Life as a Russian Refugee.

​Здравствуй. My name is Валентина Александрова, or Valentina Alexandrov. Me, my husband Vladimir, and our 3-year-old-daughter, Mariya, fled from Chechnya, Russia after the Chechen-Russian conflict destroyed our home. We came here, to London, England as soon as we could. I have no skills and Vladimir has very minimal skills. Our only source of income is the money we get from the government, but it's barely enough to live off of.
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Back home, before our house was destroyed, Vladimir was a waiter. We were getting about 50,000 rubles ($800) a month. He was the only one working. His paycheck paid our bills, put food on the table, and let us live a comfortable life in a nice home. Now we are living in a run-down little 1-bedroom apartment in London with no income. I can't even get a job because I have no experience doing anything. Vladimir, on the other hand, had been trying for weeks to get a job with no luck. I guess being a foreigner has its disadvantages when it comes to getting a job.
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Mariya keeps asking when we are going home. How do you explain to a little kid that this new, strange place is your home now? Home. This isn't home. My home is in Chechnya, not London. My home is 3,000 kilometers away. The only reason I am here in this place is because of a conflict that has been going on for 230 years. Why can't it just be over?
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I should try to be optimistic. No one knows me here. I can restart my life and become whoever I want to be. There is also some amazing sites to see. Mariya and I went to Buckingham Palace to see the guards. I don't understand how they can stay so still. We also saw the Eye of London, which is really just a big Ferris wheel. We didn't have as much to see back at home but this place is just fantastic when it comes to sites. Everyone here is also very polite. They make me feel kind of welcomed when they pass me and Mariya walking the streets.
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Walking the streets here is so much better than walking the streets of Chechnya. Doing anything here is easier than our trip from Chechnya to London. We walked a lot. More than I ever thought we could. It took months to get here. We had to hitchhike a lot which is unsafe for a little girl like Mariya. Sometimes, we went days with little or no food. What food me and Vladimir did get, we gave to Mariya. I can't believe she made it here alive. No kid should ever have to go through what we went through. Days of dehydration and changing temperatures. Days of not knowing where our next meal would come from. Days of exhaustion. I'm so glad I have her here with me.
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I think I might like it here better than I did Chechnya. There isn't as much violence. There's a lot more people here, but that's something I can get used to. Mariya has been smiling and laughing a lot more since we got here. Vladimir, even though he is stressed out about not having a job, does seem to enjoy himself in his free time. He spends time reading in the nearby park and he's ever done that before we moved.
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Maybe before forced out of our home by terror and destruction wasn't such a bad thing when I look on the bright side. It gives us new lives. New opportunities. I take this as more of a learning experience. We now know what it's like to be a refugee. We know what it's like to be starving and exhausted. But we also learned a lot on our way here about other cultures. Vladimir and I even picked up a few words in different languages here and there. Life is so much more amazing when you take a different perspective on it.
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So, as I sit here and write my story on a piece of paper while I watch Vladimir push Mariya on the swing, I want you to take something from this. Those who made our trip easier were those who were kind. Be kind to everyone around you because they may be escaping a horror that you could never imagine. Sometimes, those horror are those that have been going on for hundreds of years and continue to go on, ruining the lives and homes of thousands of people. Enjoy they time you have while you have it and be optimistic.

A/N: I actually really hope someone reads this. To those of you who did, thank you. I actually had a lot of fun writing this and learned a lot about Russia. Thank you!