A hundred people are welcomed in this EDF holiday village. Mainly women, about twenty children also and a few men, non-Ukrainians who made their lives in Ukraine, some married to Ukrainian women. This Friday morning, when the Red Cross organizes this emergency reception with food donations from the food bank, men play a game of small horses to kill time. Further women discuss. Around a few tables in what is the cafeteria of this vacation village, two teenage girls are doing a puzzle. Younger children, pencil in hand, are coloring while outside two young boys are playing football.
Everything seems calm, almost innocuous. Except that at the entrance, the volunteers of the Red Cross distribute the piles of food arranged on two large rows of tables and, at the very back, a table disappears under clothes of all sizes. It is indeed an emergency shelter for war refugees. Everyone has the same nightmares as Tatiana: “_I don’t sleep, I always see myself running_, to seek me shelter in all my dreams. It’s quite traumatic.“She was a first-year computer science student in Kyiv.
All have left members of their family and/or friends in the country and all are trying to reach them, to have news. Many want to return to the country, as soon as possible. This is the case of Iula, a woman in her thirties, whose words her husband translates: “as soon as the situation is stable, as soon as possible” she said. Her husband, Amin, would prefer to start a new life for her in France: “I’m a cook. In Ukraine I have a restaurant, and with the war, everything is over. _As I speak a little French, I decided to come here to France to live a new life_. Because my daughter, Dominica, is small. 5 years. It’s a lot of stress.“
Lots of stress, lots of questions in mind, and for many the desire to work. It is currently impossible for them. Soon, all will be received in the prefecture to study their status. They should receive a “displaced population” card. A card valid for 6 months and renewable up to 3 years. A card which will give them the right to social security, the right to a financial allowance like refugees even if, administratively, they are not yet, the right to school children, the right to work legally in France, the right also to APL, to be able to live independently if they work.
– Philippe Thomas