stevenpiziks: (Fountain)
stevenpiziks ([personal profile] stevenpiziks) wrote2010-07-05 09:17 pm
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Ukraine: TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 AND 30, 2010

(I'm in Kyiv and I'm scamming off someone's wifi.)  Photos are posted here.

After the adoption trip itself, this has got to be the scariest trip I’ve ever made.

I’m sitting in the hotel in Korosten as I write this.  It’s 5:23 a.m. local time, and I’ve been awake on and off since 3:30, thanks to jet lag and wondering what the hell is going to happen today.  Sasha is asleep in the other bed, or he’s doing a good job of faking it.  I know he’s more on edge than I am.  I’m nervous on his behalf.  He’s nervous about himself.

Kala dropped Sasha, my mother, and me off at the Detroit Metro airport in plenty of time for our flight.  Aran gave a perfunctory good-bye.  Maksim hugged me and wouldn’t let go.  I felt really bad for him.  He wanted to go to Ukraine, and with everything that’s been going on at home, he’s felt even more attached to me lately, so me leaving for a week has made things hard for him.  I let him cling for a long time, then gently pried him away and said good-bye.

We got through security just fine.  Sasha was already on edge.  He shows it by making joke-style complaints.  Unfortunately, the security line is a bad place to joke about bombs or blowing yourself up, so Mom and I had to put a stop to that.  As a child coming into the US, Sasha was largely immune to security procedures, and he doesn’t remember much of them, so he was a little startled and embarrassed about them, especially when he failed to empty his pockets completely and had to go through the detectors again.

On the other side, the three of us hooked up again, found our gate, and got supper at a restaurant before finally boarding.  Unfortunately, the three of us weren’t quite seated together.  Mom and I were just across the aisle from one another, but Sasha was some distance away.  Sasha liked this; I didn’t.  “Oh, he’s seventeen,” Mom said.  “Give him some room.”

I didn’t have a problem with him being alone--what could he do on a plane?--I was worried about his emotional state.  Sasha only vaguely remembers flying the first time, but simple roller coasters terrify him.  An airplane wouldn’t be much fun.  I could see him as we took off.  He had a movie going, and he was staring fixedly at the screen, headphones on.  (I asked him later if he were scared at takeoff, and he said he was.)

Anyway, the flight was long and it was dull, which is how you want long flights to be.  Mom’s seat-mate was a seven-year-old boy with dual German-American citizenship who flies back and forth a lot.  He was fluent in German and English.  When we approached Frankfurt, he pointed out several landmarks to Mom and told her all about them.

It turned out this trip was all about food.  On the trip to Frankfurt they fed us twice, gave us a snack, and served drinks three times.  When we landed, we found our gate for the Kyiv flight, then hunted down a restaurant for more food.  Here, my German came in handy.  Sasha said he thought it was funny and strange hearing me talk to other people in that language.

By now, Sasha was tired and extremely cranky.  (So glad we didn’t have Mackie with us.)  Nearly every remark to him got a snarl.  Mom and I were both aware that it was more the worry about the upcoming trip to Ostapy than anything else that was to blame, and we tried to keep things light, though a couple of times we had to admonish him.  And we were all tired.

The commuter flight to Kyiv went fine, as well.  They fed us =again= on that flight, too.  When I’m traveling across time zones, I tend to eat like that metaphorical pig.  It helps keep me awake, and I operate on the “eat now, you never know when your next chance will be” principal.

Borispol airport in Kyiv is hot, crowded, and confusing.  We made our way off the airplane, and a whole crowd of us apparently went the wrong way down a particular hall because a Very Unhappy Official rushed out and shooed us in the right direction.  We finally arrived in the airport proper and went through customs.  I got nervous.  The last time we went to Ukraine, we had to apply for a visa well in advance.  Ukraine has recently opened up its borders--no visa required.  Still, I was half waiting for someone to say, “What?  You heard wrong, comrade!  No visa, no entry.”  This didn’t happen--the bored, stern-faced official inspected our passports, stamped them without reservation, and handed them back.  We were in.

