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We have all lost our homes. People from Ukraine but also many people working here. We left home and don’t know where to return to after this crisis, where to go as there is nothing called home anymore. So we talk about what’s coming next, where to go after finishing our work in this humanitarian mission. We make plans that are broken and push the thought of what’s next to the back of our heads. We’re lonely and yet living all together in this world. A world we hate but also care about. We don’t look away. We try to make it a better place. We volunteer because we take the time to do so. We volunteer because we do without luxury. We help because we’ve been in situations where we needed help but had none. We want to give because we know how it feels to lose. We give out of dedication without questioning it.

A chair. It is standing in the corner. It is tiny. It has four legs. The legs are red. The seat and the back of the chair are blue. It is small. No meaning. Simple and small. Practical. At least for children.

I take my phone out of the pocket of my beige cargo pants. I open my iPhone camera in the middle of the refugee center at the border. I take a couple of shots and when I’m finished I walk on towards my desk where I’m about to work during the night. Me walking away gets interrupted by a voice calling me out for taking that picture. I stop and a little humbled I look over my shoulders and patter back. A man I’ve never seen before tells me not to take any photos in the building. He rambles on about me not being allowed to take pictures in a refugee center. We’re still at the Ukrainian-Polish border in the lovely city known by the name Przemyśl. In there the tiny chair gains a meaning — of loss, of humility, of children needing to flee. It creates awareness of the tiny humans in here, in a building full of steel and bright LED lights. It feels like a prison sometimes, of hopelessness and grief and this little, tiny, colorful chair stands for the ability of growth. Of growing out of every bad situation, of continuing and that one day everything will be fine. As for children everything is fine at times in Tesco when they are playful, getting cereal and Chai and when they are far away with their thoughts of war. We adults instead take responsibilities which is also why I apologized to the man that told me off with good reason for taking a picture. In a building full of broken people we try to ensure privacy and not taking any photos of the situation is one part of doing so. My ignorant self though thinks who is that man to tell me off, to approach me and to remind me of the rules I actually do find very important — and what is a photo of a tiny chair doing wrong compared to the circumstances. I smile politely and walk away with a serious face back to my desk in room 13, the large dormitory where 400 people spend the night and where I volunteer. I’m in a bad mood now and sit at my spot watching people sleeping in their green field beds and colorful blankets, spectating nothing important for my work. The large room looks dilapidated, half painted and set up provisionally. I sit in silence.