Despite all the misery in their home country, a few hundred Ukrainians celebrated Thursday evening in 013 in Tilburg. It’s Ukrainian Independence Day. Svitlana Iopoliuk organized it: “Because I have the opportunity to unite the Ukrainian people in Tilburg. That is very important to me.”
Svitlana is not only an organizer, she is also a presenter. Before the start of the program, she walks visibly nervously through the catacombs of the 013. “This is so important to me,” she says immediately. “I am far away from my country, but I want to support it on a day like today.”
Several hundred spectators are treated to Ukrainian song and dance. For Svitlana that was relatively easy to arrange. She lives in the shelter on the Sportweg in Tilburg. In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, she had her own English education for ten years.
“We feel depressed, worried.”
Because she is one of the few Ukrainians who speak English, she is a spider in the web there: “All Ukrainians now feel the same,” she explains. “Depressed, worried. And if we can support each other here, someone might feel better.”
Xenia from Kiev is happy that the evening is organized: “It is so important now that we can celebrate our culture. Now that we are in another country, we want to show a piece of our history and our culture. We are proud of this.”
Many Ukrainians in the audience are wearing their traditional clothes. Also Svitlana. She points to the embroidery on her sleeve: “It’s hot vyshyvanka, explains Svitlana. “There is no other word for it, in any language.”
“Fortunately, the language of music is universal.”
At the shelter, Svitlana also met Sonia Rosales from Peru, who teaches Zumba to the refugees. She has taught the Ukrainian children in the shelter a dance that they will perform that evening. “It was quite a challenge,” she laughs. “Because I don’t speak or understand their language. Fortunately, the language of music is universal. I listened to the music and choreographed purely on feeling.” When Sonia dances on stage with the children, it makes for a moving moment in the evening.
A new idea will also be launched that evening: a Ukrainian Cultural House: a place where the approximately one thousand Ukrainians living in Tilburg can find each other.
And that is necessary, according to Svitlana: “Some Ukrainians here go to work and home, to work and home. They are introverted, waiting at home for the war to end. But we don’t know how long the war will last. And we live now. So we have to learn the Dutch language and culture and have an interest in it.”
