Anastasiia Tambovtseva fled Kyiv on the 8th of March together with her mother, brother, cousin and with eight cats, seven kittens and six dogs.
Anastasiia remembers that, on the evening of February 23rd, she was editing her online presentation for the next day – “Harmonization of the Roma Language in Ukraine” -a lecture that she was going to deliver at an event organized by the Council of Europe and the Ministry of Education and Science from Ukraine as part of the project “Strengthening the Protection of National Minorities, including Roma and Minority Languages in Ukraine”. She fell asleep thinking about the difficulties Roma children face in Ukrainian schools and about the school curriculum she was working on in order to help Roma children learn to read and to write in the Ukrainian language.
It was 5 o’clock in the morning, when a loud explosion brutally woke her up. Even though her first thought was that the war had begun, Anastasiia preferred to put it behind her, taking refuge in the fragile hope that someone might still be celebrating something, somewhere, using fireworks. She hesitated to believe, at first, that war was disturbing her sleep, so she started googling for information. Unfortunately, as everyone already knows, her instinct had not deceived her: the Russians were invading Ukraine.
As of February 24th, Anastasiia slept with her clothes on at all times, always ready to dash off to the bomb shelter every time the air raid sirens would start to wail, announcing that death is about to raid down from the skies, to harvest more innocent souls, riding on winged shells and missiles that fly faster than sound, all of them „made in the USSR”.
In one of those first days of living in a nightmare, the attack struck so suddenly that Anastasiia couldn’t even make it to the shelter in time. She grabbed her frightened dog and they took cover, shivering with terror, in what they thought to be the safest place in their home. While the Russian bombs kept pounding, Anastasia remained where she froze in fear, fallen on her knees, praying that she would make it out in one piece. In the battle between prayers and artillery ordnance, Anastasiia was favoured by fortune, because on that day her entire family, when the dust from the explosions dissipated, counted just as many souls as it did prior to the bombardment. For other neighbours, whose homes were not far from the Tambovtsev residence, that day was to be their last among the living.
It was the 7th day since the Russians had invaded her country, when Anastasiia decided to flee, together with her mother, her brother and her cousin, to a safer place. They left with the clothes on their backs and with horror in their hearts, making their way to Western Ukraine. They did not chose a precise destination, her family just wanted to leave Kyiv, a city transformed into an artillery range at Moscow’s orders. It took them six hours to get out of Kyiv by car. At checkpoints, hundreds of cars lined up in endless queues acting as a barrier for refugees caming from behind. To cross from the eastern to the western bank of the Dnieper, they all crowded through the only remaining open bridge. Everyone was eager to leave the capital before it was closed. On the back seats of the car, seventeen animals also endured the ordeal of this road.
Now, in their new home in Bucharest (Romania), Anastasiia, her brother, her mother, her cousin and their pets can breathe a sigh of relief. Their lives are no longer in danger. However, their thoughts remain at home, where their fathers, brothers and cousins are fighting the invaders who hijacked their lives in an instant.
“I had to leave my family and friends, my beautiful home and all the things I loved. But I know for a fact that nothing will steal my desire to live and create. There are no words I could use to thank REF Foundation for welcoming me into its team and for giving me the opportunity to continue working with Roma children.”
Anastasiia graduated from Kyiv Law School and English, Latin, and Roman Law were her favorite subjects. Her passion for foreign languages made her improve her English to such a level that she is now able to teach it to others, too. After English, she wanted to learn a new foreign language and she chose to learn Romani, although Anastasiia is not of Roma ethnicity.
“Thanks to my tutoring profession, I found out how difficult it is for many Roma children to go to school and learn. Even though I had almost no experience, I decided that I would try to help a little Roma girl learn to read and write in Ukrainian. The number of children willing to take classes with me grew very fast, I even had up to eight children in one lesson ”.
As the number of young people and children who wanted to study with her began to grow, Anastasiia was forced to find alternatives to her weekly home meetings. She needed materials to help students rehearse the lessons they had learned with her. Currently, Anastasiia lessons can be watched on various channels, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram.
- “I am very proud to be the author of a small textbook – “Tetradka, kay te sityon i bukvi” (“The workbook for studying letters”). The textbook is written in Romani, the Vlach dialect. Children who speak Romani in this dialect thus have the opportunity to learn to read and write in their mother tongue. Those who want to learn Ukrainian online can also watch the video series “Sityuvas te adinosaras pe ukrainsko shib” on my YouTube channel.”
