Kyiv: Un-ending Day

May 24 -- Monday
We got into Kyiv early this morning after an all night train ride. Oh, the night train! I was able to catch a few hours of sleep. Thank goodness we had “beds” to sleep on. The train was by no means the provider of a comfortable night sleep but it was much better than nothing. I had the train bathroom experience and was thoroughly grossed out by the urine all over the floor. There isn’t a smooth ride and at one point as I was standing up I almost fell. I didn’t want to touch anything. Now I know why there is urine all over….no one can stand well in the bathroom! I’d much prefer an outhouse!! Colleen Skinner told us that this was the “good bathroom”. We had flushing toilet. Gross, gross, gross….

We were back to city life!! We rode the bus and metro ! My how I miss good public transportation. I sure enjoyed riding public in Kyiv today. And because yesterday was Pentecost today was a holiday in the city. This meant less traffic on the streets!

We visited the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv. This was a special experience for me. Over the last few years I have such an interest in the story of human tragedy and redemption and so getting to enter into the story of Chernobyl today was an experience I feel so grateful for. Entering in the Museum was entering into the story of the crisis. When you walk into the building there were signs hanging from the top of the building representing the many villages emptied because of the crisis. There is an area with a radius of 30kilometers that is “dead land”. Imagine that! I’ve been to Hiroshima but I didn’t realize how different the problem of Chernobyl is from the U-bomb. The problems of Chernobyl are much longer in scope!

Also I had never connected the 1986 Chernobyl explosion with the beginning of the end of the USSR. Bob Skinner, a Nazarene missionary, joined us for the whole day today and he explained much of the history and happenings around the Chernobyl events. I was 7 when this happened and all of our students were not even born. We watched this video of a parade happening in Kyiv just a few days after the explosion. The film itself revealed the high level of radiation present in the air of Kyiv. (There were flashes of light in the film which Dan explained as film exposure due to the radiation in the air) There is no way people should have been out and about let alone celebrating in a parade. No one from the communist government was telling the people about the deathly amounts of radiation in the air. Criminal!! There even wasn’t even mentioned in their papers until 3 days after the fact and the mention got a little paragraph on page 3 of the news paper. The rest of the world knew…but the people that would be affected by it…killed by its effects were not told. The horrible handlings of the Chernobyl event and the widespread suffering as a result opened the common people’s eyes to the lies of the government.

As we talked to the Ukrainian people this past week I sensed mixed emotion related to the fall of communism. Some see the benefits they had back then hat are now missing such as healthcare, paid for education, food, etc. Others told of how Communism created an extreme hunger for spiritual things. So when it fell and people were free to search beyond communism some have returned to their Christian roots. Christianity is 900 plus years strong in Ukraine! Communism was only 80 years strong.

After the Chernobyl Museum and a quick bite to eat we journeyed by metro to the Labra Russian Orthodox church. I had to hear a head covering and a “very cute” skirt. They have 4 different mummified saints in the recesses of the structure. Because today was a Christian holiday there were a mass of people visiting the church.

We had a very special dinner experience tonight. We went to a Soviet era restaurant. We must have been there for 3 hours. There were 5-6 courses and live music. Most of us were so tired it was hard to really appreciate the experience. But we asked for coffee and even me, who hardly ever drinks caffeine, had an espresso. I’m not sure it had much of an effect but the students didn’t have that glazed over look! The musicians were awesome. On of them played the accordion but it was a different kind of accordion than I’ve seen in The States. The food was awesome too. Before this trip I was turned off to beets. You couldn’t pay me to eat them. But we’ve had a couple of excellent dishes with beets while here in Ukraine. We had authentic Borsch tonight and it was possibly the best thing I ate in our 8 days here. Since I’m fighting a cold the spice and citrus of the dish was very pleasing!

After we finished dinner we headed to Bob and Coleen Skinners. They prepared dessert for us. Their youngest son turned 13 today so we had a little birthday party for him. It was nice to be with them one last time. And we needed something to do to keep us going! One of our students was in need of making a flight change and while at the Skinners we were able to make those arrangements. Technology is a wonderful thing!!

We left the Skinners around 10pm. We had 4 plus hours until we needed to head to the airport. We returned to the church to pack, shower and catch a bit of a nap. We managed to get in one last debrief. I was dead!! After being up so many hours and because I’m fighting a nasty cold all I wanted to do was lie down. We managed to get in one last debrief with the students. All of us had to work hard to “be there”. We managed. Dan and I did the final video diary and then I finally was able to lie down. I think I slept for an hour before I got up to be ready to leave. Airport bound! We said our sad goodbye to Dena, our Ukrainian friend and trip translator and to Dougie, our Scottish friend and team member.. Both Dena and Dougie have been full fledged members of our team in the Ukraine. They meshed so well with the group. They will be missed hugely!