"I went to the Ukraine and it was cold. Really cold. And everybody had guns and smelled like soup" from the film"Blades of Glory"

You’re no doubt wondering where I went. After all, it’s been almost two months since my last real update and then there was that promise a month ago about another post… whoops. Here’s the thing: I couldn’t afford the trip to Lviv to use the Internet. Really. There used to be a joke among PCVs who live in small communities that we are “village rich”, but now that prices in Ukraine are skyrocketing, we’re “village broke”. Prices in the small towns keep rising because the price to transport them is going up, and there’s no end in sight. Unfortunately, Peace Corps has failed to notice this spike and our monthly living allowances (meager to begin with) aren’t changing along with the prices. And it’s not just food. The price of utilities rises monthly, so do the prices of train tickets (it used to cost 35 UAH for a cheap ticket on an overnight train to Kyiv. Now I have to pay 65 UAH. That’s a change of one year.) In the month of October, I had to spend three nights in Kyiv. On housing alone I spent 300 UAH. Sure, that’s only 60 USD for y’all back in the land of the free and the home of the brave, but here in the land of cabbage and strife it might as well be 300 USD. And that’s ridiculous.

It’s a good thing I’m getting out. Not to say that I won’t have money woes in America or that prices aren’t increasing there also, but… come on. No one in Ukraine (except for the “businessmen” in Kyiv and expatriates) can afford these high prices. The living wage for teachers (I can really only speak for the teachers, but I feel safe in using them as a template for all of working Ukraine) has barely increased, if at all, with the inflation. Teachers at my school complain about the prices of sugar, milk, gas, etc. on a daily basis. I’m constantly reminded that a loaf of bread only cost eight kopecks during the days of the Soviet Union (I know that’s not a realistic figure now, but I’m just documenting.) I don’t know where it will end. The rich continue to get richer and the poor, who had almost nothing to begin with, fall even more into poverty.

And now for something completely different.

Remember those brushes with death I wrote about two years ago? Well, it appears that Death still has an eye on me.

Last week, during the fall holiday, I was with my friend Travis. We had just boarded a bus and were making our way to a larger city to get on another bus that would take us to an even larger city. This all transpired in the Eastern reaches of the country. It was a bus ride that we won’t soon forget.

It was like walking into a movie fifteen minutes after the start: An older woman was pulling a large, fuzzy fishing lure out of the bottom of her plastic bag. She was yelling/scolding a drunk young man who was sitting across the aisle from her (I should mention that this bus had seats that faced each other and that there was a large, open aisle near the back door of the bus.) The drunk young man, 19-25, was hurling foul words back at the woman. He was REALLY drunk (it was 10 in the morning) and REALLY malodorous, so much so that Travis and I both commented on it. The fishing lure was attached to a line that was attached to a broken fishing rod. An older man, 60-70, was holding the rod, in three pieces. The old man was also yelling at the drunk. He was telling the drunk that the rod cost 200 dollars and someone needed to pay for it. The drunk was refusing to pay.
“Son,” the old man said, “You broke the rod. You have to pay me for it.”
“Son? I’m not son to you. I’m not paying for anything,” the drunk replied.
“That’s right, you’re not son to me. You’re grandson. You’re grandson.”
“#$%#! you, old man.”

It went on like that for several minutes. And then the old man began to swear at the drunk, using even coarser language. Something he said triggered the drunk, because he was suddenly on his feet and throwing punches at the old man. Not only was the old man caught off guard, but the bus was going around a curve so there was no way for the old man to keep his feet. He fell into the back wall of the bus and the drunk lunged at him. The drunk gave no quarter and attacked him with both fists. Everyone on the bus was shouting Stop! Stop! Travis also said “Take it easy!” but when the drunk turned to glare at Travis, we both stepped back and stayed out of the way. The drunk grabbed the old man’s head and drove it into his knee. He did it a second time and was about to do it once more when the bus jerked. The old man collapsed into the back door well and the drunk fell back into his seat. The old man was not getting up. He was slumped on the floor of the door well. The drunk stood up and started kicking the old man in the side.

