Ukrainian refugees find connection and hope in Will County

Iryna Baker of Plainfield reconnected with friend Alla Lavrinenko, whom she had known from kindergarten, when Lavrinenko left the Kherson, Ukraine, area early this year.

Baker had come to the U.S. in 2008 when she married John Michael Baker. Iryna said she met her husband through a mutual friend who taught English and told Irynar she knew a “nice, sweet man.”

At the time, Iryna was a widow with a 10-year-old daughter.

Iryna said her reaction at the time was, “Are you kidding me? I can only say, ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ [in English] and then added, “I was really skeptical how we could meet in person overseas.”

But Iryna said John Michael started learning Russian through CDs, which he played to and from work. Learning Russian first makes it easier to learn Ukrainian, Iryna said.

The couple married six months after meeting online, she said.

“He was supposed to come in January, and by June 6 I was already here,” Iryna said. “You have this feeling who is a stranger and who is not a stranger.”

Iryna was happy to come to the U.S. Growing up in Ukraine was “like brainwashing,” she said. “Everyone had to look and act the same,” she said.

“But we were happy,” Iryna said. “Our parents made it a happy childhood.”

Iryna said she returned to Ukraine for a visit a few years ago and saw the country “through American eyes.”

“Before I used to think my mom’s house was huge. I was like, ‘It’s so small.’ It’s so different from here,” Iryna said. “But the Ukrainians are nice people. Every house you come, they say, ‘Hey, sit down. Have meal, have tea.’ The tea may be cold, but it’s tea.”

Iryna said her mother eventually moved from Ukraine to the Baker home after her husband died.

Iryna said she called loved ones when war broke out. She said her brother “is stubborn” and decided to stay in Ukraine. Lavrinenko stayed two weeks with other people in a school near her apartment building because of snipers and, “because of bombing near her house,” Iryna said.

Lavrinenko and the others cooked food in crockpots, slept on the desks and occasionally sneaked back into the apartment for clean clothing, Iryna said.

Iryna said she kept in contact with Lavrinenko and, from the end of March to early April, kept insisting Lavrinenko needed to leave.

“Finally she talked to her son and said, ‘We’re going,’ ” Iryna said.

So Lavrinenko and her son, daughter-in-law and 7-year-old grandson left, even though “it was really dangerous to move to one town to the other,” said Iryna. Part of the journey that should have taken 90 minutes took 18 hours, Iryna said. As they drove, they closed the child’s eyes “because of the bodies,” she said.

“They have really bad memories,” Iryna said.

When they reached Odessa, the family thought of resting for a few days, Iryna said, but a quick trip to the grocery store changed their minds when a bomb fell about 800 meters away, she said.

“They never ran so fast,” Iryna said.

Because Lavrinenko’s son is 32, he cannot go beyond the border and must stay in the country, Iryna said. So Lavrinenko took a bus to Poland, stayed with a cousin and found “cleaning” work, so she could save money.

“It was really painful,” Iryna said. “She did not want to leave her son. They were not going to be together.”

Lavrinenko flew into Chicago from Warsaw on Aug. 19, and Iryna picked her up.

“I felt I was with family,” Lavrinenko said through Iryna.

Still, no one gave Christmas much thought until recently.

“I was not feeling like celebrating. It hurts a lot,” Iryna said. “But I have her and I have Mom. So, I need to do something for them a little bit, something happy.”

They decorated the house and Iryna began thinking about the right Christmas gifts. But shopping is a challenge because Lavrinenko and Iryna’s mother are always with her, she said.

So Iryna said she ordered “secret gifts” online, “thanks to Amazon.”

They planeed to celebrate the “main” Christmas on Dec. 24, instead of the traditional Jan. 7, which is the family custom of John Michael, who is part German, Iryna said. The family will hold a low-key celebration Jan. 7, with some traditional foods, Iryna said.

Even then, convenience will trump tradition.

“I buy the pierogies,” Iryna said with a laugh.

Lavrinenko is uncertain at this point when she will return to Ukraine since “our place is still occupied,” she said through Iryna.

The challenge now is not hating the Russians, Irynar said. She recalled the stories of starvation and death her grandmother shared about the Russian invasion in the 1930s. But the Russians “always do that,” Iryna said.

