Women at train station in Ukraine. Image: Supplied
Pictures of laughing children playing a game of catch on patchy green-brown grass, watched by their gurgling baby sibling, brought home to me the reality of the displacement of war.
The happy images were sent to me by an old university friend, D, who has lived in Germany, close to the Danish border, for more than four decades. Her accompanying WhatsApp message read: “Our Ukrainian refugee family has finally arrived and is settling in.”
My friend added that the new arrivals have “sad stories to tell of hunger and fear. And loss. So much loss — of dearly loved ones, of home and property. And pride.”
This story began at the start of the war in March — a month after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Days after a shocked world received news of the hostilities, my friend, D, called me to say the war had affected her household in a very personal way.
She described the trauma experienced by her partner, T, a Czechoslovakian, who had been triggered by the war news. Memories of another invasion by the Russians (and members of the Warsaw Pact) were still fresh in his memory. As a teenager in 1968, T’s family had watched helplessly as invaders marched into Prague, killing 137 people and wounding another 500. It was an image, she said, that was seared into his brain and still caused distress.
So, when television cameras panned across the landscape, showing thousands of Ukrainians fleeing their homeland, T began to formulate a plan to help them. Within days, he’d sourced medical supplies, non-perishable food items and blankets, loaded them into his truck, and driven the essentials to Ukraine’s neighbour, Poland.
It was then that he put his name down as being available to house refugees. It has taken the German government four months to process the refugees, with the first families arriving in the middle of August.
Yes, the German state pays the nominal rent and living costs of the displaced Ukrainians, but the magnanimity of my friends, who have opened their homes to complete strangers, floors me.
I am reminded of the generosity of strangers when South African freedom fighters were fed, housed and hidden — often putting those who sheltered them and their families in jeopardy.
The cost of war! I don’t think that anyone imagined just how globally affecting the Russian invasion of its neighbour would be.
It has gotten personal for me too. A friend who is lending me his apartment in Lisbon in Portugal early next year tells me the utility bill for which I will be responsible — particularly the cost of heating — has doubled in the last year.
The Russia-Ukraine war has led to a cost-of-living crisis that, the United Nations reports, has exposed an estimated 1.6-billion people to vulnerabilities around food, energy and finance.
In the process, it has caused a global energy crisis as supply disruptions result in a punishing rise in costs. Russia supplied the European Union with 40% of its natural gas last year, a percentage that Europe intends to cut by two-thirds.
President Vladimir Putin has responded by demanding that Europe pay for gas in Russian roubles to help support the value of the currency. Poland, Bulgaria and Finland said a hard “no”, which prompted an angry, spiteful response from Putin — cut off their gas supply altogether.
There are Game of Thrones undertones. Winter is coming. Everything is beginning to look bleak. As the cold season in the Northern Hemisphere approaches, so does the threat of severe price increases.
We all know that when the going gets tough, people want those they have elected to make the pain go away. According to British news sources, nearly half of Conservative voters in the UK support the re-nationalisation of Britain’s energy industry.
In fact, one newspaper survey found that large numbers of Tory voters wanted energy companies to be taken over by the state to ensure that radical solutions to the rising cost of living could be found.
It’s crazy how everyone thinks that the polar opposite of where they are in a crisis might provide a solution. We’re in the middle of our own energy crisis — the recent insanity of level six load-shedding in the coldest part of our winter is still fresh in our memories. We know that there have been loud calls for the privatisation of our parastatal utility Eskom.
Somebody should warn the Brits about putting faith in the government to provide an energy supply and ensure regulated tariffs. It has not worked well for us, besides which, our state-owned enterprises seem to be beyond repair. Well, at least for the foreseeable future.
When, on 25 July, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the government’s intention to implement “bold, courageous and decisive actions to close the electricity gap” there were few cheers. Nobody of sound mind really believes there is an immediate solution that will forever end load-shedding.
In some parts of the so-called Global North, saving the planet from global warming seems to have been put on hold and there seems to be backward movement. Germany has passed a law to bring back oil and coal-fired power plants, in case there is a critical gas shortage. And, if the predictions being made by experts everywhere are true, there will be.
I suppose that with natural gas prices 10 times more than normal, it’s an unavoidable move in a country with severe winters.
The Financial Times reported that there was to be an emergency meeting of EU energy ministers. Such a gathering makes sense if you consider that the gas price hit an all-time European high late last month, bringing with it the threat of economic recession.
A recent visit to my 86-year-old godmother in Northern Ireland was instructive. The curmudgeonly dowager is unsympathetic and thinks people of the 21st century are, in her words, a bunch of crybabies.
She remembers a time before central heating and tells how, growing up next to the Irish Sea, the only access to warmth was blowing on your hands and a wood fire. Her mother would fire up the wood-burning Aga stove to cook on, yes, but also to keep the wee house warm.
Of course, today wood fires have been criticised as bad for the environment. And they demand the cutting down of trees which is equally bad for the planet’s oxygen supply.
It has made me wonder whether we should be preparing to return to times of old. But that means the burning of more fossil fuels … which is certainly bad for the planet.
I give up.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.