In the main area of the airport, we scanned the crowd of people holding signs.  I knew what Gene looks like from pictures, but we saw no one with our name or who looked like Gene.  After running the gauntlet of taxi drivers (“You need taxi?”  “Taxi?”  “I have taxi for you.”), we stood to one side to figure out what to do.  I was just about to look up his number and call when Gene showed up with a sign.  He had just arrived.  Well, good!

Gene is a stocky man, a little younger than I am, with sandy hair hair and blue eyes.  Introductions went all around, and he showed us to the money changer.  “Same rate as in Kyiv, so you may as well do it here,” he said.  We changed our money, I paid him, and we headed outside into the hot summer sun.

Then he took us out to the minibus he’d hired.  Hoo boy.

Originally, Gene had planned to drive us around in his own car, but it just recently broke down, so he knocked a chunk of his fee off and hired someone else to take us to Korosten.  The driver was a big bald man in his fifties who spoke no English.  He loaded our luggage into the van and off we went.

Okay, first off all, the air conditioning the van didn’t work as advertised.  It clearly needed recharging.  The inside of the van was hot and stuffy.  I was worried about Mom.  After an hour, we finally ended up killing the AC and opening the widnows at my insistence.  (I’ll play the ugly American, thanks, especially when I’m paying six grivna per kilometer.)

Once we cleared Kyiv, the drive was pretty.  Birch forests, fields of grass and potatoes, grazing cows, Ukrainian farmhouses.  It was also hell.  The driver decided that since he was paid by the kilometer, it was in his best interest to deliver us to Korosten as fast as possible.  He drove like a maniac, passing every single vehicle he came across.  I think he must have been going 90 or 100 for most of the trip.  We had several close calls, one of which made me shout.  None of these seemed to bother Gene or the driver.  Mom and I finally started laughing over it--what else could we do?--and Mom said he was better than any driver in Italy.

The drive to Korosten took about three hours.  By now, we were tired, wrung out, wiped, you name it. 

Korosten is a small city/large town in northern Ukraine and is the usual mix of old and new buildings.  I still can’t get used to Cyrillic script--I try to read it and can’t, and it gives me a slight headache.  We passed a beautiful Orthodox church, and a lot of small shops and apartment buildings.  Nothing more than four or five stories tall.  The outskirts of the town are more run-down, with a semi-deserted feel and grass growing among the buildings.

We arrived at the Continental Hotel, which has only an English name to give it cache, I think.  I paid the driver, and was less than thrilled at the amount, since it was the same as renting a car for a week would have been.  Gene says car rentals in Ukraine are risky, since the cars are often poorly maintained, but I was still unhappy.

The hotel rooms are very inexpensive.  We’re talking $50 a night, here--$80 if you want AC.  Since we aren’t going to be staying in the rooms much, we opted out of AC.  It’s weird, actually.  My and Sasha’s room is, by American standards, barley okay.  Two narrow beds, TV, bathroom with leaky shower.  The doors don’t lock as securely as I would like.  But I know that, for this area, we’re living in the height of luxury.  Compared to Ostapy, we’re living like kings.

Anyway, we unpacked.  Sasha wanted badly to go out and explore.  This is a bit of a problem.  Sasha talks, moves, and acts like an American teenager, for all that he looks Ukrainian, and this town gets very few foreigners.  Calling attention to yourself as a “wealthy American” is bad idea around here, and if Sasha got lost, he couldn’t even ask for directions.

Also, Sasha keeps giving money away.

He’d saved up $100 to bring to Ukraine, and he changed it to about 800 grivna.  And he keeps giving it to people.

Sasha’s main (perhaps only) memories of Ukraine are of hunger and poverty, and he thinks of everyone in Ukraine as being poor.  And he wants to help.

At the end of the hallway on our floor is a tiny balcony that overlooks the house next door.  It’s a small enclosed yard with a woodpile, no grass, and some ancient wooden chairs scattered about.  I saw two teenaged boys playing a game with a ragged deck of cards down there.  Sasha, apparently, saw them too, and asked Gene to introduce him to them because Sasha wanted to give them some of his money.  Gene dissuaded him from that and also told him not to wander around the streets of Korosten alone, which I also told him not to do.

