An Ukrainian Mother Abroad

Text: Olena Fedyuk, Ivano-Frankivsk
Photographs: Leona Goldstein, Berlin

Introduction. After the Italian legalisation of 2002, the number of Ukrainians staying legally in Italy increased almost tenfold, from 14 035 to 112 802. Most of these people, up to 80.8%, come from the Western regions of Ukraine. 90 % of this migration is female, with an average age around 45. Of all the migrants, 64.3% are married, 90.4% have children, and only 5,5% have their children with them in Italy. Those women who are unable or unwilling to take their children along with them to Italy, leave their kids with their fathers, grandparents, relatives, or elder siblings.

Photo gallery

On June 29th 2006 in Lviv, the Greek-Orthodox Church of Ukraine held a round table – “Labour Migrants’ Children: A New Form of Social Orphanage.” Among the questions discussed by the Church activists, media representatives, schoolteachers, and local government representatives was the suggestion that parental rights of labour migrants should be removed.

Motives. Halyna Drach has been a labour migrant to the small Italian town of Montalcino (about 5000 inhabitants, Siena region) for six years now. Halyna is 48 but she does not look her age; slim and sporty, she is wearing her blond hair in a short bobtail cut. Her frequent open smile and the ease with which she tells her story reveals a person who is used to socialising a lot and being in public. Meeting in an Ivano-Frankivsk downtown café, she introduces herself in Italian “Ciao. Sono Anna. In Italia. In Ukraina sono Halya.”

Halyna is from the small town of Tlumach (about 8000 inhabitants) located in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, in Western Ukraine. She holds a university degree in Education and was the highest category of elementary school teacher before she went to Italy. Halyna has two sons, Vitalik, 26, and Volodja, 19. Her husband, who stayed at home to look after their children when she left in 2000, divorced Halyna last year to marry her former colleague and friend.
To tell her story Halyna goes back to Soviet times, some 15 years ago or so. After the collapse of the USSR, she had the highest hopes for the development of the independent Ukraine, but the situation was getting dramatically worse. The Perestroika chaos took away economic stability, individual security, and something more than that. “I used to have a perfect life. I was teaching at school, a job that I simply adored. I was so endlessly happy with my little students, my husband teaching in the same school, and my two sons growing up. We had an apartment, just three minutes away from work, we had our savings and the respect of our students and their families.”

The whole old social system went practically overnight, and many people could not fit in anymore. Savings were lost, and it was a common practice that people would not be paid for 9 months in a row. Instead of 100 UAH per month ($20), Halyna would get 10 UAH and the excuse that there was no money in the bank. Halyna says they became so poor that for six years she had only one nice dress, which she would wear for every important occasion. One of her students, a six-year old girl, once told her with childlike directness that she knew that the day was a real holiday because Halyna was wearing her festive purple dress. However, Halyna says she minded neither her poverty nor the increasing feeling of shame due to the obvious impoverishment of her family.

What she did mind was that her children would often go to bed hungry. “I could not bear looking into their eyes, and hear them asking for more food, which I didn’t have. They are boys, you know; they needed vitamins and meat to grow strong. Every time I couldn’t afford to buy my sons this or that food, I would kiss and hug them instead. But this would not make the hunger go away. I could not see my sons growing in misery, neglect, lack of education related to our poverty, and with a lack of prospects.”
Halyna does not like to remember those days. She says she encouraged her husband to go to work abroad, but he would always find excuses, or say that he was sick. And one day she realised that she was the one who had to go and provide for her family. Halyna says she never thought she would ever have to do it. She never thought she would have to leave Ukraine.