“I try to be bubbly, happy, positive,” Iryna said. “It hurts to say it: ‘We hate the Russians.’ You just can’t explain it. It grows every day. You try to stay positive. You try to go to the church.”

Speaking through Iryna, Lavrinenko said she is worried for her family and “all the children” and that she just wants “peace in the Ukraine.”

But Lavrinenko also found unexpected support at the Joliet Public Library. While taking English as a Second Language classes, she met Yulia, a 19-year-old woman from the Ukraine who is living with Susan Shukstor of Shorewood. Lavrinenko enjoyed talking in her native language to Yulia and communicating through social media outside of classes, she said through Iryna said

For the past 10 years, Shukstor has hosted Ukrainian orphans for a few weeks at Christmas or in the summer through New Horizons for Children, “at least 20″ orphans over the years, she said. This introduces the students to family life where “people love each other, the English language and life lessons,” Shukstor said.

The goal is to “break the cycle” that made these kids orphans in the first place, she said.

“They’re discriminated against because they are orphans, so it’s hard for them to find work, to find places to live,” Shukstor said. “They end up in the cycle of hanging out, doing drugs and having babies that end up in orphanages.”

Spending time with an American family is much different than living in an orphanage in Ukraine, she said.

“They eat borscht every day,” Shukstor said. “They don’t get meat or vegetables or fruit. They don’t get milk. They drink tea and water. They just have bedrooms that are stacks of beds and no personal items. It’s a very meager existence, very little heat, no air conditioning, so it’s difficult there.”

Sometimes American families adopt the orphans, Shukstor said. She herself is ineligible to adopt because she is divorced, Shukstor said. But Shukstor has kept in touch with some of these youth and traveled to Ukraine three times – the last was the summer of 2021 – to celebrate special occasions with them, such as graduations, she said.

Programs for the Ukrainian orphans end when the orphans are age 16, because the orphans are considered “high flight risk,” Shukstor said.

“Once they’re 16, they’re not allowed to travel outside the country to the United States,” Shukstor said.

Yulia left the orphanage at 17 and attended trade school in Mykolaiv to become a crane operator, which is unusual because girls usually learn cooking or sewing, Shukstor said. But the school was evacuated – Yulia lived at the school and – and Yulia somehow wound up in the bomb shelter, she said.

“When war broke out, she sent me a video of her in the basement of a bomb shelter with a bunch of other people,” Shukstor said. “And she showed me a video – a selfie – of her crying and you can hear the bombs and she’s shaking.”

Shukstor said she worked with World Children Resources to bring Yulia to the U.S. through a Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) two-year visa providing, Yulia had a sponsor. Yulia was approved 48 hours after the application was submitted, Shukstor said.

World Children Resources then helped Yulila get from southern Ukraine to Poland, traveling through Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, Shukstor said. But some of the train stations are full of human traffickers, another danger to women and children trying to flee to safety, she said.

Yulia arrived in the U.S. at the end of June, Shukstor said. Yulia received a Medicaid card and a Social Security number, Shukstor said. She is taking ESL classes and has a private tutor.

Once her Yulia’s English is proficient, she will get a job, she said.

Shukstor is hoping Yulia will not have to return to Ukraine in 18 months, where she has no family and would be on her own, she said. She said Yulia is a “really good kid” and “happy-go-lucky but a little native.”

But that’s because the orphanage did not foster independence, she said.

“She is used to everybody doing things for her,” Shukstor said.

Yulia was 12 the first time she stayed with Shukstor. The following year Yulia stayed with a family in Missouri and then came back to Shukstor’s house for a few weeks when she was 15.

“That was her last time,” Shukstor said. “Once she turned 16, she could not come over anymore. We tried so hard to find her an adoption-minded family but they like the little kids, not the older kids.”

Shukstor said she sponsored another orphan she hosted in 2018 through Frontier Horizon. Dasha is now 19 and living with her 6-month-old baby with a “wonderful family” in Florida, Shukstor said. The World Children Resources housed Dasha in Lviv until it obtained passports for Dasha and her baby.

Meanwhile, Shukstor hopes another young adult, Tanya, soon receives her U4U visa sponsor so she can come to the U.S. at the end of January 2023. Shukstor said she hosted Tanya and her twin brother in 2019 through World Children Resources. Tanya is not an orphan but was rescued from poverty and an abusive situation, Shukstor said.