Ukraine Part 2 - Sumy
It must have been some time around seven when I was startled awake
by a soft but firm knocking on the door.
“Come,” Igor said, opening my door. “We’ll go to a café now to eat.”
Traffic was scarce on the hilly road.
Igor explained that this was because the snow covering the
street made it impossible for cars and busses to get up the hills.
The streets had neither been
plowed nor salted. Igor
and I had to step carefully down the sidewalk holding onto one
another, to keep from slipping on the ice.
Igor motioned for us to stop in front of a small building
with no sign, and indicated that this was where we’d find breakfast.
I looked for the restaurant’s name around the building’s
roof, its windows, and the door, but found no sign anywhere.
There weren’t even any decorations in the windows that might
indicate this was a restaurant or a café.
I asked Igor how he knew they served food here, when there
wasn’t a sign.
“It doesn’t need a sign,” Igor explained. “Everyone knows the café
is here. We can find it
without a sign.”
Small towns like Sumy didn’t normally get tourists or visitors.
So as long as the locals knew it the café was there, there
was no need for a sign.
We found a bit of warmth in the small café, which was quite old.
It had been a government-owned café until five years ago,
when its current owner Nakitta obtained it.
Half a dozen men were seated at small tables, stealing silent
glances at us while Igor translated the menu for me.
They were bachelors, Igor said, regular customers at this
café. They stopped here
to eat every morning around seven, on their way to work.
They worked at a large factory in town, where the city of
Sumy produced tractors for the Russian pipeline.
Because there was nowhere to park a car at the factory, the
men walked to work every day.
Since Russia controls most of the energy in the former Soviet
Union, I saw it given a great deal of respect in the Ukraine (even
among those who privately disliked it).
The bachelors spoke Ukrainian to each other, but any time
they heard someone speak Russian in the café, they immediately began
to speak Russian too, even if the visitor wasn’t speaking to them.
I still needed that coffee.
Nakitta told Igor that he had some instant coffee, and would
bring hot water. Nakitta
didn’t have change for the large bills that Money Exchange had given
me, so I borrowed some hryvnia from Igor. (One U.S. dollar is equal
to about thirteen hryvnia.) After
we finished breakfast, Igor left a tip of eight hryvnia, and we left
to visit the residential part of the city, stepping carefully over
the icy snow-patched sidewalk.
Igor’s in-laws lived in this part of town, and it was also where he
kept his nice car in a makeshift garage. He didn’t want his car to
be seen by the public, and never drove it around town.
It is very unusual for an average citizen to own a car as
nice as his. Having his
tires stolen was one of his smaller fears; someone might harm his
family out of envy, or because they assumed that the car meant he
worked with the much despised government.
Igor’s father-in-law kept the
car for him in that garage at his house.
The small old houses on this street were packed together, all with
high wooden fences and swinging gates.
Each home had its own garden plot for growing food, as well
as a storage shed. I
thought it looked more like the back alley of some urban street than
the main road of a neighborhood.
Igor’s father-in-law, Alexander, stopped sweeping the light
snow from the driveway as we approached his house. It was a
one-story house the color of concrete, with dark blue paint peeling
from its shutters. Alexander
stopped brushing and looked up at us, adjusting his dark fur hat.
Igor softly introduced us as Alexander lit up a cigarette.
Alexander was retired, having worked in the munitions manufacturing
Collective. In his youth
he’d worked on one of the Russian Hero Projects in Siberia (probably
the railroad). Now he
was an alcoholic who drank most of the vodka he made from his own
Alcohol Still—but this didn’t stop him from being a kind man and a
generous host. There was no
“front door,” as we in America would think of one.
Igor led me through the high wooden gates around back,
overlooking the family’s small snow-covered garden plot.
As Igor opened the creaking
gate, the guard dog began barking at us.
It was chained to a tree, but I kept my distance anyway.
When Igor opened the door to
the house I found instant relief from the warmth of a woodstove.
Igor and I hung our coats on
the hangers on the door, next to the rest of the family’s coats and
fur hats. The house was
practically spotless.