Other passengers were yelling Stop the bus! Stop the bus! and the driver stopped the bus. He tried to open the back door, (at this time, I’m pretty sure that the driver was unaware of the fight. There was a barrier that divided the diver from the passengers, and there are rarely rear-view mirrors on Ukrainian busses. As evidence to this, the diver was opening the back door as though someone wanted to exit the bus) but because the old man was in the door well, the door could only emit a pneumatic hiss. The drunk lifted his boot and stomped on the old man. He did it again, yelling “Open the door!” The door still could not open.

As the drunk lifted his foot to stomp again, the old man started to get up. He placed his hand on the low railing of the door well. In his hand was a gun.

Yep. A g-u-n GUN.

And the gun just happened to be trained right on Travis and me. Not that the old man was planning to shoot us, but he didn’t exactly have all of his mental faculties at that moment. “Oh, fuck no,” Travis and I cried at the same time. We began to move toward the front of the bus (we were standing in the aisle, since all of the seats were full.) We’re pretty sure that no one else on the bus, except for the drunk and the old man, knew that there was a drawn gun. So when we started pushing people forward, they weren’t in a hurry to be moved. The drunk, knowing that he might be shot and killed, rushed the old man and tied up with him. As this happened, other passengers on the bus saw the gun and started to scream.

At this point, I don’t remember much other than chaos. I was churned and moved to the front door of the bus. Travis was near the back of the crowd. An old woman told me to just look forward, to just look at the road. The driver climbed out of his seat and went around to the back door. He opened it and shouted for both the drunk and the old man to exit the bus. They both refused. The driver took the gun from the old man and told the two to stop fighting. With the gun in hand, the driver got back into the bus. We took off. All of the passengers were massed around at the front of the bus, and scared.

The drunk and the old man sat across from each other in the back and continued to hurl insults and curse at the other.

As we entered the city, our bus stopped to pick up more people and to let people off. We made a lot of stops. Every passenger remained at the front of the bus. The two in the back continued to spit venom. Their quarrel drew to a head as we pulled into the bus station, and Travis and I are pretty sure that if we hadn’t stopped then, they would have fought again. Luckily, everyone got off the bus. Except for the old man. He stayed onboard when the bus drove away.

I have no idea what happened after that. Did the police get involved? Probably not. All I’m really sure of is that I doubt if I’ve ever been more scared. I don’t know guns, but this one wasn’t anything small. It was what I’d call an officer’s gun. Maybe a .45? And staring at the barrel of the gun really cemented the fact that I’m ready to leave Ukraine. It’s time to go.

Funny thing is, however, that I might be going out of the frying pan and into the fire. On the 14th I’m catching a flight to Bangkok. With my pals Travis (of the story) and Nathan, I’ll be in Thailand/Laos/Cambodia for a month. We’re planning to sit on the beach, be hot (there’s been snow on the ground for the past two days), ride elephants, and eat food that doesn’t involve potatoes or beets.
We’re aware of the craziness that’s happening in Myanmar/Burma right now, and we’re planning to maintain a low profile and stay out of trouble. We want to make it home in one piece.
And for all of you who were hoping for some sort of retrospective “What I’ve learned/How I’ve grown/What’s next,” you’ll just have to shine it on for a while longer. I’m sorry to string you along, but I’m not sure if I’ve decompressed enough to answer any of those questions yet. I think I’ll have to be removed from this before I can mine true meaning from it (at least meaning in the sense that I can write about it).

I can offer you this, however:

Ukraine by the numbers:
Languages Learned ::: 2 (Ukrainian and Russian)
Students Taught ::: 165
Hours Spent on a Train ::: Too Many to Count
Oblasts (Regions, Like States) Visited ::: 18 out of 25 (counting the Autonomous Republic of Crimea)
Seasons of TV on DVD ::: 31 (I went through all of the West Wing)
Phone Cards Purchased ::: At least 61 (In Ukraine, phones are pay as you go and the
cheapest phone card is 25 UAH. So that’s at least 1525 UAH or 305 USD spent on
phone cards over 27 months.)
Books Read ::: 125 (The top five books I read are as follows [in no particular order] “The Terror” by Dan Simmons, “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon, “Watchmen” by Alan Moore, The “Hyperion” series by Dan Simmons)