The picture above is a very good description of my strongest experience that I had in Ukraine for the first three weeks! I will just share my thoughts here and you can compare and see whether you ever had a crazy experience like this in your life!...
The first evening after my arrival onto the Ukrainian soil is truly unforgettable. The reason for that is not only the reunion with my family whom I have not seen for the past 11 years! First weirdest thing was that the people speak a "different" language that sounds so weird, so radical compared to the English and Afrikaans pronouncing I am so used to. Yet... I understand that language! It was super cool!!! Yet only until I realised that my brain begins to re-adjust itself to think in Russian so that it can speak Russian fluently. Soon it was a nightmare!!! I dreamt of people talking Russian and Ukrainian to me, it was not a time for resting but learning and more learning!! I even began to hear voices of people in my head that were building Russian phrases. Crazy things like "green cat eats trees" or "big small car on the bus today ever and ever". My brain went bunkers and I had absolutely no control over it, but to pray quietly for God's mercy over my poor physicist's mind.
My eyes got the best flexibility training over this period of time! Nearly lost them out of my sockets you know! I am extremely visual, so if I see, I basically remember. And I literally knew NOTHING of the stuff around me. It was very confusing at first: the streets, the phone numbers, new people's faces, money notes, price tags etc etc etc ... Basically, all the thing that we take for granted while we are in our peaceful environment, got the best of me. I mean, our note of 10 in South Africa is green, and our 50 note is red. Here the green one is the note of 20 ad the red one is the note of 10!!! So imagine me and my gigantic frustration every time I would open the wallet... I also often would forget to look in the right direction while crossing the street, so after a few very unpleasant experiences I finally decided to make it my habit to look both ways! :P
Here in Ukraine people rely immensely on the public transport system. Since in South Africa we do not have any public transportation, but people only - and I mean ONLY - use private cars, it was a great challenge for me to learn how to use a bus or a tram again! When you enter, you have to use the front door because that is where you pay the driver of the bus. Then you have to squash yourself towards the middle of the bus to make room for more people coming in behind you. Since the buses are designed to contain about 20 seated and 20 standing passengers, and everyone uses the buses, there is normally very very very very little space to occupy. Often I shared my bodily space with someone who I would never normally prefer to be close to in the open! Well, let's g community style for God. Then once the bus approaches your needed stop - which you ALREADY have to know by the looks of it, they do not announce the stops! - you have to squeeze back towards the exit, then give out a shout "NA ZUPYNTSI", which means "On the next stop" and hope that the driver heard you and will stop and open the doors. The price for a ride is about R2 ($0.25) so if you do not plan your route carefully, you can actually lose a lot of pocket money. Often I went on faith because the bus was No. 15 and I had to take No. 16 or something. There are so many different routes and different buses, you really have to know where you are going AND how you are going to come back to your original spot - ELSE you are lost in a town where people do not think like you, do not speak your language and do not even understand how you can be lost!
Speaking of different mentalities... I had a very funny incident in a super market with plastic bags. We do not use paper bags in South Africa and in Ukraine it is the same. Also in both countries you have to purchase the bag if you ever need to. So i went to this shop one day and got all my groceries. I did not want to spend some money to buy a bag, so I brought my own bags. So I put all my groceries on the counter and put the bag on top. Then this lady looks at me and asks: "Is this your plastic bag?" I say: "Yeah, sure its mine." Then she took it and tossed it to me and said: "Well, then why in the world did you give it to me??" I was like ... hmmm... what is that reaction?? So I just apologised - maybe I was wrong. And then later, only later, did I realise that here in Ukraine everyone has to put their own stuff into shopping bags - all self-service!! I was stunned! :)
Overall, my life is filled with experiences like that. I am sometimes confused, sometimes lost, sometimes totally out of place. But I can testify that God was always there, guarding me and guiding me every step of the way. Sometimes He even challenges me to take risks (!!) - you know, like He sometimes tells me to get on this bus, that I never took before - or maybe to approach a person on the street that I never spoke to and just to tell them something like: "Good morning! God bless you!" Its very weird to be like this, but He does it all for a sole purpose of teaching me how to be obedient and how to trust Him and His Voice. Things like this tell me that He loves me and that He is concerned about my growth and that's why I love Him so very much!!
