Victoria Kalistratenko says if she ever has grandchildren she will have many stories to tell them.
The 15-year-old is living in Bundoran with her mother Tetiana, an endocrinologist from Bucha, one of six doctors from Ukraine now living in the Co Donegal seaside resort.
All of them hope to work in Ireland once their medical registration is complete. And all of them have stories to tell, but the sights Tetiana and her daughter saw as they fled Bucha by car will, as Victoria already knows, be passed down through the generations.
“Local people were escaping in a column of cars. People in front of them were killed,” said Hanna Balystka (28) a neonatologist from Odessa, whose nephew was born there on the first day of the war. She met Tetiana and her daughter in Bundoran.
Accounts of how corpses lined the streets of Bucha, how local men were shot dead, apparently by snipers, as they escaped through the fields and how civilians were killed as they surrendered, have sparked allegations of war crimes in the town which is just 24 kilometres from the capital Kyiv.
Victoria recalls that two weeks after the invasion began, she and her mother faced their car towards the Hungarian border, against the advice of Ukrainian soldiers they encountered who urged them to turn back.
“They said, ‘You are crazy.’ They said a few hours earlier there were Russians here and tanks.”
The mother and daughter soon passed a number of cars which were on fire and saw no sign that any of the occupants of those vehicles had survived.
“We have rules,” says Victoria. “If you want to go somewhere from occupation, you need to show something white.
“These cars on fire had [notices] on them saying ‘kids in car’. They had put a lot of white, like white towels on them.”
Horrors of Bucha
And yet despite these horrors, her mother, who waited weeks to hear if her parents or husband had survived the horrors of Bucha, returned there and resumed caring for her patients.
“Her patients missed her. She is a really good doctor with a really good salary and here she was cleaning houses,” says Victoria, who acts as her mother’s interpreter.
All the doctors say they can understand why they must pass English exams before being allowed to practise here, but they have been told that once they do that, it will be at least a year before they can sit exams to establish their medical expertise
A few weeks ago, Tetiana returned to Bundoran. “They started to bomb Kyiv again, and I missed her,” says Victoria who had remained with a host family.
The doctors from Ukraine for whom Bundoran is home for now, did not know each other before arriving in Donegal, apart from husband and wife Dani and Svitlana Abbas al Faraui, who are also from Odessa.
The medics include two ophthalmologists, an endocrinologist, a GP, a neonatologist and a cosmetologist.
“It is hard to not work,” says Dani (28) an ophthalmologist who also worked as an optometrist in Ukraine and tried to get work as an optician in Ireland but says he was told his qualification was not recognised. All the doctors say they can understand why they must pass English exams before being allowed to practise here, but they have been told that once they do that, it will be at least a year before they can sit exams to establish their medical expertise.
Abbas al Faraui says it is frustrating. He also went for a job as a lifeguard in Bundoran “but they wanted a diploma”, something he did not have despite having been a lifeguard in his teens.
He is taking English classes but says if he sits the exam in February he worries that it will be another year before he can sit his medical exams. “It is a very long time. It seems I can work here only as a cleaner or in a bar,” he says.
Hard to do nothing
Olha Yalovets, a native of the occupied city of Melitopol in southeast Ukraine, is also an ophthalmologist and having worked for 30 years, she too finds it hard to do nothing.
“From the first days of the war my city was occupied. More than half of my patients left the city. I have not been working in my profession since the first day of the war.”
She remained for months working as a volunteer providing emergency assistance to those in need but left last August, locking up her office and hiding expensive equipment before she left. Her 19-year-old son is in Canada and her husband is still in Ukraine. He texts her every day to reassure her he is safe.
Hanna Balystka (28), who worked in an ICU unit for premature babies in a hospital in Odessa, has heard the reports of long waiting lists for consultants and GPs here and believes it would be in everybody’s interests if the registration process for Ukrainian doctors could be speeded up. “They need us. We need them. We are ready to do the tests but want to do it faster, not wait so long.
“It is crazy to wait a year. I am losing my medical knowledge,” she says.
“People are without electricity and without water for seven days already. There is no electricity to prepare meals, to heat buildings, to have a shower. It is fine for adults but not for babies.
— Hanna Balystka
Now working as an interpreter in a local medical centre where she is a GP’s assistant, the specialist in the care of premature babies constantly receives worried calls from her brother and sister-in-law who are caring for their small baby while living with constant power cuts.
It took Hanna and her mother and 19-year-old sister seven days to make the journey by car from Odessa to Ireland, partly because they brought their two dogs, a huge Newfoundland weighing about 60kg and a Labrador, with them. “It was a crazy journey,” she says. “My mother and I drove, so my sister was in the back with the dogs. We had to stop many times a day to let them out.”
Her father and her two brothers, aged 20 and 26, remain at home. “People are without electricity and without water for seven days already,” she said recently. “There is no electricity to prepare meals, to heat buildings, to have a shower. It is fine for adults but not for babies.”
