"At Your Peril, Miss Peace"

Sometimes I feel that if I were to weigh every Russian word I know on a bathroom scale, the arrow would jiggle in that way that it does and then settle back again at zero.  In my vocabulary there is one word for cold, for tired, for work, and for beautiful.  My dictionary is about the size of a box of ktiches matches (the upside is that I can say that in Russian).  I consistently confuse the word for “person” with the word for “garlic”- which complicates things if you are sauteing.  During this first month of Russian study, I have been freed from the carapace of poetics.  And let me tell you literal is the new black.

One of these days, following the exposed hot water pipe that stretches form the school where I teach to my host family’s apartment, it will all be old news.  The walk will be just another part of my plucky, plumthumbed everyday life here in Ukraine.  But right now, I am marveling.  Every time I walk by the water pipe, I watch a black cat nestling in the torn insulation.  I count mullets and open beer containers on my walk from the bazar. I bristle at the full-throttle, gutteral groan of teenagers flooring Ladas in back alleys.  My kids, I vow, will learn how to feather a clutch if it kills me.  I ponder the taste of goose and rabbit in the dumplings at dinner.

And then there are the marshrutkas.

The marshrutka is the lingua franca of local transportation here in Ukraine.  No doubt if you’ve every visited or lived in a former Soviet country or traveled around Latin America or the Indian subcontinent, you’ve encountered one of them.  Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a hundred.  They are of no particular ilk, color or style.  They may have four wheels or six; one door or three.  In fact, they might be most accurately identified by their inability to fall into a single category of automotive vehicle.  Retired school buses, minivans, construction trucks, coaches, all can be found and reincarnated on the road.  If they one day banned together and created a world enterprise, they would operate under the slogan: These Wheels Will Take You Anywhere.”  Heck.  If they were to buckle down and really get creative, they might come out with a bumper sticker.

And today, being no different from yesterday or tomorrow, I heard one of these marshrutkas pop and putter out while driving up the hill that leads into town.

Huh, I mused, so that’s what that sound is.

And then I went back to thinking about how my friend in Cleveland would be just devastated to see all of these earthworms drowning in the puddles of recent rain.  Figuring that some well-trained technician would alight, kick at the front bumper and get the van started again, I kept on up the road.  After deciphering a billboard advertising plumbing facilities up ahead, I looked back and saw the dark blue van, dejected, rolling back down the hill and into the shoulder.  I tried for the next billboard and got lost in translation somewhere between beach and electric kettle.

Then I looked to confirm whether or not the passengers had at least made it off the bus and out of the road.  No sooner did I turn around than was I confronted with the Little Engine That Could incarnate cantering up the hill past the broken-down bus.  A farmer and his haying tailer were gaining on the mislaid travelers like a metronome.  They grey horse that pulled the whole contraption made me want to sing Christmas carols, drink Budweiser, and watch National Velvet all at the same time.  Seeing the passengers marching up the hill on foot, I figured that the marshrutka couldn’t be blamed entirely for living up to its etymology.  The farmer, seated at perfect height for surveying the demise of modernity, continued on without so much as a spit sunflower seed.

The farmer made it up the hill first but I’ll still stand behind the marshrutka. Pawns fall too, but ah, could we ever capture a king without them.

Soon enough, I guess, I’ll start to understand all of this.  And maybe I’ll pause from the marveling for a while.  For now,  I am still waiting for the moment when I become more person, less penmanship.  And wouldn’t it be something to write a love letter in Russian.

These first few weeks we are bound by host families and tied to regulations.  We are foreigners at first sight – temporary visitors who speak in pigeon-tongues and hand gestures.  Every night, we nest and study until the tide of sleep comes in.  Then, we wake and preen and shrug on our brightest colors and tallest shoes.  We cross streets, buy groceries, and barter in packs.  We are in view, always.  And still, somewhere within this foreign limelight, routine has claimed its side of the bed and settled in.

Lately, I’ve been visiting the local stadium after Russian lessons.  It is my best attempt at independence. Every day, I rush home as if to catch the bus for a late Fall field hockey game.  Then, I go and blow the stink off before the sun sets.  The track, rows of blue bleachers, basketball courts and a parking lot make this stadium something of a Mecca for the sports-minded.  Boys play soccer in a cube-like cage turned practice pitch.  A few others toss a basketball at a net-less hoop.  On most days I am the only runner and when I do have company, it is one of my fellow volunteers.

On the commute to the stadium, I see teachers, blue plastic bags full of fresh fish in hand, marching home to second jobs and lazy husbands or dinner preparations.  Teenagers saunter over to the computer club where they watch YouTube videos and learn how to be cool.  Men walk back from kiosks setting packs of cigarettes and spitting sunflower seeds.  At four o’clock everything is in motion.

