Peeling potatoes also saves the world
What did you feel when you saw this common aid movement of ours?
JULIA CELEJEWSKA: The joy of seeing others throw themselves into helping so much, which means I don’t have to do it yet and can join in later. I was also in awe, I shared the mood of solidarity. Then there was also fear, because I saw how much energy the volunteers put into these grassroots activities, and that without previous experience and institutional support it would result in a lot of fatigue.
NATALIA SARATA: My first thought: I hope no one shuts down our social media. We often live in such isolated communities that without social media, support can collapse – ‘aid swarms’ will have no way to coordinate or even form without them. And I was furious: the crisis on Poland’s eastern border with Belarus has been going on since August. On one border, there is admiration that society works so efficiently, and an exclusion zone and criminalisation of giving aid on the other. I keep asking myself: who do you have to be to get support in Poland and Fortress Europe while fleeing war?
Who?
NATALIA: For social solidarity to be activated on a grand scale, it should be a white mother with her child. And she must be fleeing a war that is geographically close enough. Then empathy based on the vision of ourselves in the situation, our own children, dogs, cats, bombed cities, has a chance to break through the fear of strangeness. Although I somehow understand the process, I still can’t believe that there are maybe 5-6,000 people fleeing from the war, also waged by Russia, such as Syria, on the Polish-Belarusian border, who have been captured since August and mercilessly pushed back to Belarus, Putin’s ally. And here suddenly we can host 2 million people in three weeks. This injustice of those in power, this obvious violence pisses me off and breaks my heart. A few days after the outbreak of the war, I also began to be irritated, though not surprised, that the Polish state continues to be passive – it relies on grassroots uprisings and local governments.
You have written that out of the necessity of the moment, but also the abandonment of the needy by the state, many people have become activists. You emphasise that activism is not just driving people in cars from the border or welcoming them into your homes, but also cooking soup or explaining the new situation to children. Suddenly, almost all of us are emotionally involved. What should fresh activists prepare for?
NATALIA: I would like people who have no experience of working in aid organisations, who, apart from working, are also afraid – because, for example, you don’t know whether Poland will be next – not to enter the mode: I can bear it, I can stand it, I have to listen to everything and bear everything. There is empathy fatigue that people are prone to, for example, making room in themselves for other people’s difficult experiences. Accompanying traumatised people can also trigger secondary traumatic stress, or STSD, in female volunteers. Plus, we operate under a lot of stress for a long time, which can first cause what’s called ASD (acute stress disorder), and then – this is no joke – PTSD as well. On top of that, our lives have changed, we are terrified of the political situation, and we fear for our safety and that of our loved ones. Let’s not try to be heroes and heroines at all costs. If we don’t take care of ourselves, a day of rest, a moment of quiet, we may even harm the people we are trying to help – venting our irritation on them or our own children. Or cause an accident while driving once again from the border without rest. It’s worth seeking support for ourselves, not just for our guests. You can apply for it, for example we can help you vent it and get in touch with reality. There are now many places that offer this support – it’s a big change.
JULIA: When I worked in development aid in Palestine, I observed this mechanism in myself and other activists: if we are to help people who are much worse off than we are – because their lives are in danger, they have no access to water or food – we must first focus on securing their needs. But if this situation lasts for a long time, we not only deplete our resources, but also begin to drift away from our normal lives – our previous activities suddenly seem too trivial and inadequate. This is a dangerous signal that means we are losing touch with our normalcy and losing ourselves in helping.
And what should this recovery involve – yoga, a breathing session?
JULIA: The recovery time should depend on the time you have spent helping – it should be long enough. We need to give ourselves a longer time, maybe a few days? To go for a walk, to watch stupid shows, to cuddle, to eat, to go on vacation, to do nothing. And only then should we check in with ourselves about how and if we want to continue our commitment.
And how do we get rid of this sense of the triviality of our own existence in the face of tragedy? How do we see sense in cleaning the bathroom without getting annoyed at the child who wants to drink in the only cup that is in the dishwasher?
