Emmanuelle ended up typing “diabetes + 1″ type on Google and her eyes widened at the screen. “Oh my God !” exclaimed the Toulousaine, rather accustomed to testing the ground of business real estate than leafing through medical books. Here she is grabbing her phone, ready to move heaven and earth so that the youngest of the three Ukrainians she is sheltering is taken care of as soon as possible. She contacts a doctor friend, who puts her on the trail of an endocrinologist, who yells at her on the phone that she needs “absolutely find a solution within two or three days”, what it is “a matter of life or death”… but that there is “incompatibility between Ukrainian material and French material”. We are mid-March and Emmanuelle, who thought “just helping out by reaching out to a family in need”, finds himself at “dealing with a life-threatening emergency” between two business meetings.
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Finally, everything is back to normal. A solution and doses of insulin are found, and Sophie, 16, can continue her diabetes treatment 2,940 km from home as if nothing had happened. Emmanuelle, herself a mother, breathes a good blow by telling this episode and while Larissa and her daughters, Anastasiia and Sophie, returned to the country: “How stressful! It was gibberish to me, I didn’t know anything about it. Between us, I felt quite helpless in the face of the situation, I did not control everything.”
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It’s a fairly shared observation: after 76 days of war, some French people who have helped a little, a lot, enormously the 70,000 Ukrainian refugees in our country are starting to get tired. Among these anonymous told us their story, nobody, absolutely nobody don’t regret the time and energy spent. “Simply, they warn, we have to admit that we have to manage things that are beyond us.” Emmanuelle, for example, also had to find an appointment with the optician for Larissa, the mother, who forgot her pair of corrective glasses while fleeing kyiv, but who obviously cannot be found in the Health Insurance files. Her husband Arnaud also “demerged” so that the mother and her two daughters benefit fromliability insurance “in case something happens to them” in the apartment in downtown Toulouse that the couple graciously entrusted to them.
“It’s getting by for everything”summarizes Laure, a 59-year-old Parisian who has put her work “on pause pwithin a week, “the time to accompany a Ukrainian family who landed in Paris with a tiny shopping cart and two backpacks”. We had to dress them, find a mobile phone, fill the fridge… “In short, to make sure that everything is going well, that everyone is well settled, that they don’t miss anything. The first few days, I must have made a hundred phone calls.”
“It’s not old friends you see again. It’s people who fled the war.”
Isabelle, 58, did not think long when an acquaintance called her to entrust her with a mission: “Could you support a Ukrainian family please?” “I said yes straight away. My first question was: how can I help?’ Result: in a month and a half, I became a banker, travel agent, psychologist…”
The question of money, as delicate as it is, always comes up very quickly. While every Ukrainian refugee is eligible for the asylum seekers allowance, the ADA, which amounts to 6.80 euros per day for a single person and 10.20 euros for a couple, French caregivers are not eligible for any expenses. Laure lets go in an embarrassed whisper having already spentstar “several hundred euros”. And Isabella, “far from being a millionaire”, “something like 2,000 euros”, between Airbnb accommodation (600 euros), shopping (100 euros) or train and bus tickets (400 euros)… “Faced with the emotion, I did not count. We laughed about it, but I almost could not use my bank card. I was in the red in fact.”
“We organized pots, we asked our relatives if they wanted to participate.”
Lucie also begins to scrutinize her accounts. Since March, it has been lending her 70 m2 T3 that she usually rents for 1,200 euros per month to Alexandre, Arthur, Alexandra and Viktoria, two Ukrainian couples and their children Arina, 6 years old, and Léon, 9 months old. But now, seven weeks later, “I am faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, I would like to be able to recover the accommodation to re-let it by this summer. On the other, it is impossible for me to put them out.” At the town hall of Toulouse, he was made to understand that there was not really a solution. Finally yes, there is one: to make his guests pay rent. “Out of the question”she replied. “Do you see me asking for money from people who have lost everything? If I lent this apartment to the base, it was selflessly.”
Nevertheless, neither Emmanuelle, nor Lucie, nor Laure, nor Isabelle are rolling in gold. So why, for example, not to imitate Italy, which pays between 25 and 30 euros per day to each host, as explained La Repubblica ? Asked by franceinfo, the entourage of Marlène Schiappa, the Minister Delegate in charge of Citizenship, did not wish to answer us. It is therefore impossible to say whether such a device is possible in the short or medium term.
