'It's like an out-of-body experience:' 19-year-old Irish-Nigerian student stranded in Ukraine

Racheal Diyaolu who moved to Ukraine to study medicine in November.

Racheal Diyaolu, 19, from Co Carlow moved to Ukraine to study medicine in November and now finds herself in a country at war, seeking shelter in a bunker, and unable to secure a safe route out.

“Coming here, I thought my main worries would be what I’d be doing for my next class or the different tests that I’d have to be preparing for and how much study I’m doing,” she said.

“It never crossed my mind. It was never on my radar that something like this could happen.” 

Racheal is staying in a hostel with other international students who are also studying medicine as well as Ukrainian families and Ukrainian students.

She is currently in Eastern Ukraine, close to the Russian border, where loud bangs and artillery can be heard daily.

“I’m pretty sure around our Russian-Ukrainian border, there are Russian troops there, but the Ukrainian forces are doing well to keep them out and from entering the city,” she said.

Where she is staying has a bunker where they go when it is deemed unsafe to be overground.

She said being in Ukraine at present feels like “an out of body experience”.

I try not to think about the fact that I am in the country that is going through war at this moment just because it does take a toll if you think about it a bit too much.

“The main thing I’m trying to do is to just stay positive and just stay in contact with my family and friends as much as possible and let them know that I am fine, I am safe — as safe as I can be in this point in time," she said.

Racheal Diyaolu

As an Irish-Nigerian she said she has heard of racism at the border.

“I have seen different videos of people that are stranded at the border and unable to get through. It was really upsetting when you did see that coming in because those are really the only avenues that we have to get home,” she said.

“I know that if I would be lucky enough to get to a border like everyone else did, my skin colour is the first thing you see, not my passport, so it was very worrying seeing all of those reports.” 

Racheal has been looking at safe routes to leave Ukraine but has been told that transport is not available where she is and has been advised to “stay put”.

Her mother, who is back in Carlow, calls her as often as she can to make sure that she is OK, but she tries not to tell her friends and family the real extent of what is happening, so as not to worry them.

When going down to the bunker, she tells her family that they are going down for safety reasons.

“But we’re usually going down because we hear loud bangs, or we’d hear ammunition. Last night, we were told that we need to go down to the bunker because there is a threat of an airstrike," she said.

“We’ve been down there so often. We’re just like 'OK, we’re going down again'.

"All we can do is hope that it’s not for a very long period of time."