Why I Want to Go to Ukraine
No, I don’t have plans to visit Ukraine, but it’s at my very core. People are there. High school students, video game players, shopkeepers, professors, infants, mothers, builders, priests, football players, basketball players, nurses, artists, wannabe pop stars, street cleaners, guitarists, couples scheduled to married this weekend are there. Persons with disabilities are there. People are being surgically treated right now. People who deliver packages, people who were supposed to receive something in the mail. And many don’t have a bed anymore. If they do, they can’t sleep.
And then there’s the pandemic.
I almost always want to go where the loss and grief are, even when I can’t help anyone. It started when I was about five years old. Dad was a Navy photographer. He sent us pictures from Japan. I didn’t see any evidence of homelessness in adulthood, but those pictures back in 1960 grabbed me. I didn’t even know what homelessness was, but I wanted to help. I told my mother, “When I get big, I want to buy a ship (I could relate to ships) and fill it with food and clothes and stuff and take it to Japan.”
The feelings never left. More recently, I went to New Orleans after the levees broke. I had nothing to offer but just wanted to be with people. It’s why I answered Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s call to come to Standing Rock. Aside from a few blankets and tobacco, recommended by one of my local Indigenous friends, I had nothing to offer. I just needed to be there.
I used to frequent South African townships because, at first, of HIV/AIDS, but then I was seized by the desire of children and adolescents to learn. To read. I started a book project, raising money to feed these minds. A huge breakthrough came when someone connected me with a major U.S. publisher who gave me $300,000 in books, and we were able to meet the needs of the entire province of Gauteng, where Johannesburg is the central city.
I want to go to Ukraine because I am Ukrainian, and they are my people. I belong to them.
