“All they want is to get home.”

So says Hayley Richert, an SA expat in London who is one of a group of women helping SA citizens leave Ukraine safely.

She has had only a few hours' sleep since Thursday. 

Richert, Lorraine Blaauw, a South African in the Netherlands, and Kim Kur run the Facebook group “Community Circle Home SA” to support SA refugees and the department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco).

She said people who need help contact them through the Facebook page. 

“Whenever I close my eyes, I think of those people and how I can help. Then I wake up to try to contact people and ask for help.”

Richert said South Africans living abroad were offering accommodation to people from Ukraine who need a place to stay. She was also part of a group that helped South Africans needing repatriation when the world went into lockdown due to Covid-19.

“What is different is that with the 2020 repatriations the question was about how long it may take to get home, but with this, it's that people may not get home,” Richert said on Monday.

She spoke of the exhaustion, anxiety and helplessness among those trying to leave Ukraine, many of whom had hardly slept since Thursday.

“Some of them walked for 12 hours to the border, and when they got there, they encountered much hostility. They were pushed by officials and received the most inhumane treatment.”

Those who have crossed the border so far just wanted to sleep. Richert expects the situation at Ukrainian borders to get worse as more people attempt to leave the country. 

“They have not slept or eaten anything since Thursday. They’ve been on the road for days and all they want is to rest.”

Cars leaving Ukraine spend between 60 and 80 hours in queues at borders.

“You can imagine what that does. Some borders only allow one bus to leave every 24 hours, others it’s one bus every hour. So for the entire time, while waiting to cross the border, the people can’t do anything. They sit and wait in the buses.”

People leaving Ukraine have told her about appalling conditions at some of the waiting areas on the border.

“In one instance, someone said they were put in rooms with no ventilation for six to eight hours, others said they were held there for 12 hours without ventilation and not enough space for them to walk.”

Though she could not provide exact numbers, she said they have managed to help South Africans, Africans from other parts of the continent, as well as Indians move from Ukraine into Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

“There are incredible people who have opened their hearts and homes and said they will gladly assist those who need a safe place to stay. So we have linked them up.”

Though some people have been helped, Richert said there are hundreds more who still need to leave Ukraine.  She is pleading with corporates and South Africans to send donations to help cover the cost of flights, accommodation and other needs.

“Most of them want to come home, but they don't have money for flights. Most of them are students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Donations can be made through an NGO, We are South Africans.

Richert said they had a challenge with some people who did not want to leave Ukraine, for different reasons. Some were students who did not have the money to return to Ukraine and finish their studies, while others had family ties in Ukraine. 

“We have an SA woman married to a Ukrainian man. She didn't want to leave her husband because Ukrainian men are not allowed to leave the country. So we had to convince her she needs to leave immediately and she's on her way out.”

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