Vice Chair of the Manx Motorcycle Club Jim Hunter tells us about the trip he's been on to Ukraine delivering equipment to schools there.
He also gives us glimpse of what life is like for those living with the constant threat of conflict and describes the warm welcome he and his party have received.
Hello and welcome to this edition of the Manx newscast with me Beth Espy. Now this is a conversation which really opened my eyes to what's happening in all reality, not that far away from us. I was talking to the vice chair of the Manx motorcycle club Jim Hunter, very well known to motorcycle fans over here on the Isle of Man because he's one of the travelling marshals but he's also an incredible charity fundraiser and somebody who really does go above and beyond to look out and look after other people. As I speak he is in the Ukraine and so I caught up with him to find out what he'd been doing there. There's actually three of us here. We're actually driving through Keith and driving the car with Israel, Gillette and Israel's a sudden hundredth competitor and he's also, I think, one of your journey to a dream podcast sat behind me. He's riding Russell, of course, past Manx. We're on a pretty competitor. So the three of us have been on this little excursion through Romania, into Ukraine. Then we've driven up to Keith and we're visiting two schools. We visited one school down in the southwest of the country and we provided some multimedia facilities for them so they got a projector to use in the hall and classrooms and lots of sports equipment and then today we've been in a school. It's called the ORT, Lyceum School, Keith, fifteen hundred students. It's right in the centre of town. Their problem as a school is that their power supply gets affected when there's any sort of attack and in the winter, of course, it should be cold. They needed some equipment that they could use to provide power when the mains electricity goes off. So collects their donations from people mainly associated with the Banks World, we were able to buy this uninterrupted power supply to cost us through donations because we're about four and a half thousand euros and we bought a lot of modeling equipment to give out to the students in school today. And Jim, I think it's fair to say that you've had a real insight into what's typical now daily life is like for people living in Keith. Yeah, there's a couple of things we've called us out. One is we've maybe shown us to ride on the Saturday evening when we went out for something to eat and get a drink. Keith was absolutely bustling with people and then just when we're thinking about perhaps getting one more drink in another bath, everybody disappears in the bath clothes because there's a curfew at after the clock, you realise that people do a day to it and there's absolutely nobody around. Then last night we had the hotel and the city air raid sirens went off. I was up out of bed straight down to the basement and into the air raid shot. There's one or two other people there. Then it didn't seem like anything was going to happen. So I went back up to my room, took a look out the window from my hotel room when there was a drone, a Russian drone attack taking place. That's, I was pretty stressed about that to get last sleep, that's not to be honest. But the starting thing is when I got up, it wasn't on any of the locals' radars. It was just that's just the way it is now and we get these attacks on a daily basis. When we're at the school today, that's another fascinating part of it. It's 1500 students at the school, 170 staff, but they do have three huge basement air raid shelters. When the air raid siren signs, then it's obligatory for their staff students to go down into the shelter. Staff are telling us how stressful some of the younger children, their primary school children, find that because sometimes the internet goes down, sometimes the mobile data goes down. They want to go home and see their parents and they can't stay in the shelter. But like I say, it doesn't seem to be such a big deal for them today. We spoke to lots of students today, absolutely outstanding students at the school. They just saw very much a fact about how dealing with the air raids and disruptions to your power supply some days, not being able to go to school because of the ice risk of the time. That's just become part of their daily routine. It's very humbling. It's really, really quite humbling. Did you get a sense, Jim, of what you all being there and the donations? Did you get a sense of what that means to everybody there? I'm sure it's right. I'm running what they agree with me here now that since we've arrived, we've been made to feel so welcome and the first school that we went to, the head teacher of that particular school, after we had a look around and we'd made a little presentation, he said, "Look, you have to come back to my house. We've prepared some lunch for you. We had this absolutely outstanding lunch and all this family was there and afterwards he got his accordion out and he started singing the songs with other members of staff with school. It's just been a real feel good event for us. Well, I say feel good. I think we've just been made to feel so welcome. The things that we've been able to provide because there's a nation to be given have been really very well received. They've really appreciated it. It's been really worthwhile." And from your point of view, obviously with your school background, just knowing what a difference you are making to these young people who are having to go through some unthinkable things and unthinkable stresses, it must be really heartening for you from that point of view, just knowing you're making a difference in young people's lives. Well, the first thing on the agenda this morning, because they did an itinerary before our day at the school, was a 10-minute discussion with some, equivalent to your 10 students. Anyway, that's how many discussion turned into a one-hour discussion, because they just get firing questions that are how life fits an Indian's high school differs from life and the OIT licensing school keeps. I suggest it to them that perhaps when we're going back to the island, one of the things we could do is set up some Zoom classroom conversation cycling, because I'm sure that both parties are getting lots of light out of that. And Jim, what's the plan now? Are you staying out there for a little bit longer or are you heading home soon? Well, as we speak there, we're just trying to get out of the key. We're hopefully getting maybe an hour outside, around about a seven-hour journey to the Ukraine, Romania border. We're actually getting through the borders a little bit of an unknown sometime on our way in to Ukraine. It took maybe half an hour running and I've certainly had experiences in the past when we've been there for half a day. So we don't know. I mean, it's going to take to get back into Romania, and then we're catching the flights of Romania on Wednesday evening. And when it's flying back from Gatwick, I think, I'm catching the boat. I'm going to call and see my daughter at the Free University, and they catch the boat back on Thursday, hopefully. The other thing that's come out of this little trip here, now, we've got Israel. And yesterday, we had a trip between Keith and the Chernobyl nuclear plant. And we traveled through lots of parts of Ukraine that was previously occupied by the Russians back in 2022 and the invasion. And that was with a guy called Lenny. Lenny is a huge biker. So we're just thinking, "Okay, the thing that brought us together was, you know, out of the riding bikes." You know, that's it. And pretty much all of the donations to buy this 4,000 euro heat exchange area and things were bought for schools and the projection facilities. The vast majority of that is through people that we know through our common interest in riding bikes and motorcycle. And particularly, I have to say, to my squirrel, please. So people just been so generous. So honestly, it's been a great thing to experience coming along, but we couldn't have provided the things provided without this sport. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manks Radio newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. 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