The lemon in the tea: A reflection on displacement, nostalgia, and waiting with Ukrainian temporary protection beneficiaries in the Czech Republic

By Lilian Ebere Anazube | OMC 2025

Photo by Николай Демин on Unsplash

I didn’t think a cup of tea would stay with me this long. But Oksana’s words did: ‘I make tea the way my mother taught me, as her mother taught her. Strong, scalding, and with a slice of lemon. It reminds me of home’.

It wasn’t just about the tea. It was everything. The quiet care with which she folded a napkin under the cup, the pause before she handed it to me, and the silence that filled the room after. That cup of tea opened something in me. I had come into Oksana’s home as a researcher. But in that moment, I was simply one migrant woman, sitting across from another who missed home in a way I deeply understood. During my fieldwork with Ukrainian women under temporary protection in the Czech Republic, I spoke with twelve women and joined them in five informal gatherings. Some stories were shared over lunch, while others were told during walks or in the middle of language class breaks. Nothing about these encounters felt like data collection. It felt more like listening to grief unfold in small, careful ways.

The Czech Republic, under the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive, had taken in many Ukrainian refugees after the Russian invasion, mostly women and children, since martial law kept many Ukrainian men behind. With their temporary protection legal status, many Ukrainians were able to seek safety and basic access to essential services. However, as I observed through my interactions with the participants, safety does not always equate to stability. During my research, I kept returning to a central question: As a “temporary refugee”, what does it mean to occupy a place where one is safe, yet suspended, legally, emotionally, and temporally? Through an internship with Diakonie’s Programme of Work for Migrants (Diakonie CCE, Praha), I got close enough to see how these displaced Ukrainian women and their families rebuild their lives from the inside out, not with policies or documents, but in tiny acts of hope and memory. One participant still arranged her shoes carefully by the door, just as she did back in Ukraine. Another told me she made sure to fold her blanket every morning and place her rosary beside her pillow. It gave her a sense of order. Familiarity. Safety. Another participant, Yana, who shared a suite with her son and two other Ukrainian ladies in a converted hotel building, said, ‘I cannot plant flowers here because that would mean I’m staying. I don’t know if I'm staying.’. She had kept her bags half-packed for over a year. I understood that feeling of being somewhere, but not really being there. The Temporary Protection status, despite its legal generosity, comes with a cruel paradox: it grants safety while denying settlement. You are allowed to be here, but not “of” here.

Tea, nostalgia and the rituals of continuity

In one of the shared housing spaces, I met a woman who had hung a printed fabric of snow-capped mountains behind her bed. ‘It makes me feel like I’m in my room back in Lviv’, she smiled. ‘No matter how sad I feel, when I walk into my room, best believe I will walk out hopeful and energetic. The nostalgia clears my head.’. That phrase stayed with me: The nostalgia clears my head. What surprised me most wasn’t the stories of struggle, there were many, but how much effort went into staying emotionally present for themselves and others. Mothers held themselves together for their children. Wives kept up smiles during video calls with husbands still at war. A woman who used to be a fashion stylist told me, ‘When I dress well for Czech language class, it reminds me of who I am. Not just someone running away.’.

And always, there was tea. Boiled-to-the-point-of-scalding water with lemon slices. Wherever I went, tea was there, poured like a ritual, shared like comfort. It was one of the few things no one had to explain. We all just knew what it meant. I remember one afternoon, sitting beside a participant named Svetlana. Her husband was still in Ukraine. She had been crying the day before, but today she smiled, straightened her back, and laughed at a joke in Czech class. ‘We are strong, like our tea’, she told me, almost like she was trying to convince herself. In those weeks, I learned that strength doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, like tea, it steeps quietly. It folds laundry. It cooks Varenyky even when key ingredients are missing. It tidies a corner of a shared room. It waits.

Final remark

I began this research curious about how displaced Ukrainian women create meaning while living in the inevitable limbo that the temporariness of their temporary protection legal status thrusts on them. What I walked away with was a deep respect for the everyday ways displaced women hold themselves and their families together, without headlines, without applause, sometimes without even words. They wait, not passively, but actively. With longing, yes, but also with care, and now, whenever I make tea, strong, with lemon, I think of them. I think of home, and how many ways it can be recreated, even far from where we last left it. ​

Lilian Ebere Anazube 

Lillian is a sociologist and migration researcher with a focus on displacement, emotional labour, and the lived experiences of migrant women. Currently pursuing advanced studies in migration and intercultural relations, Lilian draws on her journey as a migrant and humanitarian practitioner to explore the everyday acts of resilience that shape life beyond borders.