Like claps of thunder, the sirens multiplied; their shrill cries, once few and far between, now competing with the echoing explosions.
After days of incessant sirens, Dima – a gay, HIV-positive Ukrainian – decided to flee Ukraine.
Now, he appears in front of me on Zoom, over 800 miles away from Kyiv, where he started his journey. Despite all that he’s been through, Dima’s smile overtakes my computer screen, and he begins his story with ease and excitement.
Pictured above: Dima sits on his bed in his temporary Airbnb in Berlin provided by ORAM.
“I was with a backpack in the front with my cat and a huge hiking backpack and a suitcase,” Dima recalls. “And the moment when I was already stepping onto this train, one guy just grabbed me by my backpack and threw me away.”
Dima laid on his back, watching as his “plan A” pulled away from the platform.
Later that week, he tried “plan B”: a bus to Lviv, where he could then cross the Ukraine-Poland border. For 17 tedious hours, the bus inched closer to a cluster of hostels in western Ukraine. Dima woke at five o’clock in the morning to the sound of explosions. He thought he was dreaming and went back to sleep.
When he reached the hostel in the morning, everyone asked, “‘Why are you here?’” Dima was surprised by their cold greeting. They went on to explain, “‘We were bombarded last night’” and he realized, last night’s explosions weren’t a dream after all.
A few days later, Dima embarked on a desperate “plan C” – crossing a river that runs between Ukraine and Poland along with a group of other LGBTIQ Ukrainians. After another long drive and a hike through the countryside, he stashed his clothes and belongings in a trash bag and waded into the frigid rapids. Dima somehow made it to the other side.
Plan C had worked – or so he thought.
Before Dima could dry off, let alone process where he was or what was happening, Polish border guards took him and his group to a jail where they were locked up in separate cells.
“A lot of our rules were violated. I was not allowed to call my mom…” Dima tells me. Three long days passed by before Dima saw the sky.
After Dima was released, volunteers from Safebow – a nonprofit that evacuates marginalized Ukrainians and partners with ORAM – put him in touch with his mom and reunited him with his cat Peach in Berlin. (You can read more about Safebow’s founder, genderqueer Activist Rain Dove, here.)
Rain referred Dima to ORAM and we provided him with over one month of safe housing – a welcome upgrade from the dingy jail cell he slept in for three nights.
Pictured above: ORAM Executive Director Steve Roth, Dima, and ORAM Senior Program Manager Anja Limon in Berlin (left to right).
Everything was looking up, but Dima couldn’t help but think back to his old life in Ukraine.
He thought about how just two years ago, none of his friends knew he was gay. He spoke with his mom on FaceTime for two hours and broke down crying when he learned that she had told the Safebow volunteers who offered to help her, “just help my son so he will be happy.” He took his HIV medication again, for the first time in two weeks, and he reflected on having to leave his friends and family behind.
“I felt guilty leaving my country because I still have some friends there,” Dima tells me. “I still have relatives there…I don’t know, it’s making me so emotional, but I’m just, I think I’m too tired for emotion and thank God.”
I can only imagine what Dima saw and felt in Ukraine and along his route to Berlin that led him to be thankful for feeling numb.
Dima smiles and gestures to the plants behind him. He says, “Look at this amazing apartment which I am in right now. I have a huge motivation to find a job and just to move to somewhere for the long term… Anja [ORAM’s Senior Program Manager] provided me with a lot of information, like a lot of resources where I can look for a long-term apartment.”
Based in Berlin, Anja has helped ORAM to leverage our presence as a registered organization with an office and staff in Berlin in order to support displaced queer Ukrainians like Dima. ORAM has now provided over 800 nights of safe, short-term housing for LGBTIQ Ukrainians in Berlin and other cities in the region, and we recently onboarded a Berlin-based Ukraine Program Manager, Camille Ogoti, who will focus on overseeing and growing our housing efforts.
Dima and I talk some more, about how he misses his home country and simultaneously feels hope and excitement for his fresh start in Berlin.
“I love Ukraine. That’s my country,” he tells me. “I’m proud of our country that we are still standing, and we are fighting. But I’m not afraid to be who I am here in Berlin,” Dima says.
So begins the next chapter of Dima’s new, unapologetic life.