Thank you for giving me the opportunity to look back at that time. When I think about it now, it feels like another life, but I actually have many very good memories of my life in Great Britain.
In 2004, Ukraine was a very different country. Salaries were very low, and Europe was almost closed to Ukrainians. Getting a visa was not easy at all. I was a young student at Kharkiv National Agrarian University, studying Management. At that time, the university had a special program that allowed students to go to England for “practice.” In reality, it meant working on farms, in fields, or in packhouses.
Almost every student dreamed of getting into this program. It was a huge opportunity for us to see Europe and earn money that was very difficult to earn in Ukraine.
But the program was expensive. My father had to take a bank loan of $1,530 to pay for my participation and my flight to London. If he could not repay the loan on time, the bank could take our house. So, yes, we were taking a real risk.
We also had almost no information about where we were going. There was no internet like we have today, and students could not choose where they would work. I was simply told that my employer was Cecil Fransis Ltd. and I was given a printed map with the location.
My English was not very good. I could understand some things and speak simple sentences, but that was about it.
I travelled with two other girls from my university, Masha and Liuda. We met at the airport and discovered that we had the same destination. There were about ten other Ukrainian girls travelling with us, but they all had different destinations, so the three of us decided to stay together.
We flew first to Austria and then changed planes and arrived in London. Masha and Liuda did not have any British money, so I bought train tickets for all three of us. Before leaving Ukraine, I had visited several banks trying to buy British pounds. I was lucky enough to find some. I remember being particularly excited because some of the coins were completely new and unfamiliar to me.
Our journey from London to Spalding was quite an adventure — and not a very comfortable one! We were exhausted, had to change from trains to a bus, and at one point we even spent the night in an English man’s house. Eventually we arrived in Spalding.
We went into a shop and I asked a gentleman if I could use his telephone to call our employer. I paid him for the call and tried to explain to our employer where we were. My English was very limited, so I asked him to come and get us because we had no idea what else to do.
Eventually, Andy, the manager, arrived by car and took us to Pinchbeck.
The company had accommodation for us, but there were no rooms left in the main house because students from Poland and Belarus were already staying there. So they put us in a caravan. The company provided us with sleeping bags and bicycles, which we used to get around.
There were about 14 students and three local supervisors — Andy, David and Paul.
I worked mostly in the packhouse, packing strawberries and plums. I only worked in the fields a few times, while most of the other students worked outside.
The first couple of weeks were difficult because I wasn’t used to standing on my feet and working all day. But we were 20 years old and full of energy, and very quickly we got used to it. After a while, none of us felt tired anymore.
The money was a very important part of the whole experience. As soon as I received my first salary, I borrowed some money from Masha and Liuda and sent everything back to Ukraine to help my father repay the bank loan. When I think about it now, I realize how much money it seemed to us at the time. We were so happy!
Soon we were able to buy mobile phones, which was a huge thing for us. Finally, we could call our families and friends in Ukraine whenever we wanted.
Some of the students had driving licences, so the management sometimes let us use a company car to go shopping. There were no Ukrainian shops in Spalding that we knew about, so we really missed Ukrainian food.
I especially remember the potatoes in Safeway. They were already cut into little pieces and packaged, and we thought this was very strange! We were used to buying normal potatoes and preparing them ourselves. But we had no choice, so we ate them anyway.
Fortunately, we made a lot of friends. At weekends, we travelled whenever we could. We went to Peterborough, King’s Lynn and Skegness, and of course we wanted to see the sea. For young people who had never really travelled outside Ukraine before, all of this was very exciting.
I know quite a few students from my university who decided not to return to Ukraine after the program. But that was not my story.
Our visa was for six months, and I decided to go home because I wanted to finish my education. I still had two more years of university, and I wanted to get my Master’s degree.
Looking back, some of my best memories of Great Britain are not about work at all. They are about the people and the friendships.
We had lots of parties in our caravan. One of my favourite memories was when Ukraine played England in football. We all watched the match together in the caravan. David Gray brought pizza and beer, and we were all cheering for our countries.
At one point David got lost in the darkness and I had to help him find his way back to his friend’s car! We were laughing and shouting like crazy during the match. Unfortunately for us, England won.
Another very special memory is the party we had just before we returned to Ukraine. We danced a lot and everyone was having a wonderful time. David’s little mum even came to pick him up!
The next morning, David and Andy drove us to the bus station in Spalding. When they said goodbye and drove away, I saw both of them crying.
David gave me his address written on a piece of paper. I sent him one or two letters after I returned to Ukraine, but then life became busy — graduation, relationships, different jobs — and eventually I lost his address.
I still wonder sometimes what happened to them and what their lives are like now. I would honestly love to know.
At the end of 2013, I emigrated to the United States on a fiancé visa. I now have a family and two beautiful children, and I became a U.S. citizen in 2019. About five years ago, we moved from New York City to Texas.
I am still in touch with my friend Masha. She is also a mother of two children now and lives in Poland. We sometimes talk about those days in Spalding and remember how young we were.
When I look back, I have many good memories of that time. We were young, we worked hard, we had very little money, and sometimes we were completely lost — literally and figuratively! — but we also met wonderful people and experienced something that was completely new for us.
I don’t remember feeling that British people were unkind to us. Quite the opposite. There were local people who helped us, looked after us and made our time there much easier. That is probably one of the things I remember most warmly.
I also think that experiences like ours are an interesting part of modern history. We were a generation of young Ukrainians who suddenly had a small window into another world. We came to England to work, earn money and see something outside Ukraine, and then most of us went back home.
For me, it was only six months, but those six months stayed with me for many years.
And now, after all these years, I have so many photographs from that period. It would be wonderful to find David, Andy or Paul again and find out how their lives turned out.
I would especially like to tell them that I still remember them — and that they were an important part of a very special chapter of my life.