Valentina and Sergei Shavloskaya are two grandparents aged 66 and 67. She is retired from the agricultural industry, where she was involved in seed production; he is a former soldier, ex-policeman, then construction worker, who became a sculptor, after having worked in Germany and Poland.
Two children, three grandchildren, whose photos adorn the cups for tea. They live in a house surrounded by a vegetable garden in Reni, a large village in southern Ukraine, near the border with Moldova and Romania, where thousands of Ukrainians have already crossed to flee the fighting, among nearly two million internally displaced people in Ukraine, in addition to the three million people who have fled the country, according to the United Nations (UN).
Sergei would have liked to join the civilian forces manning the checkpoints. But his health problems do not allow it. So, in the cellar, amid the canned pickles and the wine stash, they went to get their stocks of bottles, which they keep to make alcohol, and gave them to the men of the territorial defense so that they make Molotov cocktails.
Above all, when Ukrainian families began to flee their bombarded cities, they opened their homes, remade the beds in the rooms of their children who had become adults, and took in and fed up to twelve people. “Many people in the village did like us,” explains Sergei.
Very practical help
This is the case of Alexeï Panin, 22 years old. Employed in the insurance sector, where he deals with quality procedures, he lives in a house he shares with his grandmother. It now hosts four people from Odessa. As his own mother left for Germany several years ago to rebuild her life, two rooms were available. “They may be staying for months. We’ll see. One day, tomorrow, next week, next year, I could be in the same situation, and I would be happy to be helped. » His grandmother is happy to feed them, he says, with a smile.
Michele Potgieter, 49, a missionary in an evangelical church that occupies three floors of a building in the city center, organized with volunteers the delivery of food from Romania. “We mobilized donors from Germany, South Africa, New Zealand, France, to finance the aid”, she explains. She herself welcomes a family of six from Odessa into her house. “I don’t know for how long, whatever. »
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