One of the nicest experiences for me was of course to meet my family after so many many many years of separation! When they came to meet me at the airport, my sister recognised me purely because of my Facebook pictures. My auntie and my grandma told me that only my eyes remained the same. My aunt even thought someone else was me and she almost went out and greeted him at the airport. When we took a taxi to their house, I was absolutely mesmerised by the sight beyond the windows: the architecture, the people on the streets, the shops and the adverts. Then, to just get away from the flood of experience, I began to speak to the driver - you know, just a polite conversation. To my surprise, he sounded so offended, especially when I asked him what his name was. Later on, my sister told me that in Ukraine people do not just make friends on the street, and that was kind of a shock to me as well. In South Africa we are a little more loose and warm towards each other and towards making friends, and one thing I noticed is that Ukrainians are really task-oriented. When people walk on the streets, the expressions on their faces is of utmost seriousness, focus and concentration. All because they are thinking about what to do next, apparently.
My grandmother was head over heels to see me again, she was the last person to see me off at the airport when I was 14, so my visit was so important to her! Wow, when we were hugging I realised that I missed her a lot too! Thank You, God, for this wonderful reunion! But as I was walking around the house, where I was born and where I used to live for the first 14 years of my life, I noticed that all things were... kind of... small!! No, I mean, like tiny!! It's all probably because I was still a child and all dimensions were bigger then. :) Just a side note, hehe!
I am so very grateful to my family in Odessa! They were extremely patient with me overall, probably realising at least in part what I was going through. They constantly went out with me on the streets of Odessa, taking me to places to help me adapt faster. They took me to all those spots where I used to be when I was a kid - those were some sweet times! We took a lot of pictures too! Also one of my old school friends, whom I also have not seen for over 11 years, had arranged for us to meet and to go out somewhere in town. That afternoon was a total blast! She had an amazing knowledge of Odessa's history of origin and development and enlightened me about it all. As we were walking around our city, she always had something to say about pretty much everything - and I really mean it in a good sense. Through her I learned a lot about my home town and the whole day was fabulous! Also at the end of it we went to a very cosy coffee shop and I had some latte and cheese cake! I almost felt like I was back in South Africa - hmmm,.... Well, except for the smoke... Overall, the standard is expected to be that the smokers are in one sealed-off room and the non-smokers are in the other room. Here in Ukraine the smokers occupy the most of the restaurant, and the non-smokers sit there where the fans are that suck out all the smoke. Or at least it seems that way judging from all the clouds of toxic gases going towards me everywhere I go - up until today! Oh, well, my dark sarcastic humour again...
I also got a chance to see an Ukrainian university on the inside. Wow, what a contrast! The university does not have its own land and premises and has only two doors through which people can enter/exit. The lecture halls are pretty much the same layout as the ones in South Africa, maybe not as big though, the biggest one might maybe fit like 60 - 70 students. What shocked me the most though are the offices. Here the departments or the different schools are called "kAfedra"'s - so it's like a big room with about 5-7 desks - and that's it! Your desk is pretty much your office here! I wondered about the privacy of such layout but it seems to me this is considered a norm. Well, it's understandable since in Europe space for living and accommodation is very scarce and expensive. I just cannot imagine all our physics department fitting into one of those rooms, with each one staring at one another, or talking on the phone 5 people at a time. :D
Another thing I discovered as I was communicating with people and doing business in public places, e.g. shops, markets, pharmacies etc., is the Dima-defined concept of "triple standards". The Ukrainian people are very friendly, hospitable and are ready to help - but only if you and them have some kind of a personal relationship thing going on, like you are friends or colleagues, or you live in the same apartment, or you are family. If I would communicate with total strangers, I would receive a really cold shoulder with anything. This is in such total contrast with what would actually be advertised at e.g. a shop. Like I had this experience while trying to buy a starter pack for my mobile phone. They had about 4 - 5 kiosks in this shopping centre that advertised to provide services for MTC mobile provider that I was looking for. As I was used to South African standards of VodaCom franchises, where you can get anything and everything of VodaCom at any branch, I expected to have the same here. No! At each of these kiosks I was told that the starter pack I was looking for was not available there. I was like "DUH?? What DO you then provide??" - ok, in my thoughts! :) Some salesmen were busy doing their own thing on their mobile phones when I approached them. It would often play out like this:
Me: "Good morning, can I please have MTC Super Freedom?"
