Five years ago, they welcomed me into their home like a daughter – now they are living under Russian bombardment, the sound of gunfire at every precious call.
Tato, a white-haired person in his early 60s, tells me over the phone that he can see the explosion from the front yard of his house in a small village outside the northern city of Chernihiv. Mama, who is a few years younger, cries as she tells me that they have no water, no electricity, and no safe way to go.
Their only form of transport is a Soviet-era car that is so rusty you can see the ground rush through a hole in the floor. And Mama’s 91-year-old mother, Babusya, is so frail that she rarely leaves her bed. Due to security concerns, CNN is not publishing their photos or full names.
In some other cities Ukrainians have managed to escape from their homes by evading Russian attacks through temporary evacuation corridors, but no clear route exists out of Chernihiv or their village.
“The enemy continues to carry out air and missile strikes on the city of Chernihiv,” the head of the regional state administration, Vyacheslav Chaus, said on Saturday.
“Citizens are dying, many people are getting injured. Enemies open fire on civilian infrastructure, where there is no army,” he said.
Before the war, we would share regular lessons about pet dogs, and what we were eating – they were fascinated by my life outside Ukraine.
Then, exactly a week ago, Tato sent me a picture of black smoke billowing into the air from explosions near his village.
His text: “If we survive, maybe we’ll see each other.”
a simple life
Ukraine is not the same country where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years from 2017 to 2019. Then, I had long conversations with my host family, sitting at the kitchen table with tea, sharing simple stories about the season’s harvest or me. work with children.
Tato and Mama do not have children of their own. Knowing I was Japanese-American, Tato learned Japanese words like “ohyo,” which means “good morning.” At night, we danced to 80s Ukrainian and American music – they thought it would make their house feel like home.
The first night at their house, I felt a little awkward, so Taito broke into my room with an ABBA CD and was inspired to dance. I took out my phone and played music, song after song. That night we used a month’s worth of phone data.
Tato and Mama’s life was very different from mine. In Los Angeles, the city where I spent most of my adult life, I fell asleep to loud bar music and honking cars. In Ukraine, the nights were so quiet that I could only hear their dog’s footsteps.
Tato and Mama grew their own vegetables and raised their own chickens to eat. During the spring and summer, he sold flowers grown in his backyard to Chernihiv’s market.
Every day I took a bumpy 20-minute bus ride from my host parents’ house In town, where I would work at a local cafe. It had a strong Wi-Fi signal, good coffee and thick slices of Ukrainian Kievsky Torte, a layered pastry with cream and hazelnuts.
Tato, Mama and I, after returning to America in 2019 Will send each other video and text messages and FaceTime over and over again.
During the first week of the war, he suggested that he continue with his normal routine – getting up at 6 a.m., feeding the chickens, and going to his part-time job. Babusya was still watching her favorite TV show while bombs were dropped in other cities.
But on March 2, his tone changed. Tato sent me a message: “Mom, Babusya and I eat only 150 grams” – about the weight of an average potato.
It has become difficult to reach them in the days after that. My call is not answered. Text messages do not go through.
All I can do is watch the destruction of their country from afar.
The Russian army has now surrounded Chernihiv and the video shows the scale of the devastation.
According to the video posted on Telegram, there is a big pothole between the locals The library and the city’s football stadium are where Taito trained as a very young man for FC Desna Chernihiv.
And outside the city, satellite images show the shopping center of Chernihiv’s local epicenter – Ukraine’s answer to Home Depot – is now a hollow, black shell.
Less than three weeks later, an unprovoked Russian invasion pulled Tato and Mama out of their peaceful, rural life into a geopolitical war they were not interested in.
‘We live in Ukraine’
Tato and Mama were born and raised in the Chernihiv region. From there, he has seen his country change dramatically throughout the decades – from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Orange Revolution in late 2004, the Plains Revolution a decade later, and now the war.
They’ve been through it all – the area is home, and their family lives within a 30-minute drive.
On the first day of the invasion, Tato and Mama seemed more concerned about going back to their part-time jobs in construction and nursing. “Why?” I asked. “There is a war.”
Tato simply said, “We live in Ukraine.”
It’s been four days since I last heard Tato’s voice on the phone.
The connection was unstable, and we were only able to talk for a minute. “We don’t have light,” are the only words I could understand when I cut off our paused conversation.
When I call now, the phone goes straight to the voice message: “This call cannot be received.”
In a text message, a friend who had fled the village last Sunday tells me that his parents, who lived a 10-minute walk from Tato and Mama’s house, were hit by a bomb at a nearby house. were killed. Having fled to Chernihiv.
They got out of the car on Wednesday and saw that Tato and Mama were still there, but they had no further information to go on.
On Friday, a senior US defense official said Chernihiv was in isolation and under “increasing pressure”. “The Russian army is right outside the city,” the official said.
A few hours later, a shooting took place at Hotel Ukraine, a local landmark in the city center within walking distance of the Chernihiv Central Market, where Mama used to sell her flowers.
In March, temperatures hovered around freezing, but now the city has “no electricity, almost no water, gas and heat,” said regional administrator Chaus. He said the attempt to reconnect the power failed when the Russian military opened fire on the power network again.
When I lived in their village, Tato and Mama were very protective of me, especially my host father. When we went to pick mushrooms he made me wear a neon orange vest so he could always find me.
Now I feel helpless to protect them.
I look at my phone. The text messages I sent Tato last Sunday remained unread. I send the number to the Red Cross anyway, if it passes.
My last conversation with Mama on Monday was only the second time I heard her cry. The first time it was time for me to leave the village to go to Kyiv, a city now steeped in history by Russian troops just 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the city center.
“There is a shoot, we have to shelter … I love you,” said Mama, from the house where in peaceful times they would start sowing the season’s harvest.
“I love you too.”