At one point, he =did= wander away for a bit during supper, and when he came back, he said he’d given 50 grivna to a little old lady gathering cans on the street.  Gene gently told him that although he probably made that old woman’s day, she was probably more startled than really thankful, and if he keeps giving money to strangers around town, word will very quickly get around that this American boy (who must have American parents) is staying in the hotel and he has money.  This can easily attract thieves.  “You are going to visit your family in Ostapy,” Gene said, “and you can spend money on them.  There is also a church in town, and that would be a good place to donate money without attracting attention.”

We ate supper in the hotel restaurant.  (Four people cost 200 grivna, or about $24.  McDonald’s costs more.)  We all had borsht and I had chicken kyiv.  Sasha had fries that were definitely fresh sliced.  Mom and Gene had a pork dish that I couldn’t name.  The salad came straight from a garden.  It was all wonderful and tasty.  It took quite a long time to make, and I suspect they were making it from the beginning in the kitchen, but we didn’t mind--we had quite a lot to talk about. 

Sasha wandered off (see above for what he did).  Gene gave us more details about his trip to Ostapy.  He said when he arrived at Marija’s house and knocked, he got no response.  He looked through the windows and saw her sleeping.  Viktor was asleep in another room.  After some pounding, he finally woke Marija up and she came out.  At first she thought =he= had adopted Sasha and Maksim, and she started to thank him, but then he explained that he represented some “friends” in America who had adopted them.  He translated the letters and showed her the pictures, and she cried.  Viktor, Gene said, was very interested in seeing Maksim.

Gene said the house was very dirty, and that Valentina, the head of the village, ordered her to clean it for Sasha’s arrival.  (Apparently she hasn’t changed much from when she lost custody of the boys.)  Gene also said that Marija’s daughters’ houses were much better kept, which was a relief to me--perhaps that part of the cycle has been broken, and good for them!

Sasha came back from his wanderings.  I could tell he was nervous and rattled.  His country had become a foreign place to him, and he was uncertain about the reception he would get tomorrow.  He expressed this by being generally crabby and snarly to everyone.  I told him that tomorrow he was in charge.

“We will stay as long or as short as you want,” I said.  “If you want to stay, we’ll stay.  If you want to leave, we’ll leave.  I only have one over-ride--if it looks to me like you’re in any kind of serious emotional danger, I reserve the right to have us leave right away.  Other than that, we do what you want.”  This seemed to make him feel a little better.

After supper, Mom wanted rest.  Sasha wanted to stay in the hotel, and Gene and I looked around Korosten.  We talked about a number of things.  Gene used to be a teacher of Russian literature, so we have that in common.  We found a monument to the Chernobyl disaster (which is only about 120 miles from here) and a really nice park with a big brass statue of Russian warrior that looks to date from the twelfth or thirteenth century.  It stands on a hill with an entrance beneath it.  We didn’t get a good look--the sun was setting and mosquitoes were coming out--but we decided to save it for later, after Ostapy.

Returned to the hotel and went upstairs to zone for a while.  Sasha was watching TV.  I dozed on my bed, and then we both realized it was time for sleeeeeeeep!

I woke up at about 3:30 and again at 4:30.  The swallows outside fly around making scree scree scree! noises, and the crows have been croaking since 5:00.  Jet lag has kept me messed up.

Today we’re heading for Ostapy.  Gene says the entire village will probably be involved in some way with this.  Everyone remembers Sasha, he said.

I hope this goes well for Sasha.  He needs this.  He needs to see that his family is all right, but most importantly, I think, he needs to see . . . well, what he’s escaped.  I’ve told him flat-out that he has no choice, that he has to come back to America with us, no matter what he might think or what his family here might say, thereby removing any feeling of conflict he might feel if anyone (say, his mother) asks him to stay.  He can be angry at me if he wants.  But he needs to know that what he remembers isn’t as idyllic as he makes it out.  I think that’s another reason he’s nervous--the illusion he’s built up for himself is going to be shaken.  And, of course, he’s worried because he won’t be able to talk to his own mother, and he’s worred at the reception he’ll get.

Heading off now to shower and get breakfast.


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