Rianna Blake has arrived in Budapest, safe. Together with her fellow students, she had fled Kharkiv from bombs and destruction. The Jamaican’s dream of studying medicine should have come true in Ukraine’s second largest city last September, but it turned into a nightmare.
Last fall, 48 students began their medical studies at the National V.N. Karasin University in Kharkiv, including two Jamaicans: Rianna Blake and her friend. “Most Americans stay in America for their studies or go to Canada, but we wanted to see the world. We wanted to experience other, exciting countries,” says the 19-year-old. “Nobody could have guessed that there would be a war.”
On Thursday morning they were startled from their sleep by bombs. Blake and her friends immediately packed up their belongings, not knowing exactly what had happened, and took shelter in a subway station. “When we heard that the Russian army was advancing, we rushed to the train station,” says the 19-year-old. They stood close together on the platform. When the train pulled in, the crowd was uneasy, “then the stampede started.” People crowded onto the train bound for Uzhgorod, a city in the border triangle between Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. They held their children up in the hope that someone would take them on the train. The female students also made it into the wagon with difficulty. The journey took 36 hours, and the train stopped again and again. Soldiers stormed the wagons. “They asked where the men were, they were looking for young conscripts,” says Blake. If they found any, they took them with them.
Many of her fellow students moved on to Poland. Blake and her friend came to Hungary, the Scharnstein sports manager Robert Wagner helped them, he is a family friend. “I was very lucky, now I’m safe,” says the 19-year-old student. “I have no choice but to pray for everyone who is still in Ukraine.”
Source: Nachrichten
