Participants Blog

Goodbye Ukraine

These last few days have been some of the busiest of my life. Thursday was my last day with my l’Arche workshop, and everyone was very emotional. Firstly, my workshop is moving to a new location because the rent at the current location is too high. And so the last week at the workshop we were moving all of the stuff to the new location. On Thursday morning, we finished that job. In the afternoon we had a barbeque, and it amounted to a typical l’Arche Ukraine party. It was very much in the spirit of l’Arche, with all of us being together, singing together, eating together, etc…. And it was very Ukrainian due to the food we ate. We had kovbasky (sausages), bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The party was very nice.

There is a song that the members of l’Arche and Faith and Light sing here in Ukraine. It goes: Ми любим тебе, ми любим тебе, ми любимо. Хай господь бо тебе благословить, благословить (My lyubym tebe, my lyubym tebe, my lyubymo. Khaj hospod’ bo tebe blahoslovyt’, blahoslovyt’). It means something like: We love you, we love you, we love you. May the Lord bless you. And you can replace ‘We love you’ with ‘We thank you’, ‘We welcome you’, etc… depending on the circumstance, and of course you would change the singular ‘you’ to the plural ‘you’ if necessary. Anyway, this song is very special for l’Arche here because we sing it whenever someone visits, whenever someone leaves after visiting, whenever it’s your birthday or nameday or anniversary, etc…. On Thursday, when they sang three versions for me, ‘We thank you’, ‘We love you’, ‘We’ll wait for you (to come back)’, I broke down into tears, I’ll admit it. My three months with them have been so incredible, and they have had an impact on me they will never know about, and probably are unable to understand due to their mental disabilities. But they are a group I can never forget. When I gave my little good-bye speech, I finished it with ‘I will remember you always’, in Ukrainian. The rest of it I gave in English, with one of the assistants translating.

And so, I said good-bye to them, and they said good-bye to me. Afterward I was able to go for ice-cream with three of the assistants, Khrystyna (the one who translated for me), Ivanka, and Ira (the UKU student). It was nice getting to spend a little bit of time with them that last day. I hadn’t been able just to relax like that with any of the assistants to this point. But then that had to come to an end, and I said my ‘до побачення’(do pobachennya-until next time) to them as well. So many times before I had said to them ‘до завтра’ (do zavtra-until tomorrow), but obviously I couldn’t this time.

So, Ukraine, good-bye. See you again some day.

-Michael Hayes, Ukraine