Anna Kanavalava:

I didn’t take my phone with me, so we wouldn’t be tracked. We packed so quickly that instead of a bag, I used a pillowcase. With only 90 dollars in my pocket, I took the children and we left. My granddaughter Nastia sang protest songs as our friends drove us to the Ukrainian border. We begged her not to sing, at least not at the border. At night, we walked 2 kilometers through the neutral zone. I never thought it would take so long- there was no light ahead, and we were feeling our way through the darkness. It was then that Vania asked me for the first time; “Grandma, is our mom in prison?”

During the Soviet time, we lived all over the Soviet Union, because my husband worked in the military service. We lived in Moscow, Chita, and Sakhalin. At first, I took any job I could find. When the era of entrepreneurship began, we started to get into the trading business. Then, we opened a café and shops in Sakhalin. However, we never considered staying there, we always knew we would return to Belarus.

My husband and I have one child in our family; our daughter Antanina. My husband is a straight shooter- he’ll never deceive you, and always keeps his word. He instilled those values in our daughter. She is brave and loves animals. Once, when we were on vacation at our country house, we heard a dog’s cry. Antonina swam across the river and brought back two little yellow puppies, which we kept. Simply put, our house was always noisy.

My daughter Antanina Kanavalava and her husband Siarhei Yarashevich were detained after the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus. My daughter was a representative for presidential candidate Sviatlana Tikhanouskaya, while Siarhei was an admin for the Telegram channel “Army with the People.” The Belarusian court sentenced them both to five and a half years in prison. To prevent my grandchildren Vania and Nastia from ending up in an orphanage, I took them and left the country.

My husband stayed in Belarus to help our daughter and son-in-law. He deals with lawyers and brings them packages to prison. I haven’t seen my husband and daughter for almost four years. In Poland, I took two more children into my care, while their mother was undergoing drug rehabilitation treatment.

Anna Kanavalova arrived in Poland with her grandchildren in 2020.