Manchester Community College students celebrate Ukrainian culture
Apr. 22—Manchester Community College students organized a festival Thursday to celebrate Ukrainian culture, raise money for refugees and maintain awareness of the human tragedy in Ukraine.
Over Ukrainian food, community college students signed up for a fundraising walk, bought raffle tickets and T-shirts, and listened to a woman from Kyiv tell the story of how she escaped with her three children to New Hampshire.
Nadia Nakonechny told her story to students with her sister, Olivia Babin, a Manchester Community College graduate who now lives in Pembroke, interpreting in English.
Babin said she called her sister early the morning of Feb. 24, to tell her the bombing had started. At first, Nakonechny said, the family couldn't believe war had started.
"We were hoping this would be a much smaller scale, and somewhere away from us, not in the capital," Nakonechny said through Dabin.
"The first two days I could not process it because it was so shocking to everyone," she said.
"For example, on the first day, my ears heard the sounds of bombing and my brain still could not process how, how could this be happening? A war? What is that? What does it mean?"
The next day, Nakonechny said, she woke up before dawn to the sound of explosions. From her family's eighth-floor apartment, she saw the sky lit up red and orange.
"At that moment, my husband and I decided to leave," she said.
They packed up their three young children, and headed for their parents' house in the outskirts of the city. They scrambled to figure out where they could find shelter from the bombs, but soon decided the safest option was leaving the country.
Nakonechny and her family stayed in western Ukraine before leaving through Moldova and then Romania, eventually flying to Boston on tourist visas the family had secured to visit Babin in New Hampshire.
Nakonechny and her three children were allowed to leave Ukraine with her husband, despite the martial-law requirement that men stay to contribute to the war effort. The law makes exceptions for fathers of three or more children leaving with their families, so Nakonechny's husband was able to travel with the family.
Babin is the family's only relative in western Europe or the United States, Nakonechny said, so it made sense for the family to go to her.
But back home, Babin and Nakonechny said their father and three brothers are serving — evacuating people from eastern Ukraine, delivering food and providing shelter to the displaced.
The sisters try to connect with their family back in Ukraine every day. But they can't help but worry.
"We worry, and we pray," Babin said.
Nakonechny said she had been reluctant to leave — Ukraine was developing, prospering, and becoming a better place to live. But when the war brought an end to the family's normal lives, she said there was no choice but to leave.
Now safe in New Hampshire for nearly two months, Nakonechny said her 2-year-old son had only just started sleeping through the night again after days of explosions and the family's flight from home.
"We enjoy the quietness," she said, and the peace found in nature here. But Nakonechny said she and her family yearn for peace in Ukraine, and the home they knew.
Babin and Nakonechny said they are doing everything they can to raise money, organizing bake sales and other small fundraisers, anything to raise money to send home. Granite Staters have been generous, she said, and the local Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic communities have been banding together, she said.
Babin and Nakonechny said the festival and other events and fundraisers around New Hampshire are making a difference to Ukrainians in the United States, and back home in Ukraine.
"Everything that they do is valued," Babin said.
