"Are you tired after 16 hours? Then have a rest on the bench!" The story of a Ukrainian carer in Poland

The Socportal has published the story of Ms Marina, a carer for the elderly in Poland. This is a first-person account.

I realised why the carer’s room was kept locked

“I went to Poland at the start of the big war. For the first year, I worked as a coordinator for a Polish organisation that was helping Ukraine. But then that job dried up. Solidarity with Ukraine is no longer in vogue. The projects were shut down, and there was less work. The centre where I worked shifted its focus to helping Poles and hired a Polish woman as a coordinator.

I didn’t know what to do next because my Polish isn’t very good. Of all the options, the only one left was hard physical labour.

But it turned out that warehouses and factories only take on young, healthy, and strong people. I was turned down; they said that, at 48, I wouldn’t be able to cope with that sort of work.

I’d already been thinking of returning to Ukraine, even though the front line is now not far from my town. I didn’t want to worry my children: they’re grown-ups, with families and lives of their own. Then suddenly I saw an advert: live-in carers wanted to look after elderly people. I thought that I had a paramedic’s qualification, so I filled in the application form on the website.

That very same day, I received a call from Ms Agnieszka, the assistant to the director of the employment agency. And then the director herself, Ms Magda, promised me a very good, peaceful job looking after a cultured 70-year-old woman who had recently had an operation. I signed some consent forms and a preliminary contract. But then it suddenly turned out that I was to be working for an 88-year-old man with severe Alzheimer’s. The director assured me it would only be for a short while, because some kind of unforeseen circumstance had arisen.

I only lasted a week. The patient would lunge at me with his fists, and sometimes even with a fork, as soon as he forgot where his wallet was. And, alas, he forgot very often. That’s when I realised why the carer’s room in the home was kept locked…

Pani Magda demanded that I return to work; after all, I had a contract.

‘You chose this job yourself! They’re all like that! What did you expect?!’ she shouted down the phone.

But my own safety is more important to me.

Tell clients that you’ve been working with me for three years

Another agent suggested we visit the prospective client together to get to know her, and that seemed like the best option to me. A woman was waiting by the entrance; her face bore the marks of all the turbulent events in her life, and the faint whiff of stale alcohol left no room for doubt.

‘Hi! Listen, tell the client that you’ve been working with me for three years, all right?’ The lady immediately switched to the informal ‘you’.

I didn’t get the job then, but this lady kept calling me for another month, mostly after 11 pm, telling me she was returning to the care business after a three-year break, that I just had to wait, and that Ukrainian women had become very demanding.

I filled in a few more application forms on agency websites, whilst also looking for work on my own. I narrowed down my search, ruling out job offers involving carers for Alzheimer’s patients.

One day, a woman from the Wrocław area rang and invited me to work for her bedridden mother, who was in a very serious physical condition — the patient was completely immobile. It turned out that the family had been using the services of a carer from Ukraine for several years: the woman would come on a 90-day visa-free stay, after which they’d have to find a temporary replacement for her.

I ended up staying with this family for a while; they were very kind and calm. Emotionally, it was a comfortable time. However, despite all the mechanical aids used to move the patient, I strained my back.

I met a Polish carer who had been living in her own country as a refugee

Then I met a Polish woman who also worked as a carer, but in Germany.

‘Come with me – the Germans pay twice as much, give you weekends off and two or three free hours every day; you definitely won’t get that in Poland,’ Mażena urged me.

She told me her story. It’s sheer pain, complete alienation: she’s getting divorced from her Polish husband, and there’s not a single corner of their flat left for her. There’s the bedroom where her husband lives and two rooms for their grown-up children. Every six months, she returns to Poland and sleeps in the living room, which doubles as a kitchen. She has nowhere else to go either. Mazhena was still hoping to save her family. And she often cried.

‘You don’t understand – in a small Polish town, you can’t be unmarried; it’s shameful. Everyone will look at you askance,’ Mazhena explained to me, describing the mindset of her parents and friends.

Perhaps that’s why she goes to Germany — so she doesn’t feel guilty.

You’ll eat whatever I buy

At one point, I found the perfect job. Or so it seemed, anyway.

A polite man replied to my advert; he needed someone to look after his 95-year-old mum. He sent a video: in it, a lovely, slim elderly lady wished my family and me good health.

The conditions were very good: round-the-clock care for a woman who could walk unaided and had a very mild form of dementia, with no aggression. There was a separate room for the carer in the four-room flat. It was just the two of us living in the flat – me and the lady I was looking after. Her sons would come to visit their mum every few days. Every other day, I was allowed to go out for a two-hour walk. Under the terms of the contract, my meals were provided at the client’s expense.

My client really was very sweet and kind. The only thing I didn’t understand was why she was being force-fed five times a day, including cakes twice a day. It all became clear quite quickly: as soon as we were left alone together, she would start shouting, ‘Hey!’ And this ‘hey’ would sometimes ring out every minute — she was silent only when she was asleep or eating. No, she didn’t actually need anything at those moments.

‘I just like shouting “hey”!’ she admitted.

And it was awful. I managed to get her to agree to everything: to eat properly, drink more water, do the exercises prescribed by the doctor, take her tablets, not cry… But that unbearable ‘hey’ is still ringing in my head; I shudder at the sound of it whenever I hear it on the street (Poles, especially in Silesia, greet each other that way).

I lasted quite a long time with that family; other carers ran off straight away or after a few days. Perhaps I would have stayed a bit longer, but their arrogant attitude finally got the better of me.

One day I asked them to buy half a kilo of strawberries for my patient and me, instead of the sweets and ham, which I don’t eat.

‘You’ll eat whatever I buy! Your order far exceeds the food budget!’ my ward’s son declared categorically.

Of course, it was strawberry season; a kilogram cost 10 zlotys, which was much cheaper than ham and cakes. I reckon the young master just wanted to show who was boss.

A little sympathy — for a single sweet

In my spare time, I used to buy these strawberries for my ward and myself at the local market. Grandma was as happy as a child.

The lady’s second son would come round once a week with two chocolate sweets — one for his mum and one for me. When I politely declined, as I try not to eat sweets, he started bringing just one.

‘Well, how are you getting on here today?’ asked the gentleman, holding out a sweet.

‘The lady woke up at five in the morning, was restless, and never got back to sleep, and I’ve been looking after her—I’ve been on my feet for 16 hours now,’ I replied honestly.

‘So Mum’s tired, then,’ concluded the gentleman.

And I realise that I won’t get even a single sweet out of sympathy.

Then he probably tried to smooth things over and suggested:

— If you’re tired, go outside for an hour; you can sit on a bench and have a rest…

I really wanted to get to the heart of the matter and say that working 16 hours a day isn’t normal. And physically, I’m simply on the verge of complete exhaustion. Especially as the person in my care needed constant supervision due to mental health issues. But I held back because compassion and a humane approach — either you have it or you don’t.

So I won’t be going back to that family. And there’s more and more work for carers in Poland. I feel that the man with the single sweet is, after all, more of an exception, because conditions are gradually improving.”