Budapest, 23 February 2023 – Ciara opens the door with a big smile on her face. She loves welcoming guests to her historic, but newly renovated apartment on the Buda side of the Hungarian capital. A few determined rays of sunshine cut through the clouds on an overcast day in early January and brighten up the space. Glad to have finally secured her own apartment in October last year, Ciara feels she has found a safe, temporary home.

Back in 2011, her partner’s new job brought Ciara’s family to Zhytomyr, a city in the north-eastern part of Ukraine, for the first time. Leaving their family, friends and home behind in the United Republic of Tanzania hadn’t been easy, but it was a big professional opportunity for her partner and Ciara quickly took the foreign country and its people into her heart.

“The country was great, but at the end of 2013 I moved back to Tanzania while my partner moved to England for another project,” recalls Ciara.

“I was planning to stay with my mom for a while, but I actually missed Ukraine and so I decided to come back.”

In 2016, Ciara returned to Ukraine with her son, Paris. When war broke out on 24 February 2022, the pair were at home in Zhytomyr. It was early morning, her body still wrapped in the arms of sleep when she turned on the radio.

“I didn’t know anything. I called my priest’s wife,” she recalls.

At first, Ciara could not believe it. “I asked her, ‘What do you mean the war has started?’ She repeated ‘THE WAR HAS STARTED. What you see on TV, is happening now, like in an action movie.’’’

Still in shock, she was unsure how to handle the situation. “I really didn't know what to do. But two to three hours later, everybody was leaving,” she says. “I was shocked, I didn't want to leave because everything was in Zhytomyr. My belongings, my investments, my life. I decided to stay. It was the hardest decision of my life.”

Paris was still attending school. The first months of war in Ukraine were very hard. “Life was not good at all, we tried to live normally but every half hour bomb alarms would sound. You would look into people's eyes and feel that life was not the same.”

As a religious person and a regular churchgoer, Ciara often visited the Hungarian Catholic Church in Ukraine, where she met a Hungarian priest named Father Peter.

“He was telling me a lot about his country and the people, and eventually offered his support. That is how I decided to come here,” recalls Ciara. “Hungarians are very welcoming.”

“When I crossed the border with my son, I met staff from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). They connected me with Mátyás, an IOM protection assistant who provided all the necessary information.”

Ciara is from Tanzania. She moved to Ukraine in 2011 with her family but was forced to flee at the end of July 2022 due to the war. Ciara now lives with her 12-year-old son in Hungary and is planning to stay there until the war ends. Photo: IOM