Within Five Minutes, Our Families Just Clicked

When the gov asked islanders to open their homes to Ukrainians, more than 200 people and families came forward within days of the scheme being opened.

We had the privilege of sitting down with David Halliwell, who along with his family offered up their spare rooms, and Liza Chupri, who along with her mum, moved to the island in spring this year.

David said: ‘From our side, obviously we saw what was happening and saw that a very large number of people, particularly were pouring into Poland and we realised fairly early on that it the biggest movement of people we’d seen since World War Two, so way before my lifetime, we’re just in the right position to offer the right accommodation at the right time’.

Liza, who comes from Kryvyi Rih, the same city as Ukrainian President Vladimir. Aged 15, she is now living with her mum, as well as David and his family, going to high school, doing her GCSEs and doing all the usual things we’d expect a teenage girl to be doing, outwardly showing little of the stress the last year has to have placed on her and her family.

She said: ‘In the start of March, there were lots of evacuations, lots of trains evacuating and my parents decided that I should go at that time because maybe later it would be too late. I was travelling from Kryvyi Rih to Lviv, a city in the west of Ukraine and after that I went to Poland and was there for a month.’

That journey across Ukraine into Poland was taken with Liza’s aunty, who has since retuned to Ukraine. It was from there that Liza and her mum, who travelled to Poland later on, travelled onwards to the island.

Unsurprisingly, Liza had never heard of the Isle of Man, but her brother, a fan of the TT, knew quite a bit about the island. Liza said her brother, who has remained in Ukraine with her dad, was ‘excited’ she and her mum were coming here. During TT this year, they even spent time watching the races and filming clips on her phone to send to him.

She said: ‘We didn’t try to be in the best place, we just didn’t want to be in the war. But we are very happy that we are here.’

Asked on her first impression of the island, Liza said: ‘It is very similar, like nature, to be honest with Crimea, a peninsula in Ukraine that is now occupied. It is much more warm, but I really liked it, I like that it’s quiet and very beautiful, lot’s of different greenery.’

While the decision to offer up what space they had came quickly to David’s family, no-one knew who would come to their door, luckily for David, Liza and their families, they all got on pretty quickly.

He said: ‘We signed up for the scheme and then there was security checks and also checks to the accommodation to make sure it was suitable, so that was all done by the government. Then we just waited a short time, there was more than one way to arrive to the Isle of Man [different schemes] and we just waited for a time.

‘Then the government said “we’ve got two people possibly”, which is suitable for our house, because we couldn’t accommodate more, then they [Liza and her mum] came round to visit and we did it from there and we decided in all of five minutes really, I said well do you want to think overnight or whatever and they said no, that’s fine.

‘It was only, like I say a five or 10 minute chat and that was it really.’

For Liza and her mum, the feeling was mutual, she said David and his wife were ‘very friendly’ from the start and have been ‘very kind people’. She added: ‘We’ve been very happy that people tried to help us.’

You can see our full interview with David and Liza here, including how she settled into Manx schools, her favourite places around the island and her hope for peace to return to the country that she loves so much.