PORT READING: A blue dot on a box means nonperishable food, ready for shipping. A red dot means first-aid items for hospitals still standing. A green dot means supplies for Ukrainians taking up arms: boots and kneepads, socks and gloves, thermal underwear and camouflage-patterned clothing.
And in this cavernous warehouse, at the back end of an industrial park in central New Jersey, green dots are everywhere — emerald signals that Ukrainian Americans stand behind Ukrainian civilians who are defending their homeland with their lives.
Just three weeks ago, the warehouse hummed with the business of Meest-America Inc, a freight delivery service that specialises in shipping goods to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, including Russia. “Meest” is Ukrainian for bridge.
But on February 24, Russia attacked Ukraine, the native country for most of Meest-America’s 108 workers, and business all but stopped. The company was unable to ship to Ukraine, and it could not in good conscience continue shipping to Russia and Belarus.
“Once we saw the images of bombing, it was an easy decision,” said Natalia Brandafi, the company’s chief operating officer.
Overnight, the New Jersey warehouse became a Ukrainian outpost. The lobby was decorated with a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, and the phone system modified to play the Ukrainian national anthem for callers on hold. The entire business model was changed to a single purpose: Help Ukraine.
As raw images and reports of war’s life-shattering toll spread online, Ukrainian American organisations pleaded for donations to help the wounded and displaced. But they also sought aid for those who were setting aside pens and shovels to pick up guns. The response, organisers said, has been overwhelming.
A glimpse could be found in the modest basement of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Holy Ascension in Maplewood, New Jersey, where the wintry backdrop of the Christmas pageant still adorns the small stage. Boxes of donated items covered the tiled floor, and handwritten signs of organisation — “diapers + baby care” — were taped to the wood-paneled walls.
But the desired “priority items” listed on a church leaflet more directly reflected the carnage of war. Abdominal bandages. Water-gel burn dressing. IV starter kits. Emergency compression dressings that stem the bleeding from hemorrhagic wounds.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dan and Lynne Gulak, married retirees and church members who had been volunteering since the outbreak of the war, were taping and labeling boxes in the basement when the telephone rang. It was the Maplewood Fire Department.
Dan Gulak listened to the caller, said that words could not express his thanks, hung up — and briefly lost his composure. Removing his glasses to wipe his eyes with a handkerchief, he explained in a quavering voice that the department would be dropping off several dozen boxes of medical supplies. It had also collected $5,000 in donations, and more money was coming.
Many donations like the one delivered to the church in Maplewood are being trucked to Meest-America’s massive warehouse, where evidence of the company’s interrupted business could be seen in one corner of the 92,000-square-foot space. There, row after row, sat thousands of packages whose delivery to Eastern Europe had been halted by war: books, clothes and household items, many in Amazon and Target and Walmart boxes.
Lesya Tenderyak, who works in accounts payable, paused to explain why she had been sorting and packing seven days a week. She said she comes from Chervonohrad, in western Ukraine. She said she has family there and would take up arms if she could.
“I’m fighting this way,” Tenderyak said. Her nephew, who had joined a civilian defense unit, had been killed.
“She collapsed in her chair, crying,” Brandafi said of the volunteer, whom she has known for years. “And she kept crying.”
Such scenes have unfolded while some Russian customers have been calling to berate and complain, leading to raised voices at the reception desk. “They yell at our employees and blame the war on Ukrainians,” she said. – The New York Times
