Second-year argrotechnology student and Argonaut Sybren Beeksma brought rowing boats to Ukraine last week as part of humanitarian aid.
“On Sunday morning I saw an app that they were still looking for drivers for boat transport to Ukraine,” says Beeksma, who sits on the Boat Transport Committee for rowing club Argo. ‘I knew about the fundraising campaign that had been started for a stricken rowing club in Odesa. At the end of September they would drive that way with two boat wagons. I wanted to help with that. I just had to skip a few days of uni for it.’
Last Tuesday at five in the morning, two drivers left Amsterdam with a small boat truck full of donated rowing boats. Beeksma joined them in Barneveld. ‘We drove almost to the border between Poland and Ukraine in one go. By the time we got there to the hotel it was almost midnight. We had an appointment in Lviv on Wednesday with the people of the affected rowing club. Most Eastern Blockers are a bit grumpier and don’t show much emotion, but the three Ukrainians were very happy. They didn’t speak English so we communicated with each other via Google Translate on the phones. They took over our trailer for the last leg towards Odesa.’
The destroyed boat shed. Photo Rowing club Tairove
Air raid siren
Beeksma did not notice much of the war around Lviv. ‘There are soldiers walking on the streets, but in Lviv you hardly felt that the country is at war. Shops are running on generators because the power has gone out and we have been stopped a few times for checks. One time it was a passport control and another time an officer searched our car; we thought it was for alcohol and cigarettes, but later it turned out – when he pointed to the magazine of his firearm – that he was looking for weapons.’
‘In Lviv the air raid siren went off once, but no one panicked. Almost everyone continued with what they were doing. Some buildings have sandbags for protection. And in churches, for example, the higher windows are shielded. We also saw some memorials for the fallen soldiers. Those stories were in Ukrainian, but we were able to get some of it through Google Translate. It was impressive.’
Fundraiser
This spring, the rowing community joined forces. A young Ukrainian rower who had fled to the Netherlands had shown his coach in Utrecht images of his old youth rowing club in Odesa. That was last December completely destroyed by two rocket explosions and a fire. The building and almost all the boats were lost. A fundraising campaign was launched: both individuals and rowing clubs donated money and rowing materials.
It yielded a large load of items, which were driven to the affected area last week by Beeksma, among others. Two boat wagons – one large and one small, filled with a total of 36 rowing boats and 140 oars, good for about a hundred rowing places – went from Amsterdam to Odesa.
The boats arrived at the affected Chornomorets Rowing Club on Thursday evening, where the club’s children were reportedly given the day off school on Friday to to be able to unload boats of the trailers.
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