Disturbing images from war-torn Ukraine show just how fragile our home life can be. For anyone.

In war, our home can be lost to us in an instant.

War reduces people to the basics for survival.

Forced to flee, people are able to take what is absolutely essential for survival. What they wear and what they can carry.

That is: clothing, toiletries, nappies, baby food, identity documents, money, bank details, medication, mobile phone.

Life-changing decisions will be made in a state of fear, panic and heightened anxiety. 

Perhaps, the real dilemma is not what you take – but what you leave behind.

Elderly parents… pets… friends…partner… neighbours… teenage sons? 

If you stay your life will be in danger.

If you leave you may never see your family again.  

Elderly people may be too frail to travel and may require specialist nursing care, be disabled or suffering from dementia.

But as more and more people are forced to leave if they stay they may not get the right level of care and support food or medication.

When you leave behind your business, your home, your family, your friends and pets you have no idea what will happen to them. Or what to do next.

The horrific stories of ordinary people fleeing Ukraine reflect what is a rapidly disintegrating social environment.

Millions of people are on the move.

Cities and neighbourhoods wiped out, apartment blocks destroyed. Desperate people  forced to take harrowing journeys and leave their homes – just to be safe.

We see images of families living in underground bunkers, huddled on trains and arriving in foreign countries with only what they can carry. Children: scared and exhausted. Mothers: anxious and stunned. 

And yet,= determined  not to abandon their loved ones, we see people carry elderly parents, much-loved pets and the children of those who cannot leave.

They own, only what they can carry.

Now, all the possessions of their home reduced to a few bags.

As a refugee they are now totally dependent on the generosity of others and humanitarian aide.

Only when they reach the safety of neighbouring countries will they get a change of clothes, be able to shower, sleep, obtain medical help and proper food.

Relying on their families and the governments of other countries they will have to live in temporary quarters, in make-shift accommodation.

If you have to leave your home and country where do you go?

North, south, east, west? .

Displaced people – especially women and children are especially vulnerable. They have to be careful, cautious and wary.

In what is a terrifying situation they are just people who want to be at home – in their own home. Going to school and work… socialising.. shopping… watching TV…gardening. Just an everyday life. 

They are ordinary people and each of their stories is unique.

War changes everything.  

History tell us that war shifts, annihilates and scatters populations; it spreads and devastates languages, religions and cultures. 

Most of all it displaces people from their homes, their country and way of life. 

To date a staggering 4 million people have left Ukraine as refugees from war. Up to 10 million have had to move to ‘safer’ parts of Ukraine.

They are not alone.

They are part of the more recent exodus fleeing wars in Afghanistan and Syria or, in the case of the Rohingya people, uprooted and exiled from their homes. 

It is not just war that causes people to flee their homes.

Fires, floods, drought, famine, landslides, volcanoes, tsunamis,  avalanches can  occur with little or no warning.

In a natural disaster you have to get out quick. There may be no time to think, or plan or discuss what to do.

Lives will be lost, infrastructures will be destroyed, livelihoods wiped out, land rendered unusable. People have to start again to re-build their lives, community and country.

But with a natural disaster in their own country they speak the language and can expect to be supported  by their own governments.

Refugees from Ukraine do not know if this is a temporary situation – or something permanent.  

Will they ever be able to go back?

Is there be anything left to go back to?

Will their families ever be able to join them? 

In the chaos of war there are heart-warming stories of ordinary people around the world welcoming refugees to share their home.

They reach out to offer the comfort of their home – an altogether very different environment from a refugee centre, or a hotel.

But at some point they will have to move into a home of their own. 

Grateful to be safe at last, will this strange land ever, truly feel like home?

All photos taken from Anyone At Home