The kitchen walls were painted light blue, while the dining and
living rooms were lined with colorful wallpaper.
Beyond the dining room was the carpeted living room, where I
was invited to share a couple shots of vodka as a welcome to Sumy.
The conversations kept Igor busy interpreting their native
language (which sounds similar to Russian), as he was the only one
in the family who spoke English. Either
my accent or my words must have sounded funny to them, as
Alexander’s wife Kalyna got the giggles when I spoke.
We sat near a crackling
fireplace, which kept the house comfortably warm in the
near-freezing weather. I
could tell Igor enjoyed seeing his father and mother in-law.
He lived across town, in a high-rise apartment complex.
He and his family stopped by
at this house every Sunday so his three-year-old daughter could
spend time with her grandparents, and say hi to Granny.
She would often play with the
toys Kalyna kept in the house for her, while the adults caught up
with each other in the living room.
Kalyna soon had to get busy in the kitchen, and excused herself.
By now I had noticed that almost everyone I had met here in
the Ukraine seemed rather soft-spoken and mild-mannered compared
people in other countries and especially in the U.S.
I guessed that their subtle approach to speech and fashion
probably stemmed from generations of communist rule, where it was
(at best) discouraged to stand out, or be caught loudly criticizing
the government. Still, that didn’t keep them from enjoying
themselves in the privacy of their own homes.
Kalyna wore a beautifully
embroidered headscarf covered with colorful flowers, as did her
elderly mother, who went by “Granny.”
Granny stayed in her small bedroom the entire time I was
there.
Granny looked like the oldest person I had ever seen—not that I saw
very much of her at all. She was perhaps about eighty, and never
left her small bedroom, due largely to her health.
Her rheumatism made it impossible, or at least very
difficult, for her to go anywhere. The
only time I saw her was on the occasion that she appeared in her
bedroom doorway and asked Alexander, “Any word from Vasily?”
Vasily was Granny’s husband.
No one had heard of him since the horrible night years ago,
when he had been arrested and taken away to a Gulag in Siberia.
No one in the household had been told what crime Vasily had
supposedly committed, but such an incident was far from unheard of
in the Soviet Union.
As I already knew, the Ukraine had been a part of the Soviet Union
until the communist country broke apart in 1991.
During much of that time—as far back as 1930, before World
War II—the Ukraine, like all parts of the Soviet Union, had been
terrorized by the communist dictator Joseph Stalin, whose crimes
rival Hitler’s. Over the course of his rule, Stalin murdered
millions. Vasily, like many others, was taken to a train and sent to
a labor camp in Siberia, without being allowed to change out of his
night clothes, pack any bags or say goodbyes.
On his way out he had told his wife something about writing a
letter to her when he could, but apparently he never got the chance.
Or if he did, the letter never reached her.
Granny’s mind had deteriorated since that night.
She didn’t recognize anyone
in the house anymore, Igor explained to me.
But every time Alexander made
a trip to the local government building to ask if the family had any
mail (there are no mailboxes in the Ukraine), she asked if there
were any letters from Vasily.
I regarded Granny differently after hearing this story.
Of course I had known already that we all have our own
stories, our own hardships, and I take that into account when I meet
someone. So it would be
untrue to say that I did not respect Granny and her family before
knowing this story. But there is certainly something to be said for
knowing a person’s—or a country’s—history.
It puts an entirely different perspective on how you see
them.
by Everil Quist, International Agri-business Consultant
Return to Articles from Sumy
Return to QuistSpeaks Home from Sumy
Everil Quist - President & CEO of QuistSpeaks, LLC
"Enjoy this story about the noble peoples of third world countries. I've truly enjoyed working with them and have many heartwarming and entertaining stories to tell.
I enjoy sharing my adventures with my audiences, where I feel I am truly 'Creating Positive Change'."
“Everil Quist delivers with knowledge, humor and compassion. His trials and tribulations during his stints in Former Soviet Union countries impart the difficulties and perseverance these dynamic people have to overcome—difficulties we seldom experience here in
-Virginia Dessart, N2 Area Governor, District 35, Toastmasters International