!/wie/cms/images/361.jpg!Yet the day came when she finally decided to leave. After holding yet another six hour training seminar for schoolteachers in Ivano-Frankivsk, she was again paid nothing but a promise. On her way back home Halyna saw an agency providing tours to Italy, asked how much it was, and simply submitted the papers. Then, Halyna says, she hoped they would never issue her visa, but after two weeks the agency called and set the departure date. Halyna borrowed $ 1000 at 25% interest in order to pay for the agency’s services, packed and left. Her mother died two months later, but Halyna was not able to go back to Ukraine to attend the funeral. The first time she went back was two and a half years later, after receiving her Italian permesso di soggiorno.

Abroad. Halyna arrived in Rome on Christmas day. She called a Ukrainian woman, whom her colleagues in Tlumach assured her would help her with job and shelter. Yet the woman only told her that her Italian husband opposed such things and she would appreciate if Halyna did not call again. For three days Halyna stayed at the train station Roma Termini without a single contact, “Non parlo italiano,” and 150 US dollars left after her trip. When finally she met some people from Ukraine, she asked them for help. They took her to a Ukrainian woman who for a payment provided shelter and helped to find jobs. Halyna found her job in Montalcino within a day; no other woman staying at the shelter wanted to leave Rome for the province, but Halyna simply needed a job.

Today, Halyna has four jobs. Always depending on the shift she has at her main job at the casa di riposo, she takes care of two elderly ladies in two different families. When her hospital shift is from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., Halyna takes care of a 95-year old lady; she combs her hair, dresses her, helps her to use the restroom, cooks, and spends time with her talking until the lady’s daughter comes back from work. On the days when Halyna’s hospital shift is from 2 to 10 p.m. she spends her mornings 30 km from Montalcino where an 88-year old woman lives with her son. Here Halyna has a full scope of household duties; she cooks, cleans the apartment, and does washing. “My fourth job is my home, the so-called home. Yes, I live here, but I have to do everything as if it was my job. I have to clean the house, wash, and cook dinners. If I don’t do the job properly and on time, the house owner gets very upset.”
Halyna’s 13-hour-long working day does not have any official breaks. She also does not take weekends. When too tired to work, she usually asks for half a day off, in order to go to Siena to send a package to her sons. When Halyna has a free hour, usually because one of her ladies let her go earlier, she returns to her room to study. “I love to study. I did it all my life. When I study I do not have to think of any problems or anything besides the subject. I love to read and write, working on a computer, and studying English. When I first came to Italy, I used to paint a lot, but now I don’t really as it is too time-consuming.”

Halyna says that at work Ukrainian women are treated with a respect that they would never get for doing similar jobs in Ukraine. Most women get as attached to the old people they look after as to their own family. One cannot spend 24/7 with a person one hates or doesn’t care about. Often Ukrainian women become their employers’ closest contacts. They share their memories, life stories; give them food, care, attention. However, Halyna says, this closeness is misleading, as for most Italians Ukrainian women are only employees, who can be dismissed or changed at the first inconvenience.
Halyna knows that there is also a lot of prejudice about Ukrainian women among her Italian colleagues. “For Italians it is hard to imagine that someone with an education, and the qualification of a medical nurse like mine, would go abroad to do low-paid jobs. They also think if you can’t speak proper Italian, you are completely ignorant and underdeveloped. But this is just a language, and it just takes time to learn it.” To fight back against such stereotypes, Halyna often reverses them by joking with her colleagues ‘What do you expect from me, I am just a straniero!’
However, Halyna finds the separation from her family The most challenging aspect of it all. Halyna says, “Italian women often ask me ‘what kind of mother are you if you leave your children alone?’ I do not blame them for these accusations. There was a time when I thought I would never do this. I just tell them that they haven’t known real misery in their lives, and I hope they never will.”
Halyna calls home several times a day and in the time period from January to July 2006 she spent $1500 on telephone conversations: “When I am in Italy, my heart is never at peace, not even for a minute. I take care of the old granny and I think about who will take care of my sons in Ukraine.”

