Even with the massive volunteer effort, Lorenc says, “The sheer volume is overwhelming.” On 3/29, the day of my conversation with Lorenc, 22,400 refugees entered Poland from Ukraine. This is the second-fewest in a single day, beaten only by 3/28 (21,000). All-in-all, nearly 2.5 million refugees have entered Poland, and the city of Warsaw saw its population grow 15% over two weeks. 170,000 children are already enrolled in Polish schools, and up to 700,000 more could consider it in the fall if they remain in Poland. “That’s kind of the scope, the size, of it,” Lorenc said, before adding, “and if there’s a sad part of what I’m doing, what I’m doing, even with everybody’s support and with so much money reason, it’s only a drop in the ocean of needs.”
The displacement numbers are immense and affect those still in Ukraine, as well. One in two children has been displaced in Ukraine after just a single month of the war. Casualty numbers during fighting are difficult to confirm given the very nature of war, as well as the secrecy of information during wartime, but estimates of 20,000+ fatalities already are difficult to stomach. It is the most deadly active armed conflict in the world.
“While I’m talking to lots of people I’m realizing that many people aren’t shocked by what has happened,” said Lorenc, whose knowledge of Polish history makes him an excellent judge for taking the temperature of the nation. “Poland, Ukraine, Baltic states, we [all] have a complicated history with Russia. There isn’t much love lost, so people were always kind of suspicious. What Putin did wasn’t a complete shock to everybody.”
However, Lorenc would follow that up by saying, “What I think shocked everybody was how cruel and brutal the effort is. Hearing about Mariupol, seeing the tanks moving in, seeing how much of the damage has happened, is really tough to see.” The brutality of the war is difficult to interact with, and recent reports continue to be grave, with the AP reporting of civilian massacres by Russian troops in areas around Kyiv.
Lorenc says he not only feels safe in Poland but stresses “it is safe”, an emotion shared with him by much of the Polish people thanks to Article 5 of NATO, citing collective defense for all NATO members. However, the reality of being a stone’s throw away from a shocking degree of violence certainly causes tension that Lorenc says he feels throughout the city. “There’s definitely some tension that’s palpable. People understand that this is a serious problem.”
“The human spirit is critical,” said Lorenc, as we wrapped up our conversation and discussed more of those ‘non-essential’ (a term that should be used lightly) items. It’s very much in the little things, as Lorenc is learning.
“I just found a local shop that’s making lollipops, and they were giving away Ukrainian colored lollipops, so I ordered 2,000 of those!” Lorenc shows me them on our Zoom call. They’re blue and yellow swirled lollipops clearly professionally made – clearly by a knowledgable candymaker. “I just want to give a little lollipop that reminds the kids of their country. I think those things are very, very, important.”
There are also 250 more soccer balls being donated to the cause by AFCAA. Lorenc is excited because, “I brought only a dozen of those [to start] with me, and every time I gave a soccer ball away, [you saw] the pure joy on their face”. Lorenc would also add, “I really think being able to move away from the necessities to something that can really lift somebody’s spirit while giving them the ability to be active is something that I’m looking forward to.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the little boy playing with the car or the little boy that I gave a soccer ball to that was so appreciative,” said Lorenc, discussing the trip so far. Lorenc notes that it has been personally difficult for him. “It gets lonely sometimes,” he said, who also cited the emotional exhaustion that all parties are feeling in this situation.
It is people like the smuggler with a checkered past, or the Polish women who have cooked for over a month straight for the refugees, or the refugees themselves, models of courage, that keep the negativity of the situation on the page from drowning out the beauty of the day-to-day resilience.
Gaining Knowledge About Conflict Elsewhere
For a myriad of reasons, ranging from justified to insidious, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has dominated the news cycle. Critics of the rampant coverage and hyperfocus within even the 24-hour news cycle on the conflict have noted that coverage of this war has not nearly been the same as compared to wars where Black and Brown people elsewhere on the globe not in the immediate vicinity of Europe have been in danger and targeted.
As a club, we are firm in our beliefs to help educate others. Two other brutal ongoing conflicts that have already seen four to five thousand men, women, and children killed as a result of the war very rarely, if ever, see coverage in any form of news about them. It is not enough, but it felt right in this piece to briefly engage in discussion and emphasis about these conflicts, as well.
