, that really must be something to see all the people that are helping.
Olga:
Yesterday we picked up a blind girl. She arrived by herself, she has even no cane on her. She has no cane skills. She was pretty much just passed on from one person to another. Miraculously, she made it to us, because now people kind of know that we are here, we’re helping blind people. And so we looked after her for some time and talked to her about where she was hoping to end up. And she said, well, she was actually hoping to stay in some kind of like blind school here, because she didn’t know anyone. She didn’t have anything, and she didn’t have many life skills, independent skills as a blind person. So I started talking to her, she can’t make a meal, I had to unpack her things to find her a change of clothes. And I was like, well, what am I to do with this girl now? She’s 22. I think she has also some sort of minor mental disabilities as well as being blind, and comes from, like, very difficult social backgrounds, like mom, alcoholic, that sort of stuff. So I was like, what am I to do with this girl? I can’t just send her to Sweden. No one will look after her there. I can’t send her to a gym full of, you know, like 100 people sleeping on the floor. I need to find a really, really good, caring place for her. And so I’ve developed and asked some contacts in Poland, and I started calling them and it was an absolute miracle. So we had a phone call from one of the Polish, we’ll call them friends, volunteers, colleagues, I don’t know what they are. We’re all like family here now. And she said, look, I found just the place for this girl. And so we take her there, it was about 30 minutes from Warsaw, and they arrive and it’s a center for the blind. It was run by Catholic church. Some nuns were there and I start talking to one of the nuns, and I go- when she named herself, I was like, wait a minute. Were you teaching knitting in the Boarding School for the Blind in Kharkov? She’s like, yes, your face is familiar. And I just burst into tears. And this girl was so excited as well, because that nun was teaching me, teaching her, even though we have 15 years difference, she was all the time teaching blind kids in the Kharkov school knitting. And she happened to be right there for that poor girl. It was so confident, you know, like she just, it was a miracle. She was welcome there. She has her own room. There’s forest around. She will be so well looked after, it was an absolute miracle. And there are so many miracles like that, you know, like you see around, you wouldn’t be able to do as much if you were away from here. You know, sometimes all there is, is just offering your shoulder to cry. People cry a lot here, you know, like this kid, this kid, and you know, like they want to go back. That’s the horrible thing. It’s not like they’re happy to leave the country and think, woo-hoo, now we can travel the globe. You know, all those wealthier countries will take us in. No, they don’t want that. Like, no one wants that. I sent my nephew to Australia. Australia is actually very greedy. They’re just offering tourist visas. They’re saying, oh, Ukrainians don’t need long-term solutions, they will be soon able to go back. Right. Kharkov is flattened, you know, there is no city left. Anyway, so I sent my nephew to Australia, pretty much forced him to go, because he was like, no, I have my home here, I have my friends here, I’ve worked here, I can’t go. I don’t want to go. It’s tragic. It’s absolutely tragic. People are completely robbed. They’re just robbed of their destiny, of their lives.
Jeff:
Wow. That’s quite the experience that you’re getting in, to think that you went there not knowing what you’re gonna do, how you’re going to help, and look at what you’ve been doing and making this connection for the blind coming out of Ukraine and finding arrangements for them to make that next step, even though they want to go back. But like you said, back to what?
Olga:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
So, what you’re doing is just, I thank you for everyone. I know you had a GoFundMe started up, and that’s how I caught on to what you’re going to do, and I was wondering, you’re from Ukraine and this really hit home. And your parents are there still in Ukraine?
Olga:
Yes, they are. So my parents are both completely blind. They’re 74. They leave in Kharkov, sort of on the outskirts of Kharkov. It’s nonstop bombing and shelling, you know, like right there, and yet they’re afraid to go. They’re saying, we will not make it through Ukraine. We will not make the journey to Poland. We will die here. It takes them sometimes three days to find a loaf of bread. It’s just not there. And I was trying to convince them in every possible way. I said to them, even if you just make it to Western Ukraine, I found through these nuns, a Catholic- it’s not a monastery, a convent? Yeah, where they will take you in. I found a volunteer who takes people with special needs out of Kharkov. No, they are just afraid. And yet they are very depressed and scared. It’s not like they’re saying, you know, oh, that’s fine. No, they understand the severity of the situation, but they just lost all their hope. They feel very depressed, and my heart is aching for them, but I don’t know what to do. I can’t go in there and physically take them out. Yeah. It’s just hard.
