The war is very far away here, amid the rising Carpathian Mountains and their deep green trees. A stream flows down into the valley alongside the unpaved road. Wisps of clouds still hang in the treetops. Insects buzz around them. An eagle circles above the camp, screeching.
And yet, in some ways, the war is close. It is right here.
Early morning, the fog is lifting after a damp night, and the square in front of the house at the end of the street is filling with children. Eight o’clock. Time for the morning roundup. Giggling, whispering, jostling, some are writing messages on their phones, others are making calls, still others check their phones with worried faces.
The children stretching and yawning as they look forward to the day all come from regions of Ukraine where it is not eagles that screech, but rockets and grenades – not insects buzzing, but terrifying drones. These are children who have lost parents, schoolmates, neighbors and friends to Russia’s aggression. They are here for a short time. It is meant to be a break from the war. But their parents are there. Right in the middle of it.
Then the music starts. A little morning ritual, hugs. The children dance – the girls expansively enthusiastic, the boys more reserved, their eyes fixed on the girls and imitating their movements with a delay. A circle dance therefore ends in complete chaos and collisions. Laughter. The day is discussed. A minute’s silence for the victims of this war.
There are 56 children here, aged between 10 and 15. All of them are children whose everyday lives have been invaded by war and all its cruelties. Those who are here are hardship cases: children who have lost parents, schoolmates, friends. Just a selection though. Because even hundreds of such camps could not meet the total demand. After all, this is an entire generation of children who know nothing but this war, which has been raging since 2014 and was expanded by Russia in 2022.
The children are here for 14 days at the camp organized by the NGO “Voices of Children” and the Zelenska Foundation. These are days filled with leisure activities, psychological group sessions and individual consultations. According to one of the camp leaders, the aim of the 14 days is to give the children the tools they need to cope with the stress, fear and panic caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, to become aware of their own emotional turmoil and to somehow navigate their way through it.
Myroslava dips her brush in coffee. She is a quiet girl with long brown hair, sitting with her group in a bungalow on the edge of the forest. Daniel is sitting opposite her, a lively, skinny boy with light blond hair who likes to talk. Myroslava has drawn one eye in detail with a pencil, Daniel has drawn three coffee cups. They are both 11 years old.
Myroslava is from Mykolayiv, a city 70 kilometers from the front line. If Mykolayiv is attacked, there will be little warning time due to its proximity. She says she is only afraid when there is a crash nearby, and paints the eye with coffee. You get used to it, she says.
Daniel is from Kharkiv, which is practically under constant fire. He wears a cap with the badge of an artillery unit. His father serves there, he says proudly.
A teacher looks over Myroslava’s shoulder and praises her. Daniel asks her how he came up with the idea of painting coffee cups. Because he loves coffee, he says. But this one is much too watery, he can’t get the color right. He likes his coffee black – without sugar. Meanwhile, Myroslava finishes painting her eye. She wanted to be a painter, she says. Then she wanted to be a dancer. Now she doesn’t know.
Meanwhile, a girl sits apart, crouching on a chair. She says she doesn’t feel like painting, that she has no energy. She just wants to sleep. Then she jumps up and starts pushing other children. A teacher asks her to sit down and starts talking to her. Daniel is hungry. He wants food. Burgers would be just the thing, he says. Myroslava wanders off.
Outside, girls are singing karaoke. Some boys are sitting on the floor next to them, heads together. Finally, one of the boys grabs the microphone and sings. A girl around 13 has finally reached her mother. She was worried this morning because she couldn’t get through. Under a tarpaulin, a few teenagers are huddled on beanbags, chatting. A girl jumps on an educator’s back and wants to be carried piggyback. And he gallops away with her, neighing.
For lunch, there is soup with meat dumplings, liver in sauce with mashed potatoes and salad, accompanied by compote, a traditional Ukrainian fruit drink made from various berries. Daniel is satisfied and goes upstairs. Because now it’s quiet time.