NATALIA: I find it very helpful to do what Jolanta Brach-Czaina called ‘occupying oneself’ in her book ‘Cracks in Existence’, the repetitive actions, deeply rooted in everyday life, that hold up the world: cleaning, tidying up, arranging. What also helps is the awareness that the perspective on heroism instilled in us in Poland: messianism and martyrdom, ‘Poland is the Christ of nations’, is based on a model of frontline heroism that fights and dies for the cause, not one that sustains the continuance of life. This is where some obvious gender division comes in. And the world, even the world of refugee action, is not just made up of fighting, but also of peeling potatoes, making beds, wiping the kitchen counter once again. So, what helps me maintain a distance is bustling around and the realisation that if I don’t come back from the action and ground myself through stroking the dog and cooking dinner – for myself, too – I’ll overturn the bus I’m driving to pick up refugees from the border.
And how can we get rid of the feeling of shame and guilt that we can no longer help, we would like to forget about everything, dance and drink wine, but it is not appropriate when people are dying and fleeing?
JULIA: I was helped by a meeting about caring practices in crisis organised by the Political Critique Cultural Centre. I had previously been in contact with activists who are intensely active, Facebook and Instagram were full of reports, so I succumbed to the impression that everyone has power and knows what to do. There, for the first time, I was in a group where other people feel just like me – they are tired of the constant call to action when they have chaos and anxiety within them. Being in this group has helped me get rid of the sense of guilt of not doing enough. Another thing that helps me is to remember that this anti-rest activity is strongly related to the capitalist paradigm which tells us that our worth depends on how much we do and how productive we are. I don’t agree with the way the world is arranged, and it also allows me to regenerate.
NATALIA: I myself sometimes feel guilty about not doing enough because I was raised to keep doing something. So, when I start to feel guilty about not taking anyone in tonight because I need to rest, I pat that dear mummy sitting on my shoulder and reminding me: ‘You will sleep in your grave, there are people to be taken care of’, and I tell her gratefully: ‘Thanks, Mum, for those values, so today I’m the one who I’m going to take care of’. I know that shame or guilt will come because it’s an automatic reaction to trigger me into self-sacrifice for others. I am prepared for this and try to persevere in this recognition of my own need for a day off. We may feel shame, but let’s not let that feeling colonise us.
That is, to let shame come like tears when we are sad?
NATALIA: Come and then go. Don’t bully yourself with this shame. See how much energy it costs us to struggle with crying, suppressing anger, or constantly doing something out of guilt. For example, we spend it on activities to drown out sadness or anger. It drove me to burnout some time ago. It’s worth stopping for a moment and looking around at where we are at, even before burnout occurs.
JULIA: In the first days of the war I threw myself into small relief activities and felt worse and worse. I felt like I knew this state, but I didn’t know what it was. And it occurred to me that I was in mourning – because of the proximity of the war, and therefore the deaths of soldiers on both sides, the civilians being killed. It is also mourning for lost normalcy. Border situations trigger mechanisms from the past. And here you still have to support others.
On the other hand, action also helps reduce our own tensions and fears.
NATALIA: Of course, acting helps with anxiety. But it’s very important for us to remember that this is not an intellectual decision: I’ll start helping to escape sadness and insecurity. It is our automatic, protective response to danger. This is why some people fight, i.e. they throw themselves into helping, some run away, i.e. they distance themselves a bit, they do not think about what is happening or they think about leaving Poland, and some remain frozen. For many people, facing difficulties helps regulate the nervous system. In the short term, this is great. However, our bodies are not prepared to run on the savannah for three weeks or more without a break. Every energy gets depleted. And already at the entrance to this crisis we as a society were tired of others: for two years there has been the pandemic, for almost seven – an acute crisis of democracy and social solidarity, social polarisation is the main tool of politics in Poland, which we perceive as extremely threatening to the sense of belonging. What I find encouraging in all of this is that this collective uprising, seeing ourselves acting together across divides, can become uplifting. The hope of bonding society awakened in me.
We welcomed the Ukrainians into our homes. Strangers, traumatised, maybe we manage to get along, maybe there is a language barrier, and maybe we have come to like each other, maybe not. Maybe our two-year-old daughter, like at a friend’s house, wakes up mum at 3 a.m. and demands to play because she wants to finally have her all to herself. What are we to do with all of this?