Jeff:
When was the last time you talked to your parents?
Olga:
Oh, yesterday? Yeah, it’s, I don’t know. It’s just so sad. I just try to focus on what I can do here. And I feel like, okay, I help these people here and someone will help them over there. And you know, it actually is true. So their neighbor, ‘cause it’s kind of like countryside, he has pigs. So he killed a pig and he shared meat with them. You know, it’s very generous in war, you know, it’s very, very nice.
Jeff:
Like you said, the chaos that is going on, the bombing and all the shrapnel that’s all around, for a blind person to navigate, to try to get out. It just seems there’s gotta be people that are helping them navigate to get out, to get to the train, to get to the station, to- I mean, yes, people have blindness skills and all that, but this is not a typical environment.
Olga:
There are a lot of volunteers and yet it’s still hard. For example, today we sent a family of visually impaired people to Sweden from Kharkov. And we were talking a lot, what it was like for them leaving there. And they said they just chose not to leave their apartment for all those safety reasons, and just did their best to find safe spots in their little apartment, in the bathroom, away from all the windows, but to- they felt safer like that, but is it safer? Not sure. Like, they said that several times, it was so close, because there was also aviation bombing, not just missiles, but airplanes just bombing the houses, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, everything right there. They said that they didn’t dare even to step out. They’d just waited in their apartment, and I’ve talked to other people with disabilities and they said the same thing, that they just didn’t want to go anywhere for safety reasons. They didn’t feel like they could make it. But yes, there are volunteers, there is even delivery of food, and water, and medication to vulnerable people. So it’s definitely happening. People are risking their lives getting around the city and trying to provide people in need with food and water and everything. I guess another thing that I heard from people who did make it here, visually impaired people, that- sort of talking about them feeling unsafe. Not only that they don’t feel safe to go to like, you know, somewhere to hide, but also arriving to a foreign country. Okay, they’re thinking, okay, we’ll get volunteers to take us to Poland and further on, but then what, we don’t speak the language, we don’t get those visual clues that obviously sighted people have. And what? And so I actually, those people who we helped, they said, you know what, once we heard that you were here, because we know you and we understand that you understand what we’re going through, we had that courage to actually come, to get out of that house, and we knew that on this side of the border, you would be here looking after us. So that was a good enough reason for me to come, to give people hope that they would be looked after. I’m not saying, you know, we are able to help hundreds. But those few families that we are and will help, that still matters because every life matters. Every single life matters.
Jeff:
You’re part of the change. You’re part of the help that’s there. You’re making yourself available. That’s quite a…you never imagined you would be doing this.
Olga:
No, I never imagined the world would be doing this. It’s unprecedented in the 21st century, with all the Geneva conventions, everything, what is happening is just unbelievable. It’s like when I follow the news, I feel it’s some kind of fantasy. It’s not true. It can’t be true.
Jeff:
And you’re surrounded by it right now.
Olga:
Absolutely. It’s the grief, the pain, it’s just everywhere. It’s everywhere, those little children, and it shouldn’t be happening. It just can’t be happening. And another thing that people are really worried about, you know, like, sure, mom and children got out, but you know, they worry about their husbands, you know, their brothers, fathers, you know, like, there’s this also happening. Like, they worry about their families. It’s just really, really painful for people.
Jeff:
Yeah. We can only imagine. And you’re right there. It seems so strange that Russian-speaking, Ukrainian-speaking, it’s almost like families pitted against each other, possibly, because of your vicinity to each other.
