Durban: Bombs, bunkers and the thought of breyani fuelled the courage of a Durban grandfather who spent at least 100 hours fleeing from war-torn Ukraine, many of it on foot.
Raymond Satish Ramjiawan, 70, an uMhlanga businessman, endured a six-day trek to safety from Ukraine’s capital Kyiv under siege by Russia’s military.
Surrounded by relieved family members he explained how he tapped into his extensive networks of friends in Ukraine and crisscrossed the country to get to Poland. He then boarded a flight to France, then Johannesburg and finally Durban.
In an exclusive interview with POST, Ramjiawan said he was sleeping in his Kyiv hotel room on February 24 when he was awoken up by sirens early in the morning, the day Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Minutes later he received a telephone call from a Ukrainian friend advising him to pack a small bag of essentials and prepare to be picked up later. He left his room as soon as possible, just in case a missile hit the hotel and flattened the building, said Ramjiawan.
Out on the streets people congregated as far away as possible from the buildings, which could become military targets, he recalled.
Late,r Ramjiawan travelled to his friend’s apartment in another part of Kyiv, which they thought would be safer.
“I expected there would be problems in the east of the country, not in Kyiv,” said Ramjiawan when asked why he had stayed there despite Russia’s threats of invasion.
His friend’s apartment was on the 18th floor and every time the sirens rang out they rushed down the stairs with their bags while explosions could be heard in the distance.
Ramjiawan said when the danger passed, they would trudge back up to the 18th floor.
He said everyone would assemble underground and go into the safety of the bunkers, but he stayed in the open and watched what was happening.
At the time he believed that if the building was hit, they would be trapped for several days before they were rescued from the underground hideout.
Describing his escape, he said from Kyiv he took a taxi to the outskirts of the city and then “thumbed a lift” to the house of another friend 80km away.
That part of the journey, in an old Russian Lada (car), took four hours because of the congestion on the roads caused by everyone fleeing to safety. Military tanks rolled into Kyiv as they fled.
At his friend’s place, Ramjiawan and 20 other people huddled in a bunker under the house.
He said despite the invasion everyone was stoic and no one spoke about the war.
From his friend’s house, he made a 500km trek to the city of Lviv in the west of Ukraine. That took another 13 hours, but Ramjiawan said many people were headed in that direction because that side the country did not share a border with Russia.
He stayed overnight in a rundown hostel-like building before making another 27km trip, which took him close to the Ukraine/Poland border.
“All vehicles had to stop seven kilometres from the border. When the bus stopped it started snowing. It is winter so I was prepared for the cold weather but not to be exposed for hours to it outside.”
Then began his solitary, 7km plod through the snow.
“By the time I arrived at the border it was one degree Celsius. All foreigners had to wait together. Every three hours a bus would arrive to fetch people and take them to the border post for their passports to be processed and then to cross into Poland."
Ramjiawan said the Ukrainian soldiers were heavy-handed with the foreigners and he was lucky that he managed to stay on his feet after he was shoved by them during his 12-hour wait.
He befriended students from Cameroon and Ghana, who had waited at least 48 hours to be allowed on a bus to go to the passport control and the three of them took care of each other.
“When I missed two buses to cross the border I decided to make a contingency plan. So my plan was to play sick to get out with an ambulance if I did not get the next bus. I didn’t mind if I spend a night in the hospital because it was the easiest solution to get out of there and then try and get the train out of Ukraine."
Back in South Africa, his family was frantic with worry.
His daughter Raksha said her dad had told her that he was going to Ireland and she was shocked to hear that he had travelled from there to Ukraine.
Raksha said when she discovered Russia was going to attack Ukraine he told her not to worry as it was just “political games”. By that made her panicking.
To make matters worse she said her dad had only had intermittent contact with the family during his travels to the Polish border because he needed to preserve his cellphone's battery life.
Raksha said while they worried, her dad had sent them pictures of his friend’s house to show them how beautiful it was and it helped to keep them calm. It took a lot of persuasion to get him to leave the country, she said.
“Thinking back…, I was getting a lot of pressure from my family. If they didn't put so much pressure on me I don't think I would have run from there so quickly,” Ramjiawan said.
His cousin Anand Jayrajh said it was a traumatic experience for the family.
“So many thoughts crossed our minds, ranging from when he'd get home to what if he couldn't leave the country. We were extremely concerned but semi-relieved when he reached Poland."
Jayrajh said it was only Ramjiawan’s resourcefulness that got him out of the war zone.
“We call him James Bond,” he quipped.
Despite his ordeal and the recurring nightmares he has about his great escape, Ramjiawan said he was looking forward to his next trip to Ukraine.
Raksha, a doctor at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital, said her dad suffered from post-traumatic stress and she advised him to go for counselling and massage therapy.
However, after arriving home to a plate of mutton breyani and balloons, Ramjiawan refused to say whether or not he would take her advice.
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