The Yemeni Crisis
UNICEF’s 2022 apparel for humanitarian action in Yemen features all the information you truly need to know about the horrors of what is currently happening in Yemen. 400,000 children are “severely malnourished”. 1.3 million are “acutely malnourished”. Children’s nutrition is described as “increasingly threatened, with life-long consequences”, and over ten million Yemenis still simply need to be reached.
The Yemeni Civil War has been active since 2014, and the humanitarian crisis, which was already full-blown by the start of the Civil War, has only continued to get direr and direr. In 2018, it was warned that Yemen could be the site of the worst famine in 100 years. There remains an ongoing cholera outbreak that has been active since 2016 and saw over 2,200 deaths in 2017. This is not even mentioning the active war and the massive civilian casualty numbers from the war, which are unknown and likely widely underreported due to the nature of the conflict, with UK-based Save The Children reporting 2018 of 85,000 child fatalities due to starvation. According to the Yemen Data Project, at least 10,000 civilians have been injured in the conflict, and nearly 9,000 have died. The vast majority of civilian casualties have come at the hands of the United States-backed Saudi Arabia-led coalition.
In 2019, a bipartisan resolution to end the U.S. involvement in Yemen died on the president’s desk, who used a rarely-used presidential veto to block a bill that went through both houses of Congress, claiming that the resolution was “endangering the lives of American citizens, and brave service members”. To date, a single American service member has died in Yemen in what was a botched military raid that also resulted in the killing of at least one civilian, an eight-year-old girl, who was also an American citizen.
A massive breakthrough has occurred, with the two sides agreeing to a temporary ceasefire on 4/2 with the hope of providing aid to the nation of Yemen in which 80% of the population is reliant on governmental aid.
While mainstream coverage of the crisis has been limited, the international community has moved quickly to cultivate resource guides to raise awareness. There is also a substantial population of Yemeni-Americans living in Michigan, with estimates of 30,000, and a majority of those in Michigan residing in or near Dearborn and Hamtramck.
Michigan FC is just one of those organizations attempting to make an impact. Founded in 2015, they are a non-profit grassroots youth soccer club that is available for all free of cost. Given the location and the ability to play for free, many young refugees from Yemen, as well as Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, play for and are supported by the club.
The Myanmar/Burmese Insurgency
The 2020 elections of Myanmar saw a landslide victory for the primary civilian party of the nation. However, on February 1, 2021, the Tatmadaw (the Armed Forces of Myanmar) refused to acknowledge the election’s results and detained several leading members of the NLD (National League for Democracy) party that should have been in power, including the sitting Head of State. The military would subsequently seize control of the nation and take control all infrastructure, physical and virtual, and a Civil Disobedience Movement has been the method of the people to fight back against the brutality of the military.
Being targeted by the military now in this coup, and a historic target of oppression, the Rohingya ethnic minority group is also in danger. In the first month of what was described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the UN, at least 6,700 Rohingya, with at least 730 under the age of five, were killed. Entire villages were destroyed and Ang San Suu Kyi, who was the aforementioned sitting Head of State (known as State Counsellor) arrested in the coup and a former Nobel Peace Prize winner, defended the nation’s actions at the UN in 2019, effectively shattering her status as a human rights champion. Active conflict continues in Myanmar, with over 5,000 fatalities reported in 2022 alone.
The Burma Center in Battle Creek is a local option to support. They estimated that roughly 2,500 Burmese people live in the city, and they strive to help empower and engage with Burmese people in their community, aiding with translation services and offering a health and wellness program to provide important physical and mental health services to a population that struggles uniquely with mental health here in Michigan, and the U.S. at large.
Author’s Note: The conversation with Mr. Lorenc in which this story’s quotes are pulled occurred on 3/29. All statistical numbers cited should be considered accurate to that date.
About AFC Ann Arbor
Association Football Club Ann Arbor (AFC Ann Arbor) was founded in 2014 and competes in USL2 (men’s) and USLW (women’s) national amateur leagues. We are a community-based club, focused on equity, justice, and anti-racism. We consider all of our stakeholders, including supporters, players, staff, and ownership to be part of the #AFCAAFamily. Come On You Mighty Oak!
