Illia lived in Mariupol with his grandmother and mum
He had English lessons with a tutor and went to the sports ground with friends to play volleyball and football. What Illia loved most was going to the city children’s library: every Saturday during the school year and three times a week in the holidays. There he took part in workshops, read books and watched films with other kids his age. His favourite places in Mariupol were, of course, the sea and the shore, with a river flowing nearby.
On 24 February 2022 Illia’s mum left early to run some errands. Illia remembers that it was grey and cloudy outside, and when he heard an explosion he thought at first it was thunder. But it was the first sound of the war.
On 2 March the building where Illia’s family lived lost electricity, heating and all communications. Illia and his mum moved in with neighbours, because their own flat was on the eighth floor, where a shell was more likely to hit. Illia was constantly worried about his mum and grandmother, who were very tense and panicking. His comfort was the neighbours’ children his own age: they stuck together and took each other’s minds off the horror around them.
The hardest thing for Illia at that time was the cold. They lived in their winter clothes, with almost no way of getting warm. On winter hikes at our camp we were amazed at how easily he coped with bad weather. Illia would just smile and say he had already lived through the harshest cold, and an eight-hour hike through the snow didn’t scare him.
On 11 May 2022 Illia’s family finally managed to leave the occupied city. It took them four days to reach the evacuation train.
Illia now lives in Ivano-Frankivsk, studies remotely and is actively involved in the community as a volunteer. At first he and his family went to a volunteer centre for humanitarian aid, but soon Illia was given responsibilities suited to his age: he began helping hand out food to displaced people, and later looking after younger children.
Illia got into Horytsvit on his second try. At first he wasn’t keen to go, because he worried he’d have no friends there and feel lonely. But the opposite happened: at the camp Illia met people he felt comfortable with, who were fun and interesting to be around. Even six months after the camp ended, his group are still in touch: they talk and meet up whenever they can.
The sculpture workshop became important to Illia. He had never worked with clay before, and it really caught his imagination. His most vivid memory is a session where you could shout out towards the mountains and let your emotions go.
“I felt so light afterwards!”
Illia still keeps up the habit of putting his thoughts and feelings down on paper. Every now and then he looks through the diary he kept at the camp and adds drawings and notes. He says he sometimes feels sad, because this notebook of memories reminds him of the community where he felt a real closeness.