Mother’s love from Tenerife to Ukraine

Montse transmits enormous activity to her well-cared 70 years. She is the mother of three children –Adolfo, Alexis and Laura– and the grandmother of four grandchildren –Ángel, Aidé, Adrián and Jessenia–. Better said, five because we have to include little Nascha (Anastasia) on the list for a week – they arrived on the Island on Saturday the 23rd. This six-year-old doll, daughter of Ruslana, is the star of the group. She enjoys the swings with her adoptive grandmother, who is always vigilant, and later she eats a hot dog at the legendary Casa Peter, a lagoon place.

Ruslana has another daughter Polina, 13, who completes the family.. Svetlana, for her part, is in Tenerife with Julia, 24, and Timofei, 14. In addition to Zarina, the daughter of a friend who is a doctor in the Ukrainian Army. Zarina has been key in her arrival in Tenerife because another friend of hers, Marina, who was foster before, was her connection with Victoria, coordinator of the trip. She serves as an interpreter in an afternoon of encounter and many emotions. Controlled because as Svetlana sums it up: “We don’t cry in front of people.” They already do it at night and alone. His pain is intimate. Their eyes are just scratched at the question of whether they hope to return home soon. The answer is one word: “I wish.”

Montse, from La Laguna and resident in Aguere, has experience in hosting. After the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (April 1986), she opened her house, together with her husband Agustín, always in a discreet background, the same one she loves, to Belarusian children. They were the main victims of the direction that the radioactive cloud took. This is how Ruslan arrived at the age of 13 – now he is 37. He considers Montse and Agustín his parents and they keep in touch like the first day. Then Anatoly would come, who today is a policeman in Lukashenko’s Belarus. She closes the circle, again with Ukraine in the background, although in a much more direct way.

Montse admires “the capacity for struggle and resistance that these women have who in just two months have gone from a normal life to suffering all kinds of hardships.” She considers them “generous and grateful, very good people” but, above all, “fighters for their children.”

The foster mother confirms that “they don’t want television to remember the suffering.” That’s what Timofei is for, showing his mobile phone with the disasters of war to anyone who wants to see them. In the place in the Metropolitan Area where they live, thanks to the generosity of their hosts, there is no TV because there is no need to see what they have already experienced firsthand. They prefer, for example, not to remember the massacre of civilians in Bucha. Children are the ones who suffer the most and react worse. Like when they wake up startled from bed at dawn by the passage of a plane. Fortunately, it is not a war but one like the one they arrived on the Island. Their mothers are there to protect them. Apparently strong because inside goes with them the penalty. But let Julia, Timofei, Zarina, Polina and little Nascha not notice.

Montse, a veteran mother and grandmother, pampers this Ukrainian family who came “with nothing on.” That they lack nothing. Including of course the food. The boys are real limes. “Throw them fried eggs,” says a Montse who looks very happy. She remembers her collaboration with Belarusian children and she again feels the full force of solidarity. Last Thursday they had a day off at Las Teresitas and tomorrow’s party she promises her. She doesn’t anticipate anything. May the surprise prevail on such a special day for mothers and children. She is very clear that “my house is hers for as long as it takes.” She assesses the current situation as “different” from that of Belarusian children, “precisely because their mothers are here.” She is now in the process of registering these new family members “because it is a fundamental procedure.”

family gathering

The afternoon is sunny but cool in La Laguna. The Plaza de La Concepción brims with animation in spring. The terraces are full and people walk up and down. People outside a harsh reality very close. As much as in another classic, the Bar Benidorm, where a group of women and children stands out. All and all, blond with blue eyes. Mothers from Ukraine with their children who have found temporary shelter in Tenerife from the horrors of war.

Svetlana and Ruslana are the same age, 44 years old. They have been found here, in Tenerife. The first is very talkative when released. She comes from Irpin, in the west of the country, very close to kyiv, and the family has experienced the war firsthand. First with a shelter for six days, along with 160 people, in the local church. Then when they left for the border of Poland in a terrible journey. A convoy of defenseless vehicles that stopped if the Russian aircraft appeared to go into the forest and then return to the cars. Thus they reached their destination between explosions and the remains of destroyed tanks. Timofei is in charge of showing the videos almost constantly. Among them, that of the destruction, which they experienced live, of an Antonov Mrya, the largest plane in the world.

Zarina knew another example of the harshness of war. When the Russians blew up the Irpin bridge, she and her mother were right behind a family whose members were killed by a bomb. Humanitarian corridors are not safe because “the Russians often do not respect them.”

In Ruslana dominates introspection and speaks very little. He comes from Kharkov, the second Ukrainian city, in the east, very close to the pro-Russian Donbas. She was an official of the City Council and she left quickly shortly after the start of the war that she did not suffer so directly.

They both have family in Russia. While Svetlana’s support the Ukrainian cause, Ruslana’s is favorable to Putin’s theses. But both are clear that “we do not hate the country, Russia or its people. The culprit is the one who has ordered this barbarity (Putin)».

They also agree that hardly anyone expected the invasion and the war, despite the threat from Russia, “although some had already packed their suitcases.” Svetlana worked in a nursery and a mother told her that she would not take the girl that February 24 because the war had started in Ukraine.

left them behind

Both have left part of their family behind. Svetlana’s parents, already elderly, have left the basement in which they were refugees just three days ago. Timofei and Julia’s mother’s house no longer exists because it was destroyed by shelling. Her husband Alexander remained in Ukraine. Also Sergei, the one from Ruslana, a brother with the family and his parents.

There is a small moment of relaxation in which the eternal smile of those who have suffered so much in such a short time shines. The framework is Eurovision, with Ukraine as the favourite, and the World Cup in Qatar in which their country chooses to qualify. They hope for success in both cases to give a little joy to a devastated land.

Special thanks for the welcome in Tenerife. They feel part of the family and value that “we are people with a very similar character, cheerful and open”. They confess that “we feel at home. They care daily, support us and give us their love. We can only say thank you for your energy and positivity.” All together they will enjoy Mother’s Day in Spain today, the first Sunday of May. In Ukraine, the second of the month is celebrated. A reason to celebrate it again with family. In the Ukrainian style.

Mother there is only one, says the popular saying. But this case shows that there can be more, always united by the umbilical cord that signifies motherhood. Ask Montse, Svetlana and Ruslana. Mother’s love from Tenerife to Ukraine.