Last weekend, student Mathilde Verbeek drove to the Polish-Ukrainian border with a bus full of relief supplies. She came back on Tuesday, with 60 refugees for whom she arranged a place to stay. ‘The situation at the Polish-Ukrainian border is so dire.’

‘Because of the adrenaline, when I was there I didn’t really realised what was going on around me,’ says Mathilde Verbeek, master’s student in Business Administration. ‘I was continuously preoccupied with the delusion of the moment. Only later came the realisation. I saw so many emotions: the sadness, the empty eyes, the tears, the fear.’ She falls silent for a moment. ‘Those people have been through so much suffering.’

Verbeek left last Sunday, together with her boyfriend – master student Stefan Meijering – and mother and a bus full of relief supplies, for the Polish border town of Przemyśl. In a large humanitarian centre near the city, she met hundreds of refugees in one day. She took sixty of them back to the Netherlands for a safe haven. Tuesday evening she arrived back in Beesd, where her mother lives. There, the refugees were assigned a host family.

Organised chaos

But even though she is now back in Nijmegen, she has not had a moment to rest. ‘I’m still on the phone calling and messaging people all day – and I also have deadlines for my master’s thesis.’ She lets out a deep sigh. ‘I find it hard to be back in the Netherlands. The situation over there is so dire and here everything goes on like nothing is happening. I do get it, though. But still, only now I’m back home, I’m realising everything that happened.’

Because the bus journey to and stay at the humanitarian centre were chaotic, says Verbeek. An organised chaos, that is. ‘The centre is sort of like an indoor mall, where all sorts of relief organisations are assigned their own space, based on the country of destination. And at the central spots food, medicine, and clothing are distributed.’

‘There are so many people with the best intentions volunteering over there. But things could be better. There is a huge surplus of clothing and blankets. So much, that they even dispose some of it again – to where, I do not know. There is however a shortage of food and medicine, most of it goes over the border, into Ukraine.’

‘Several busses went home as good as empty’

Then there is also the point that many busses arrive to take refugees elsewhere in Europe. A noble initiative, but many refugees are not waiting for that at all, Verbeek noticed. ‘Several busses went home as good as empty. Many Ukrainians still have family in their homeland and want to stay in the area, hoping to return soon. the Netherlands is quite far away for them. Imagine that war breaks out here and you end up in a humanitarian centre in Kleve, just across the border. Of course you are not eager to travel to, for example, Moldavia.’

Human traffickers

‘Another problem is the fear people feel. Just before we arrived, it came to light that human traffickers are trying to recruit young women in refugee camps. The security and checkpoints surrounding the humanitarian centre in Przemyśl has been increased substantially, but people are still distrustful. A lot of Ukrainians know nothing of the Netherlands and are wary because of that.’

The fact that Verbeek and consorts were eventually able to take some sixty refugees to the Netherlands was mainly due to the fact that they had many intensive and emotional conversations with them. ‘We dropped some refugees off in Hannover at their own request, and some of them already knew people in the Netherlands. But for about fifty people we also had to find accommodation.’

‘You could feel the nervousness of many of the refugees’

‘Thanks to many kind host families we managed to do that,’ Verbeek continues. ‘Upon return, we first had a collective moment and then we personally assigned everyone to a host family. That was also an emotional moment, you could feel the nervousness of many of the refugees. But there was also relief: people were extremely grateful that they had been brought to safety.’

And how to proceed? Verbeek plans to stay in touch with most of the Ukrainians as much as possible. ‘The nice thing is that I also got a lot of questions about whether there are any jobs in the Netherlands. They want to give something back and contribute to society. If I can help with that, I’m happy to do so.’

She sighs. ‘But first I have to get on with my thesis.’