Ukraine vs Russia War: My Experience
My name is Gladys. I schooled and lived in Ukraine. I am married to Professor Ibrahim Abdullahi Iliya and have two daughters who are Ukrainian citizens by birth. I am a Medical Doctor by profession (Gynecologist) and have a registered business in Kyiv Ukraine by the name “Ibrange Cafe and African Shop” and “Ibrange Hostel”.
The war came to me unexpectedly. I woke up startled in the early hours of the morning on the 25th of February, 2022 with loud sounds of bomb sirens blazing through the air and people running and there was confusion and pandemonium. My phone kept buzzing with plenty of incoming calls from friends, students, and parents. Our city was hit by a Russian missile and the war began. From thence, several Ukrainian cities reported the same Russian attack. Soon my cafe and hostel became packed full of more than 100 students and even some families and pregnant women. I started feeding them for free while at the same time preparing to evacuate Kyiv.
SWe made an initial arrangement with a Bus company to evacuate at least 50 people to the Ukraine-Poland border but after making the initial 25% down payment the Bus didn't come to evacuate people. Next, we decided to use the train. At the Vaughxall (train station) there were close to 300 hundred thousand people struggling to get onto the train. I struggled to enter the train with my family, 2 pregnant women and about 80 of the students because the Ukrainian Police entered the train and demanded men to get down and allow only women and children thus so some of the students were de- boarded. The train took us to Vinnytsia from where we connected to another train that took us to Lviv. Here we met another mammoth crowd and getting into the connecting train to Uzhgorod was like “hell”. On arrival at Uzhgorod, a border city with Hungary we had to buy train tickets, and this too wasn't easy. There were over a thousand people there struggling to buy the ticket. I managed to get tickets for my family and the students with the help of some Ukrainian border guards. Arrival at the Hungarian border wasn't easy either as their Immigration control service unit at the border attended to us in batches. I slept in the train station with my family because I had to wait for all the people with me to be cleared by Immigration. This wasn't easy for me
and my kids and we slept on the floor. My husband also got injured in the left hand during the struggle to enter the train at Uzhgorod train station.
We finally arrived at A & O hostel in Budapest, the Hungarian capital on the 28th of February 2022 where an initial accommodation arrangement for 40 persons was made by the Nigerian Embassy so I had to pay with my own money for the number of persons that came with me. Several calls to the Nigerian Embassy for intervention on that day didn't yield any result. The next day, the Ambassador visited us at the hostel and paid for accommodation for two nights for additional 23 persons only. There were no feeding and clothing arrangements. I fed the people that came with me for another two days and became financially exhausted. We have heard of plans to send evacuation flights from Nigeria to evacuate Nigerians but up till now, we have not been contacted by the embassy. Some of the people that came with me have started making plans on their own to leave Budapest to other European countries where they can take asylum.
This is a trial time for me and my family as we are still stuck in the hostel in Budapest. We left everything we had worked for in Kyiv, Ukraine. Everything looks like a bad dream to me.