Laura thinks she has the explanation: “It’s very simple: we play the good Samaritan but afterwards, it’s up to you. I have the impression that the State is unloading on individuals and associations, which do a wonderful job. I’m thinking of the Red Cross in particular. She says “blame” for example at the prefecture of Calvados. “They offered to house several Ukrainian families in a disused barracks near Caen, including the one I accompanied as best I could. Very good! Except that the place was not up to a dignified welcome. , the toilets were dirty and clogged”, she assures. Therefore the March 18, two hours after the tweet of the prefect who welcomed the initiative, Laure, who works in fair fashion, didn’t hesitate to say what she thought about it : “Dear Mr. Prefect, thank you for your welcome but… these refugees this evening have clogged toilets, no wi-fi for [avoir des] news from relatives in Ukraine, etc. Thank you for your attention to improve their reception.”
Dear Mr. Prefect Thank you for your welcome but… these refugees this evening have clogged toilets no Wi-Fi for news of relatives in Ukraine etc… Thank you for your attention to improve their welcome
– Laure du Pavillon (@coeurentreprise) March 18, 2022
Contacted by franceinfo, the prefecture of Calvados promises that the families are accommodated on the site of Bretteville-sur-Odon “in renovated rooms with individual toilets and showers and the essential comfort so that this temporary shelter takes place in the best conditions. One person was affected by this problem of clogged toilets when the device was put in place. L The association intervened without delay to respond to these inconveniences.” Laura thinks aloud: “And if I hadn’t made this tweet, what would have happened? How many people elsewhere in France are still waiting for an answer at this time?”
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Not always easy indeed to find an interlocutor at the town hall, at the prefecture or at the departmental council… “And when you have someone, it’s rarely the right one, ironically one of the witnesses. Last week, the town hall told me to check with the prefecture and the prefecture told me to check with the town hall. It’s Kafkaesque.”
Isabelle, for example, had to wait three weeks for the Ukrainian embassy in France to respond to her about a family wishing to return to their country.. “I wrote to the embassy on March 31, I received an answer on April 24. I was waiting for instructions, the beginning of an answer, I didn’t get much.” “Me and the other people who were helping this family, we found ourselves in a strange position. On the one hand, who are we to judge the danger or not of returning to kyiv? And on the other, if we don’t tell them what we think, who will? And ssomething happens to them on the way back? What can we do ? Sequester them? she quips. It is disproportionate as a responsibility.” “It must not encroach too much on private life, but in fact, it encroaches, ends up admitting Laura. You have to find the right support posture, help without making all the decisions for them.”
“You almost find yourself adopting a family. I hadn’t properly measured the organizational impact.”
In Paris, in the offices of the Coordination Committee for Aid to Ukraine, which depends on the Ukrainian Embassy in France, the phones are ringing less now than at the end of February, when the bombs began to rain down on Ukraine. . But Iryna Kuderska and her team of volunteers now note “something else” : “We receive calls from French people who are disillusioned. A few days ago, someone who lives in Ile-de-France contacted us to say: ‘Please come and pick up the Ukrainian woman I am hosting because she is ungrateful, she pulls the mouth all the time'”, says, still stunned, the spokesperson for this structure set up in a hurry at the start of the war to inform the Ukrainians arriving in France and the French seeking to help Ukraine. “Indeed, it is someone who comes from a country at war, who sometimes has relatives still there. There is a reality, it is not a guest house. In the medium term , yes, there may be character compatibility issues.”
“We are all volunteers. The students who accompanied us must now revise their lessons, I work myself. We were between 25 and 30 at the beginning of March. Now we are between 10 and 15.”
Iryna Kuderskaat franceinfo
However, out of the question for Isabelle, Laure, Emmanuelle or Lucie to discourage anyone from making themselves useful. On the contrary: if it had to be done again, they would all do it again. “I will welcome another person within the hour if necessary”, repeats Isabelle, who regularly takes news of “her” family now back in Ukraine. As for Lucie, she again invited “her” six Ukrainians to lunch a few days ago. It was a Sunday. She must also soon set another date.