Them: "Haven't got..." ("NemA")
Me: "Could you maybe tell me where I can find it?"
Them: "Dunno..."
Me: Thank you, bye!
Them: ....
----No eye contact whatsoever!!
The people here do not make eye contact easily - it's a shock! Especially when they sell me something and I want to tell them how grateful I am that they served me so well and professionally. I tell them THANKS looking at their face, they turn away and say COME BACK AGAIN. Very very weird reaction! This reminded me of those cases when I was in South Africa and as little as some people may think of the black Africans, those people were so much more polite to me, actually taking trouble to go with me and to dig around the shop searching for the item I would need, or pick up the phone and call all other branches for more info for me. It also takes place in Ukraine (I speak from my experience), but waaay less.
So why the triple standard?? Well, I noticed that one layer of it are the colourful informative ads all over the shops, the second one is the general unwillingness of the people inside this shop to be of assistance. And finally, I noticed, by grace of God, that there is another element to a heart of a Ukrainian. They are such nice people, but I can see that no one really appreciates what they are and how they do things, so they shut themselves off and to the general public that walks over them every day they are just as cold and mean. Yet, when I would just become a little more personal with them, talk with then in a light conversation, ask them stuff like "How was your day here at the shop?" or say some sully-funny stuff, they would really melt and become SO much more friendly! A few shut off, considering me a weirdo, but that I believe is merely a self-defence mechanism. Most become very warm and responsive. I remember this lady in the MTC shop where I finally received some assistance. She was considering me one of the crowd, after I actually spoke to her about some personal things like her work and my work - in my broken Ukrainian!! She appreciated it so much that eventually she helped me by taking my phone and doing all the activation and the button clicking herself! That was awesome! Same happens at the local banks when I went there for some assistance with my finances. man, don't I just love it to see people around me smiling!!
Speaking of the broken Ukrainian, I am picking it up really well and can already help myself in the shops and in the buses. I still can't really preach in Ukrainian and it is a little frustrating when we go and do street evangelism. Still, I am positive. And people notice me trying - and it makes them more friendly towards me. There is a similarity here with some areas in South Africa. There some Afrikaans speaking people value their language highly, and refuse to speak English because they believe that Afrikaans is the most important language in the world. Maybe also because their pride cannot handle all the mistakes they would make if they would speak English? Well, I don't know. Anyway, here the stuff is so similar - people would not speak Russian to you even if you were the Prime minister! So when I speak Ukrainian, mixed with some Russian words, they take it as a compliment and their attitude towards me changes for the better! Thank God for my talent to foreign tongues!!
The weather has been keeping well so far. On the streets the difference between day and night is no more than 10*C, max being around 11, and min being around 3. In our homes we have central heating, a curled pipe in each room that winds along one wall, carrying hot water from the central boiler room for a city district. This makes a huge difference, believe me! Also we have the thickest walls ever, and double windows to keep the cold and the noise out. The weather now changes from warm to winter, and strongly depends on the air masses and whether or not we have a cold front. Last week the temperatures were dancing around 0*C so the puddles froze, we were really well dressed and many of us (including me! :( ) got sick. this week the weather is an amazing 15*C during the day and it's sunshine and all! Utopia if you ask me! The food is extremely cheap here, except the meat and the dairy. A loaf of GOOD bread is about R2 ($0.25), a litre of GOOD milk is R5 ($0.70) and a kg of GOOD potatoes is R4 ($0.60) - except that the latter are not washed and when I bring mine home I first soak them for a few minutes to get rid of the thick layer of black mud on them! :)))
I am really happy here, overall! The country of Ukraine, in particular the part where I am, is lovely, with great people, interesting culture and many things that challenge my way of thinking. I like it all and I really do look forward to the next few weeks or months here. But it all is subject to where God wants me, of course... :)
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