In a previous post I described my trip through villages by Romania’s northern border, where I spoke with a few Hutsuls – Ukrainian ethnics. That happened a few days before the war started. That was how I reached Lupcina, an isolated village hidden away among forests, just a stone’s throw from Ukraine.
There I met, among others, Viorica and Vasile, a young Hutsul couple. After spending eight years in Germany, they returned to Romania with their three children.
“What with the pandemic, a lot of people in our parts came back from abroad,” says Viorica as she throws the trout brought by her husband into a basin.
Pavel, one of their boys, also returns from the sled, who now goes to school in the village, where he does four hours a week of Ukrainian (like all other hut students here). “He also speaks German and English, but it was harder for him to learn Ukrainian at school,” says his mother. “It’s been a lot of changes for him coming back from Germany, and with all those languages, you get confused. But anyway, it’s good to know several languages.”
“You see, we have relatives in Ukraine and Russia, but these borders have separated us generation after generation. We are here, they are beyond. Look, you can see Ukraine with the naked eye! We live in very strange times, we all move everywhere, but in the end we still want to come back home,” adds her husband, Vasile.
At the exit of the village, we stop and take with us Gheorghiță, who is hitchhiking to get to the high school in Rădăuți.
“During the pandemic, I didn’t go to school at all, not even online,” says Gheorghiță. “Sometimes they were sending something on Whatsapp to do some exercises, but that was the way it was.”
He says that he feels good at the high school in Rădăuți. “I get along well with my colleagues and people don’t bother me because I’m a Ukrainian hutus.” On the contrary, the teachers are happy that there are also `huțui` students there because we bring something extra and it’s a more diverse space.” He wants to go to college in Iași, to study mathematics: “I would like to be a teacher.”
(Ukraine seen from Lupcina)
Like many others from Lupcina, Gheorghiță also has relatives in Ukraine. He was never there.
“In the past, every year they organised trips to Ukraine with students from the villages, but I didn’t have the chance. The pandemic came and there were no more trips. And now the war comes and no one goes there anymore.”
Testimony donated to the Museum of Abandonment for the Abandonment Baggage campaign. This project is financed by CARE through the Sera Foundation, Care France, and FONPC. The testimony was collected by journalist Ionuț Sociu, who has also written on the subject for the Scena 9 platform: https://www.scena9.ro/article/refugiati-ucraina-film-documentari. Photos by Marin Raica.
