I delivered Ukraine aid supplies on one very long night in one very ordinary DaciaUK minivan:
The view out my eighth-floor hotel window in Warsaw hit the Cold War kid in me. Barren trees lining the empty street, yellow sodium lights and LEDs illuminating the early-spring snow—it looked like something out of a spy film. I was there waiting for a phone call that would be my signal to drive boxes of mysterious goods into a country at war. I could almost feel the ghost of Robert Ludlum.
I'd intended to look through all the supplies I'd be carrying to ensure that I wouldn't be starring in an episode of, but the Ukrainian chap standing next to a baggage cart had already shrink-wrapped the numerous boxes and suitcases. He said three things to me:"How many boxes can you take?" Followed by,"Each box is about 22 or 23 kilograms." Then, when it was clear that we could take the whole cart,"I'll get more boxes." He did, then disappeared.
At 2:30 a.m. Sunday, the phone rang. Krista and I were to meet Nick at a service station in Mroków, about an hour southeast, to hand over the goods in the Jogger. We traveled big empty highways and then narrow rural roads for a few miles before the meeting point. The address gave our American Google indigestion, with Google Maps instructing us at one point to make a right turn into a field of undisturbed snow. The cold felt colder.
We drove the last box 40 minutes to Medyka, where nonprofits from around the world had set up a tent village for refugees, providing hot meals and even SIM cards. We got a tour from Anna, a woman with World Central Kitchen, an organization founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. A steady trickle of Ukrainians entered the encampment, following the stone path to a pickup point where a bus would take them on to a processing center.
"The Polish people did this," Majka said."The government has done nothing." She told me that Poles who had room simply began taking in foreigners."By the time the government started to help, it was already over."The next morning, on a plane that would take me to Frankfurt, I helped an older woman with her luggage.
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