Olga:
The truth is that lots of Russian soldiers don’t want to fight. They drain their tanks from the petrol and basically, okay, we can’t go, you know, just abandon their equipment. They understand that it’s insane. There was a photo of a Russian soldier covering a Ukrainian girl from shooting or whatever, it was. The only person who needs it and wants it is Putin, that’s the only one. You know, Russian people, mothers, I feel just as sorry for those Russian soldiers as I feel for Ukrainians. It may sound ridiculous, but they’re forced to do it. Look, my 15-year-old, as a career, already several years ago, chose army. He said, I want to go in infantry, and that’s my career. I want to serve in the Australian army. And I understand from the point of view of the mother of a child who will serve in the army, that once you pledge to your country, to the army, you are not free. You can’t disobey. You are told what to do, and it’s just, I feel just as sorry, like, I mean, I understand they can just say, okay, kill me. I’m not doing it. And they will be killed, you know, they will be killed. There’s thousands and thousands of people are getting 15 years imprisonment for just peacefully protesting on the streets, children in Russia are getting arrested for bringing flowers to a Ukrainian embassy, you know, it’s, you know, the Russian people hate it as much as Ukrainians do. They just can’t really do much about it. When I was leaving for Poland, I had Russian friends, from Russia, who live in Australia, they were calling me and weeping, you know, like they were saying they were very, very sympathetic. So it’s all made up, it’s not cousin against cousin willingly, they are forced to do that because Putin is worse than Stalin. He has nothing, nothing human within him. He is prepared to destroy his own people to achieve his personal goals and ambitions, and it’s so selfish, and he has no morals. So he’s killing both Ukrainians just as much as his own people.
Jeff:
You know, the politics of this can go very deep, and what you’re doing for humanitarian, the needs that you’re helping, I just want to send a big thank you to you, your husband, and your son. He’s there.
Olga:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
And he’s doing it.
Olga:
Oh yeah.
Jeff:
He’s keeping the babysitter entertained, the refugee babysitter.
Olga:
Yesterday he was actually helping to make sandwiches at the blind center for dinner. So he was very, very helpful. And then when we were leaving the Ukrainian girl in the blind center, he gave her a hug, and said, I hope you love your new home. It was so sweet to watch that.
Jeff:
Does he like cats?
Olga:
He loves cats. He’s very happy that people bring cats. Yeah. So he plays with cats, lots of cat opportunities for him.
Jeff:
When I saw your post about the fundraiser, that made me dig in and then I had to contact you and find out when you’re landing in Poland. So is that still open?
Olga:
The fundraiser is Help Us Shelter Ukraine, it’s going, and we’ve been able to raise about 4,000 Australian dollars. You know, it’s significant help. It’s great that people sympathize, that people are happy to donate. It’s wonderful.
Jeff:
I mean, what you said about a bowl of soup and a sandwich, you probably never thought that much of it before, but today it’s a lot.
Olga:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff:
Just anything that you can do to help.
Olga:
We brought from Australia a suitcase, a large suitcase, 30 kilos weight of medical supplies and equipment. My husband said, oh, what a great way to retire as a doctor. So he just donated everything that he had. And yesterday we actually brought it to the center for the refugees. And the Polish doctor was extremely grateful for all those medical supplies. And we got in touch with another center that just was sheltering 85 people all in one big room. And they said, we’ve just simply ran out of food, four cans, four cans of some sort of beans or whatever, they had left. So they’re writing us a list of things they need, that’s hygiene products, diapers, food. We already found like a minibus, so we’re going to load it with things and to take it to them. There is a lot of help being provided, but because the magnitude is so unimaginable, I think it’s two and a half million refugees in such a short time, even though the whole world is trying to help it’s just very, very hard to provide enough for such a quantity of people. It’s overwhelming, but definitely the whole world is helping. It’s beautiful to see. It’s actually very beautiful to see.
Jeff:
It’s such amazing stuff you’re doing, just unfathomable from a perspective sitting here, just imagining what it can be like. And, you know, you walked in and you just took charge and could do, can do, and doing what you’re doing. So I want to thank you from everybody. Like I said earlier on, everyone thinks what can they do? And here you are doing it. So if people want to contribute, I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Olga:
Thank you, that’s so lovely, thank you.
Jeff:
Olga, I know you’re tired. You’re busy. You’re probably overwhelmed a little bit. Thank you to you and your husband for what you’re doing for everybody there, and being that connection for the blind, coming from Ukraine, giving them hope and the courage to make that trip.
Olga:
Thank you for passing on the information. People need to hear it. People really need to hear what’s actually happening. Thank you. The whole world is helping. It’s beautiful to see. It’s actually very beautiful to see.
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