‘Cannot sleep’
With her sister studying art at ATU Sligo, and her mother studying English and hoping to find work in Bundoran, they are happy to be safe but always conscious of family at home.
“We are used to worry. Every day when I wake up, my mum is scrolling the news, and every night the same. She cannot sleep because she has two kids there.”
Olha Davydenko, a GP from Poltava, arrived in Bundoran in October having also brought her dog, an eight year old pug, with her from Ukraine. She is sharing a room in a Bundoran B&B with a fellow country woman she met in City West, who has two cats.
Olha says the trauma of war led her to the brink of collapse as she had continued to work while also acting as a volunteer distributing humanitarian aid to those worst affected. She was living in Kyiv when the invasion began and every detail of that day is etched in her mind.
I was exhausted. For me it was really painful. One day I realised I do not want to wake up in the morning
— Olha Davydenko
“On the morning of February 24th I was asleep and my young sister Katya called me at 5.30am. She was crying. She told me ‘Olha, wake up!’ The war was begun. I jumped from the bed and I heard explosions.”
By 6am that morning many people were already in their cars trying to escape the region, having grabbed a few valuables “documents and money probably”, as panic set in.
“The 24th of February was a really awful day. We constantly heard explosions. We constantly saw military airplanes very close to our building,” recalls the GP.
She decided to go to a nearby ATM to get cash and was shocked to see tanks on the streets. “One day you are having a normal life and the next your beloved country is at war,” she said.
‘Deep depression’
The 40-year-old says that by August she was physically and mentally exhausted and constant air raid sirens meant her sleep was interrupted several times a night.
“At the end of August I was almost empty. I had deep depression. I was exhausted. For me it was really painful. One day I realised I do not want to wake up in the morning”.
Her sister Katya urged her to get help and by September she was having regular counselling.
“I had to fix myself. I realised I could not help other people if I am absolutely useless. I needed to fix my body, to fix my mind, to become more patient, more calm, more self-confident and to stop crying.”
She was crying constantly. “I saw that Russians killed many of our defenders and it affected my mental condition.”
She says she loves nature and living in Bundoran has provided the escape she needed.
But she also wants to contribute.
“For me, it is a big challenge to be unemployed. That is why I would like to work here as a healthcare assistant. I don’t want to be a burden for the Irish Government. I want to be independent.”
‘I can be useful’
Ultimately, she hopes she can find work as a GP. “As far as I know, the Irish medical system is struggling because of lack of doctors.
“I can be useful. I do not want to be here in Ireland as a refugee. If the Irish Government decides to make this process quicker for us, it would be nice, not only for Ukrainian doctors but as well for Irish people, because there is a big lack of medical staff.”
Dani Abbas al Faraui, who was on holidays with his wife in Egypt with only a suitcase of summer clothes, when the war started, never got back to Ukraine.
“We left Ukraine on February 20th. Nobody believed there would be war. We were like brothers.”
With his parents and 17-year-old brother still in Ukraine, he is unsure of the future and reluctant to predict how long the war will last.
“One year for sure we will stay here. In the first months I was told it would finish in maybe two months but It is almost a year now.”
Asked whether Ukraine would win the war, Hanna Balystka says: “Everyone hopes, because we don’t want to be part of Russia. We want our families to be in a safe place”.
‘Miss my home’
Tetiana Kalistratenko feared she and her daughter might be killed last March on the road from Bucha. By Christmas she was united with her family in Bundoran as Victoria’s father arrived from Ukraine for a week-long stay while her brother, a student in Dublin, joined them for the celebration.
“I really miss my home. I really miss my grandparents and my friends. We just hope it will end in summer,” says Victoria.
She knows she will never forget the things she saw as she fled Bucha. “I am sure If I have grandkids I will tell them some stories.”
The HSE said about 270 doctors from Ukraine had provided it with details of their experience, English language proficiency and locations since arriving in Ireland. These doctors had been put in contact with the relevant postgraduate training bodies and briefed about engagement with the Medical Council. It pointed out it was not able to employ doctors without registration with the Medical Council of Ireland.
“For many doctors arriving from Ukraine the immediate challenge is to obtain the necessary English-language proficiency”, it said.
It was, it added, developing a new policy proposal to facilitate doctors who may be awaiting registration to undertake “observerships”, enabling them to attend a hospital or health services to observe “without being directly involved in patient care and in a strictly supervised fashion”.
A number of hospitals had already facilitated doctors in this way. “These roles are not paid, are closely restricted and those taking part are not working as doctors or providing patient care”, said the HSE spokeswoman.
It was aware some doctors have been employed as clerical staff, translators and other work within the health system which does not require registration, and it was exploring the potential to expand and build on this.
“There is also close and active collaboration ongoing in respect of Ukrainian doctors arriving into Ireland between the HSE, the Department of Health, the Medical Council and the postgraduate training bodies for medical specialties, with meetings occurring on a weekly basis”, the spokeswoman added.