JULIA: If there is resentment or ambivalent feeling toward the family we are hosting, don’t be ashamed of it. We are slowly moving from an intervention aid situation to putting our lives together in one space. It’s not easy. We must signal our needs and take our relationship to another level a bit – from helper and supported person, we should start a partner conversation, like an adult with an adult. And set rules for living together in that space.
NATALIA: Probably not only are we tired of them, but they are tired of us and the situation – temporariness, living on someone else’s dime. By the way, the law ‘40 zloty per day for a refugee’ only intensifies this, because it deprives the people we host of their subjectivity. It is important that we see that this relationship is mutual. They, too, might never be friends with us if they didn’t have to. They are in a country and using a language they don’t know. And we have to deal with the fact that the state is absent. In our living rooms and bedrooms we must play out situations that emanate from the great international conflict sweeping the world. It’s a crazy challenge.
The infrastructure of care was created spontaneously, it was ‘home-made’.
NATALIA: But it can’t survive in this form; it has to be based on something. Otherwise, it will always work at the expense of the people.
Agnieszka Kosowicz from the Polish Migration Forum voiced an important thought that is already circulating on the Internet – about the harm we will do to Ukrainians if the aid is not raised to a higher level and coordinated. About kidnapped women and children. About people who will get fed up with host families, or already have. Such thoughts are very depressing and quenching to some.
JULIA: These mechanisms emerge whenever a large refugee group appears in a country. I worked for an organisation that supported Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Accepting refugees and finding them accommodation in private homes or camps is the first step. Later various tensions arise, be it cultural, even if it seems that Syria and Lebanon or Ukraine and Poland are close in this respect, or competition for access to the labour market, especially if the economic situation deteriorates, as it did in Lebanon. Expecting a refugee to cheerfully cook Ukrainian borscht with us, find a job after three days, and move out after a week is unrealistic, especially in the absence of or poor institutional support. Without it, we will face a wave of secondary migration and rising social tensions. We cannot solve this situation with our own grassroots efforts, with our own money.
NATALIA: It is important to reveal not only the beautiful side of support, but also the worse one: human trafficking, sexual violence meted out to Ukrainian women by Poles, and workplace exploitation. We don’t want to hear about it in the euphoria of helping, but this knowledge helps us interact more carefully with those we support. How about coming to the platform to pick up families and paying more attention to disturbing signals of interest in young women or children? This is not to extinguish enthusiasm, but to raise awareness of the problems that happen in Poland every day. Women are also trafficked and children are kidnapped in our country – human rights activists know this. And now such processes are on the one hand intensifying, and on the other – they are coming to the surface, and not because Poles are bad, but because the crisis is so great that it brings everything to the surface, and at the same time directs the lens to this piece of reality, so far unseen. At the same time, I’m not surprised that we feel like rejecting such comments because it allows us to maintain a vision of a nation that is finally together. We long for community and for goodness.
What are the possible scenarios of Polish-Ukrainian relations?
JULIA: I’m torn between the black scenario that a nuclear bomb falls on Polish territory and everything falls apart, we go into emergency mode and go back to taking care only of ourselves, and the perspective that Marta Niedźwiecka outlined in her podcast – that we will finally have the quantum leap needed to become a civil society. For us to step out of the position of a nation that has suffered so much and put ourselves in the role of a society that is mature and, when necessary, can take care of others. I don’t know what will happen with Polish-Ukrainian relations. But even if there are instances of beating and xenophobia, it will not derail the tremendous good that is happening. Inviting people into private homes on this scale has not happened in any refugee crisis. I believe that this hospitality and the trust we have placed in each other will never be forgotten in mutual relations.
Julia Celejewska – currently a welfare activist and coordinator on the RegenerAkcja (RegenerAction) team. Formerly a project coordinator for the Polish Centre for International Aid in Palestine. Arabist and dog mum
Natalia Sarata – sociologist, activist since 2002 involved in activities for human rights, founder of the foundation RegenerAkcja, anti-burnout trainer, runs support groups and workshops on welfare for social activists and their organisations
Author: Maria Hawranek
Photo: pexels.com
The text was published in „Wolna Sobota” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 2 April 2022