Sasha overslept. He is a little late. Sasha is a boy with blond, slightly longer curly hair and an attentive gaze. He apologizes and sits cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall. Now it’s time for an hour and a half of concentration – on their own emotional worlds. Psychologists Viktoria and Oksana collect the phones. Outside, it is getting darker. Clouds are moving in front of the sun. Heavy rain begins to patter on the roof.
It is usually the first time that these children consciously talk about their feelings, says psychologist Viktoria. And in sessions like these with 17 children, as well as in individual sessions, one topic always comes up: the war and how it affects all areas of life. No matter what the initial topic was. Whether it was originally about relationships with friends, parents, relatives, one’s place in the social structure among peers, or leisure time. In such sessions, everything always ultimately comes back to the topic of war.
She once talked to a girl about optimism. And this girl suddenly told her about her father, how he had always supported her, how proud he had been of her, how much she loved him. But all that was in the past. She didn’t know whether this father was at the front and simply away from home for a long time, or whether he was dead. The girl didn’t say. She didn’t ask. Because that could have opened up topics for which there wasn’t enough time here. The fact was simply that, for this girl, her father was gone.
One type of encounter involves a thought experiment. It’s about which emotions arise spontaneously in a specific, ambiguous social situation – and why these are often negative. And it’s about how to turn down the volume of the “radio” of negative thoughts in your head, as psychologist Oksana puts it, if not turn it off altogether. Sasha lies on her back, her right hand under her head, her eyes closed, her left hand stretched out in the air, turning an imaginary dial – while some boys further back in the room huddle together on a sofa, whispering and giggling.
The fact that some of them are always rebellious, giggling and gossiping, cracking jokes, is part of it, says psychologist Oksana. She herself was no different at that age. “That’s how children are. And that’s exactly what you have to allow here, as far as possible. Because that’s exactly what these children are deprived of in their everyday lives.”
Even though the conversation in all psychological sessions revolves around the war, all the stress and negative thoughts, this war is not a topic among the children themselves. They are much more interested in pop stars, silly jokes, pranks, who likes whom, the completely normal dramas of everyday childhood that children and young people everywhere else go through. Dramas, Oksana says, that have no place in this war, which has become everyday life for these children.
Oksana says that the topic of discussion here is that a girl who lives under constant fire is offended because her best friend in the camp drew another girl in an art class and not her. These are the small problems of a normal childhood that the children themselves have to deal with and are able to deal with in a world full of monstrous dangers to which they are powerlessly exposed – such as whether the house they live in will still be standing the next morning, or whether their mother has survived the night.
“These children don’t think about the future, they don’t make plans,” says Viktoria. These children have no dreams, no ideas about the future, no ideas about what they want to do or where they want to live. That is one of the consequences of war. The other consequences are chronic stress, lack of sleep, anxiety and, as a result, attention deficits and depression.
Sofia listened attentively during the group session with Viktoria and Oksana. Now she is sitting in one of the small bungalows in the garden, her hands folded in her lap. She is 12 years old. She comes from the Sumy region. She has brown hair and a narrow face. She wears a pendant around her neck with the inscription “Slim Shady.” She loves the singer Eminem, volleyball and books, she says. She has already moved twice with her family since February 2022 – within the region, always a little further away from the Russian border. And she already knows that she and her little brother, who is also here, will not be able to go home next Sunday when the camp ends after two weeks, at least not for the time being. Her hometown is under heavy fire these days. The entire family is staying with their grandparents.
And this bombardment is particularly annoying right now, Sofia says. Her 13th birthday is coming up and she wants to celebrate in her city, with her friends, not with her grandparents in the village. She pauses.
But she has learned one thing here, she says. To think about something positive. That all this madness could be over very quickly at any moment. And if not, that she has the power to go somewhere else – someday. Maybe to Canada or Sweden. They are peaceful countries with lots of forests. She loves forests. Ultimately, however, she says she wants to live where she feels at home: in Sumy. And she says: Whatever happens, there’s no need to worry about her. She now has a dream. She wants to become a child psychologist.