Photo: Jessica Orakpo
And she’s sharing her story.
Orakpo, 23, has lived in Ukraine since 2016, when she began her studies at the Ternopil National Medical University. She was set to graduate in June with a general medicine degree and then hoped to do a residency in the U.S. and specialize in rheumatology.
Because ofRussia’s still unfolding attack, all of that is now uncertain.
More than2 million peoplehave crossed Ukraine’s borders since Russia invaded two weeks ago in one of the largest and fastest-growing flights of refugees this century.
“I don’t know where I stand on that plan, because I have been displaced,” she told PEOPLE earlier this week via Zoom from Debrecen, Hungary, hundreds of miles away from where she first tried to go after bombs began to fall in Ukraine.
With only a small piece of luggage, a backpack and a few supplies like water, juice, sweets and a blanket, Orakpo left Ternopil on Feb. 26 with a friend, Nataizya Nanyangwe of Zambia, heading west in a taxi toward the border crossing at Medyka, Poland.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” she says.
When they hit traffic — still far from their destination — their driver said he could go no further so they got out and began to walk.
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Courtesy of Jessica Orakpo
Ukrainian refugees.LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP via Getty Images
A traffic warden offered the pair a ride to a shelter, where they stayed the night, Orakpo says, adding that she was “very grateful” because “he was so helpful.”
“And we asked him, ‘Please, how would we get to the border the next day?’ " she recalls. “He said there would be buses available to take us straight to Poland. We’re like, ‘We’re so excited.’ "
Orakpo says she and Nanyangwe got an early start the next morning, arriving at a bus station in Mostyska, Ukraine, near the western border, to catch a bus shuttling evacuees to Medyka — but the pair were not allowed to board because, Orakpo says, station workers prioritized white Ukrainians.
“He wouldn’t even look at you if you were Black,” Orakpo says,echoing the accountsof other non-Ukrainians and non-white people who have fled. “They were judging based on skin color.”
Orakpo says a group of more than 20 Africans were left stranded at the station, despite her pleading in Ukrainian to be allowed to board.
At one point, another worker at the station wrote a number in pen on Orakpo’s hand, indicating she would have a spot on a bus, she says. But when it was time to go the worker instead told her, “Just Ukrainians, no international person.”
“It was so dehumanizing. It was like we lost hope,” she says. “People broke down crying. Some other Africans were shouting ‘Why, why just white people? Why not us as well?’ "
Despite the multiple accounts of discrimination, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Border Guard Service, denied that officials had a policy against people of color trying to leave the country.
“They are all treated the same. Everyone who gets to the border joins a queue and they are let through the border strictly according to that queue, first come, first served, and for no other reason at all,” Andriy Demchenko recently told PEOPLE.
“It’s absolutely not true that priority is given to Ukrainians,” he insisted. “The only priority we have is for women and children. … That is the only exception.”
But Chris Boian, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said his agency is aware that non-Ukrainian refugees have faced prejudice on their journeys to safety.
“We have received assurances from governments in neighboring countries that these incidents do not reflect official positions,” Boian told PEOPLE. “There is no place for discrimination at borders against people fleeing Ukraine. All people fleeing are human beings and that’s what the criteria should be.”
Marek Stus, an official with the Czech aid group People in Need, acknowledged “systemic racism across all Easter European countries, and I would say this is not going away quickly despite the crisis situation.” He told PEOPLE: “It can’t be excluded that it has been seen in some border guards.”
Still, Stus said that in his experience, “I’ve been visiting all the border crossings in Slovakia and Hungary. There are an increasing number of crossings from people from the Middle East, North Africa, Indians, other African countries … and from what I’ve seen they’ve been crossing normally.”
Perhaps sensitive to news reports about the difficulties non-white people have said they experienced, Dmytro Kuleba, the minister of foreign affairs for Ukraine, last week shared the number of ahotline set up to assist foreign studentsin Ukraine who want to leave.
“We are working intensively to ensure their safety & speed up their passage,” he wrote in a tweet. “Russia must stop its aggression which affects us all.”
Orakpo did manage to escape, eventually: She says she returned to Ternopil before making a second voyage out of Ukraine, this time to Hungary.
A friend had booked a “private bus” for about 10 of them. “We [were] not trying to walk again or use any other means of transportation that was not perfect for us,” Orakpo says.
Asked if she’s experienced racism in Ukraine before, Orakpo says, “It’s there,” adding that while some people “see you as beneath them” it’s less of an issue in Ternopil because of its large international population.
She also says her university is “really helpful” and has a “very strong” African student union and that people on campus look out for each other.
With her June graduation uncertain, Orakpo now hopes to find a school that will allow her to finish her studies and earn a degree so she can move to the U.S. to continue a career in medicine.
She’s also willing to go back to Ukraine “if the war should stop,” she says. “I really feel for Ukraine. Really do. It’s been my home. I really want to go back.”
source: people.com