One day last week, decked out in our finest American sports gear (read: PadaGucci,  North Face, Nike) we walked toward the stadium.  Prattling on about our favorite American news sources and the habits of our host families, we were reveling in a few hours’ freedom from a busy schedule.  We passed around our bits of World News like chewing gum or hand cream. Hillary hits up Moscow. Obama Hooks a Big One. Yankees Sweep.  And then, at the road’s incline and just after some brief mention of Beyonce, we found ourselves apace with a Ukrainian funeral procession.  Half a hundred mourners, following an open casket, beat their grief in slow, metered stepsup the hill.  Bright wreaths of flowers swing from the coffin as six men carry it slowly up the incline.  Our own bright colors ring out like cell phones during final exams and we put our heads down and, quick, walk on.

And though I resented my sneakers for squeaking as we power-walked past the procession and, I admit, it was mildly reminiscent of that nightmare about being naked in public, it was familiar too.  I mean, we’ve all walked our dead and I suppose the reverence with which we bid farewell is a universal thing.  We keen, we cry, we drink, we raze, we ululate; no matter how we walk it is rough terrain.

Two days later, skipping down step toward the stadium, I pass an old man grazing two goats in the periphery by the parking lot.  He has the sort of face that is frightening on 48th Street but wise and kind away from home.  Twenty feet below, the local kids are practicing free throws.  And there we are, all of us, keeping to our routines.

I catch a few odd stares as I curve around on my first lap.  But today, two high school soccer teams are playing on the pitch and I get to be a fan again.  I toss a lost ball back to a player.  I survey the field for superstars.  I look for good defensive positioning.  The home team scores and it takes every ounce of restraint to keep from cheering them on.  But being a visitor, not yet fluent in this language or this place, I keep quiet and lean into the next turn.

I’m a week gone from the early morning Acela that transported me to Peace Corps Staging in Philadelphia. I was a mess of nerves and excitment – in fact, was nearly derailed by the fleeting impulse to stay awhile among the Liberty Bell and her brothers. Nevertheless, I’ve made it safely across the pond and beyond the Iron Curtain.  And here I am.  Hello, Ukraine.

Adin. Dva. Tri. It’s friday night and I’m memorizing Russian numbers. Along with verbs, cases, conjugations, pronunciation, intonation, and seventeen thousand other essential elements of language. My brainfeels like a blowfish on the edge of danger.  I worry I’ll burst at mere mention of the genitive case.  Guppies, beware.  So, for now and for the sake of what brain cells remain, I’m on my way to bed.  Which is to say, I’m on my way to make my bed.

My bedroom. A big, wood armoir stays the east corner of my Ukrainian bedroom. There’s plenty of room for trikanasana , for total-body homework assignments (of which there have been many), and for a little mandolin in the afternoon.  There’s a sofa that sits between an end table and a desk on the opposite wall. Lot’s of sun, too.  Three compartments slide under the sofa like a trundle bed and each holds a load according to its depth and height.  Matching bed sheets, pillow, blanket and duvet.  Every night, I pull out theunderbelly and play like Pandora.  I unfold, do up a hospital corner or two and, snap, the sofa becomes a bed.  I nod off.  Next morning, tak tak tak, all comes back together again – each into its own compartment.  These days, to begin and end each day with a task completed is really satisfying.  During my waking hours, I sturggle with personal pronouns, buying toilet paper, telling people my name, but when it comes to my Ukrainian wonderbed, the world is full of possibility!  I keep saying to myself (and it really is to myself), “I am so into my Ukrainian bed.”

And then I think – here I am – on my twelfth bedroom in 24 years and only now do such modern conveniences show themselves? Where was such innovation when I was balancing spread eagle between the mini-fridge and the corner of my closet to reach the extra blankets from the top shelf in my dorm room?  Yes, Ukraine was in the middle of the Orange Revoluation but a few more under-the-bed compartments really could have helped me out.  If I had spent less time fishing for linens,I would have had more time to study, or to practice free hits, or to bake baklava.  Who knows how much time I wasted thinking organization was overrated?

Regrets aside, let’s just say that after only three overnight experiments, I really think the Ukrainians have got something here.

I mean, I must have missed this at Ikea.  It’s got it all – wood, foam, tactile fabric, those tabs that tell you where to pull. This Ukrainian wonderbed has a future, at the very least, beside the multi-use chair-bed-desk-motorbike and the first floor bal pit. I wonder if I have any contacts in the bedroom furniture market. Is there a bedroom furniture market? If not, I should definitely create one. Tomorrow, I think I’ll see how the Cyrillic alphabet looks in Helevetica.

You see? There are endless possiblities here in Ukraine.

That is to say, tomorrow I believe there will be endless possibilities.  And this cautious enthusiasm for the future seems to be something I share with the Ukrainian people I’ve met in the past week. In Ukraine, possibility is peeking onto the stage. A few steps forward, a glance back  I get the sense that markets materialize overnight.  Elections loom. Walking through the city, my eyes are big from listening.  And in absense of understanding, I hear whispered preparation for the world stage.

Very exciting stuff, this Ukraine.