That morning, her French is numb, she says. “The afternoon is much better., assures Olga Marochko in a language that is nevertheless sufficient to tell her daily life since the exodus. And then when the words escape her, she finds them tapping on her phone. “I have completed the French courses offered by Greta”she points out all the same.
Like Nadiia Dligach, seated at these sides. The young woman is however less at ease in the language of Molière. “Conjugations, endings… french is… difficile”she says in a mixture of French and English – which she masters.
Olga and Nadiia have been living for seven months in the accommodation center of Draguignan, opened by the State services last August and managed by the CCAS of the city sub-prefecture.
That’s where we first met them. One came from Dnipro with her daughter Paulina, the other from kyiv, alone, it was in the heart of the Var that they met. They and the hundred or so Ukrainian refugees who live on this land, which has been specially fitted out with reconditioned shipping containers.
Dream of professional future
A life on hold. Because if Paulina goes to school, her mother, a speech therapist, cannot work. In any case, not without expressing yourself perfectly, or having had your diploma transcribed. “But I also have a diploma as a preschool educator: maybe I can find something in this branch?”
Nadiia, a marketer, begins to consider resuming her job here. “I could organize events, that’s what I know how to do. Maybe for the Ukrainians…”she imagines, before getting darker. “Even if the war ends, reconstruction will take a long time, especially because there is a lot of corruption.”
She gets annoyed: “I feel like if we wanted to stop the war, we could!” So today, the young woman has the feeling that her place is in France. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I believe I can make a new life here.”
“We really want to integrate into French life”, adds Olga. Her husband, Volodymyr – “Like our president!” – remained in Ukraine, has also begun to learn French in the hope of joining his family. Because it has little hope of seeing the crisis unravel. On the contrary.
“I fear that the war will get bogged down, that it will remain conflictual like in Israel. Me, everything I do is first and foremost for my daughter. She is happy here, she has made friends! People in Ukraine have become accustomed to war, they live with it. I definitely don’t want that for Paulina.”
