Volunteering for Ukrainians, day #2

JJ asked me: "could you rent a van and pick up 5000 sleeping bags from some place south of Warszawa?". While it's super easy to rent a car with five seats as a tourist, renting a van is a bit of a different story. I know it's possible through the Panek car sharing service, but one has to be a polish resident to get access. I spent maybe 15 minutes searching the internet, without success - that's all the time I had.

So JJ and Karol rented a huge van in Lublin and drove it north, we met at the designated address. Diesel and rent is to be taken from "my" budget. The sleeping bags came in boxes, 6 bags in each box, and 8 kg. JJ considered that we could fit a lot more bags if we took them out of the boxes - that involves a lot of work. Every bag was packed in plastic foil, we made a small hole in each and every of them to be able to squeeze more bags into the van. A lot of work, I'm not sure if it was worth the effort. We could fit a bit less than 1k of bags into the van - I really hope they will be useful. Tomorrow we will repeat the trip.

JJ says that this situation is really reshaping the Polish society. They are reinventing trust and volunteerism in a massive scale. Like those sleeping bags, the value in the shop for each bag is 157 PLN - not the most expensive bags, but still it's quite some value totally - all of it donated. JJ just got the key for the storage from someone he hardly knows.

What else ... it seems like this "minibus project" has flopped a bit. From what JJ tells me, there simply aren't people left to be evacuated at the end of the drivers "corridor" (Радомишль, if I remember correctly). Now the driver is considering an offroad car to be able to help people closer to the front line. Worst case I'll have to refund donations.

May the same happen with the sleeping bags? That at the time we've managed to get them to the other side of the border, they are not useful anymore? Probably not - after all, there are still a lot of people left in Ukraine. The men aren't allowed to evacuate, others don't want to evacuate. When the electricity and heating stops working, or even worse - when homes are destroyed - then sleeping bags will be nice to have. Sleeping bags may be useful for the soldiers and freedom fighters as well. Or so I hope. It would be really a waste with all this effort if the sleeping bags simply aren't useful. If anyone has "inside" information on weather this effort is useful or not, then please let me know! (@zirochka ?)

It occurred to me that I may need a new passport if I'm to enter Ukraine. My current passport is "tainted" with Russian visas, and I was leaving Russia just some few days ago - it's too risky to pass the Ukrainian border with this passport. I will ask in the embassy in Warszawa if it's possible to get a temporary passport for this trip.