Home Again. Since the legalisation of her status in Italy, Halyna goes back home every half a year. This time she was able to take a 15-day vacation to come for her first grandchild’s baptism and her younger son’s hasty wedding. The wedding came as a surprise to Halyna. Volodya announced his wedding when his 18-year-old girlfriend, Anna, was in the sixth month of her pregnancy. When Halyna arrived home, her son and her future daughter-in-law were so scared of people’s scorning and so ashamed of their ‘sin,’ that they were afraid to have their wedding held in church and to buy a white dress for the bride. Anna and her mother, who has been raising her two daughters for 11 years alone, after her husband went to work in Eastern Ukraine never to come back, had to face all the gossiping alone. At Anna and Volodya’s civil marriage ceremony, the mother of the girl cried most of the time and hardly said a word.
Halyna says that her daughter-in-law looks very much like she did some 20 years ago. “It is because of my leaving to Italy that this pregnancy and wedding occurred,” says Halyna. “Volodyk needed motherly tenderness so desperately that he fell in love with my exact copy! But I am very happy to see them in love and together. They remind me of Romeo and Juliet, so young and so much in love!”

However, Halyna says that without Italy this happy-end would have been impossible, both from a material perspective, and because of the moral aspect. Without Italy she would neither be able to afford a proper wedding nor to step aside from the moral codes that condemn pre-marital relationships. Halyna says “I would’ve been like my son’s mother-in-law, just crying and crying. We would think that all this happiness in our children’s life is a shame and tragedy! Now I know that they have nothing to be ashamed of. They didn’t give up each other and now they are a family expecting a baby.”
Telling her story, Halyna constantly talks about her family. When asked what her Italian experience has given to her individually she laughs. “I have finally learned to smoke at the age of 47. I still do not know how to inhale smoke properly, but I am determined to learn. I think smoking marks a new stage of my life. Italy definitely taught me to be strong and enduring. ” Italy became a whole new world for Halyna: “I thought I knew life, but my life in Tlumach was just its better side. My work in Italy has turned me into a servant; I start thinking and behaving as one. But Italy has also taught me never to admit weakness. I’ve learned to hide all my doubts and insecurities, do my job, and reach for the goal. One has to study and improve constantly in order to achieve something here.”
While she has been in Italy, Halyna has learned to drive and started computer and English language courses. Her Italian is fluent. Her Diploma in Education and her Red Cross nurse certificate have been in the Italian Embassy for over nine months now, waiting for recognition. Halyna calls the Embassy several times a week to check the progress on the papers, as she needs certificates to do a more qualified job.

Despite the six years spent in Italy and her achievements in this country, Halyna does not mean to stay in Italy for good. She still sees her future only in Ukraine. “I want my children to live on their land, and I am sure that Ukraine will soon turn into a very rich country. We won’t have to work abroad anymore. People from all over will come as tourists to see Ukraine. I believe that I am contributing to this transformation with my work here now, with all the money I invest in Ukraine. I hope that one day Ukraine and our government will recognise this contribution all women here are making.”

Epilogue. Meanwhile Ukrainian labour migration to Italy continues. According to the Italian Ministry of internal affairs there are some 117 thousand Ukrainians registered in the country as of 2006. In an interview given for the Express newspaper on June 19th, 2006, Natalija Shega, a sociologist researcher, estimates that the unofficial number of Ukrainians in Italy might be as high as 600-700 thousand. Most of these people are educated engineers, economists, humanitarian workers and educators. Most of them go abroad in order to provide better living conditions or education for their children back in Ukraine.

EPISODE:

Paolo is 62, unmarried, lives with his mother. He has hired a Ukrainian woman to look after his mom. Asked if he would ever hire an Italian woman, Paolo answers with a chuckle:

“No! (laughs) An Italian woman would never agree to do this job! An Italian woman has her own mother to care for, or not? They would perhaps be paid per hour, and cook a little bit, but they would never stay over night. An Italian woman at maximum could take care of her mother in law, but not privately of a stranger.”