The Kyiv Confusion.

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When I came back into the room she had a needle in her right arm, just a few inches above her wrist. Ana had woken up early this morning in awful pain, and phoned for a doctor when she couldn't bear it any more. I found her sitting against the edge of the bed, crying.

I had only left to make the doctor a mug of tea in the kitchen, but the lady had already banged a nail into the bedroom wall, attached a long piece of string to it, and fashioned a drip out of a transparent packet of medicine inside a small green supermarket carrier bag. The blood had drained from Ana's face, her forehead was hot to touch and she couldn't move. After the first packet had run into her veins she still felt no better - a sensitive stomach and a badly cooked piece of fish had given her food-poisoning.

After another three of those packets she came round, and could sit up and talk. The doctor had only been with us for two hours but it felt as if I had been sitting on the edge of the bed for a week. I had no idea what to do or say. I can't imagine how she was feeling. Ana got out of bed in the evening, and even started to boss me around again in her own special way about not taking my own medicine for the 'flu.

I missed my interview at the law firm, but they re-arranged it for the following day. When I arrived I was gripped by nerves when meeting the managing partner. I began to sweat and could not stop; my shirt stuck to my back, my tie choked me. The walk through the secretaries' office happened in slow motion. I knew that there was nothing daunting waiting for me on the other side of the teak door, but I kept shaking nonetheless.

His office was beautifully decorated with green plants, brown leather sofas and dozens of heavy books. I shook his hand and sat down in one of the chairs opposite his desk, with the lady with whom I had the first interview in the other. My Russian clung to my throat as I tried to answer the questions. Even being told that the job was mine three minutes later did nothing to slow down my heart rate - but it made the walk back onto the street a bit easier.

In the Respublikanskii Stadion metro I reached into my jeans' pocket for my phone to call Ana with the good news, but it wasn't there. Robbed already in my first week. I ran back to the law firm to see if I had left it there in my confusion, where the gorgeous secretary found it - in one of my jacket pockets. And so my first impression was made: sweaty and a bit charming. And so I also came to work at the law firm, vulytsya Chervonoarmiyska, as a translator and English language editor.

An hour's commute each morning is the price that I now pay for the chance to be a part of the city around me. The marshrutka (minibus) trip from outside the 'Eko-Market' supermarket to Syrets' metro is a bumpy and uncomfortable one, even on those precious mornings when there is space to sit down on a cold metal seat.

When you have to stand it's rough; boxed in, squeezed up against one stranger's bosom and under another one's armpit, passing on all the kopeiki thrust at you the best you can, hoping that you will recognise your stop through the marshrutka's dirty window. The unsociable scrum in the aisle is three people wide and ten people deep - as if a small phallanx of soldiers have become so wearied by marching through the bitter and neglected surroundings of Kyiv's outskirts that they decided to advance to Khreshchatik on the bus instead.

Twenty three minutes later, freshly ironed shirt already scrumpled and knees and knuckles scraped, I silently buy my metro coin from a stern woman at the Syrets' kasa, jog down the escalator and barge past as many people as possible on the platform, in order to at least get a seat on the metro for the next four minutes. I hop off at Palats Sportu, and join the bleary-eyed shuffle of thousands of other commuters as we walk across the underground perehid and on to our next train.

A Kievan perehid - a tunnel which links underground platforms - is very similar to a Muscovite perehod, but with more pushing. A loud, crackly, strict female voice over the tannoy represents the darker, hostile side of Ukraine, telling all to keep to the right. Lest we step out of line? From Resbublikanskii Stadion it's only a two minute walk to the office - I check my tie in the lift mirror on my way to the fourth floor, and summon my best "dobroe utro!" for the secretaries. The business centre is almost in the centre of Kyiv, and is home to the cobbled streets and baroque buildings which make the town so charming. The building is clean and attractive - it could as easily belong in Krakow or Copenhagen as it does to Kyiv.

Work has been very good to me so far. The managing partner has been superb in helping me find my way, and the people I share an office with are good company. They even brought me a cake after my first day, which we ate in the conference room. The important click of my heels on the floor and water-cooler chats are also helping me to forget my nerves. My job is to edit legal documents written in English by the company's Ukrainian lawyers, so that the grammar and style is perfect, and so they will then be ready to be sent to our international clients. I'm in shock at how people here can specialise in several areas of law - and do it so well - and just happen to know three or four languages at the same time.

Almost all Ukrainians are bilingual (Russian and Ukrainian). There are half a dozen conversations each day in which one person speaks in one language and the other replies in the other - with a perfect understanding between the two. It is a very Kievan contradiction: television presenters have the same bilingual conversations when presenting the pop charts or the news; my computer desktop is in Russian but my address book is in Ukrainian; signs in the metro are in Ukrainian but the free newspaper handed out to commuters is Russian-language; American films are dubbed into Russian even if the film posters are in Ukrainian. The country is being pulled into Europe and back to the Soviet Union at the same time.

The metro isn't as humid in the evening. Inside it's plain and dusty, with small television sets on the ceiling of each carriage which play either clips of catwalk shows or the news. I'm still intrigued by names of stations such as Dorohozhychi, Livoberezhna and Chernihivska.

The return trip home on the marshrutka, this time from Nivki, isn't as tiring, although I still leave work at 6 feeling awake and fresh and arrive at Prospekt Radyanskoi Ukrainy just before 8 irritable and exhausted. Travelling back to the outskirts from the centre is like stepping into a different world, with the metro - a metaphoric River Styx - linking the two. At night there is always more of a story to tell after those twenty-three minutes in the shaky minibus. There is always as impatient crowd. There are usually people in a hurry to get home, charging at the doors at the very last second and risking their fingers to keep the doors apart before they close sharply. One man on Friday night kept a grip after we had started moving, and ran alongside the bus yelling "No way you're leaving, it's my turn to get on today!

The journey on Monday night was chaos and there was barely enough room to breathe, with every last centimetre taken up by bodies, most of them pushing and kicking those around them to find a space to cling onto the rail from. A woman got on with a small child, and immediately a big man took it and held it above his head to keep it safe until it was time for them to get off. It doesn't matter how hard your day has been - and for many people here it will have been very hard - such generosity must make you smile.

I'm still struggling to feel positive, on days when I leave my adventurer's cap in my cramped kitchen and it feels as if I'm walking around my ugly neighbourhood in lead boots. But this week and Ana's illness made me realise that Ukrainians, by worrying incessantly about each other's health and placing its' importance above all else, have their priorities in the right place.

Next diary: A Night Of Missed Chances.

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Photos

The entrance to my building.
Kyiv.

Ana, up and about again.
Kyiv.

Autumn street.
Kyiv.

"Our" kitchen: Cinnamon, Salt, Tea.
Kyiv.

The Vinohradar, from my balcony.
Kyiv.

Comments

[Cat]

hey
Sounds like you have had a bit of a baptism of fire as far as stress goes on your first few weeks but I reckon you still have a lot to feel positive about now! The job is working out, you're with Ana etc.... It'll all work out fine, you'll see! xx

[Yuliya]

Hey man. As for me, it's really interesting to read how 'foreigner' sees my country. I mean, what they see first. As someone said "we see it truily, when we see it first". I'm Ukrainian, live in the US now, but everytime I go back to Ukraine, I see and feel everything very similar to what you're describing here. And it doesn't really help that I know how is it there, and that a week before my flight I meditate over old pictures and videos, trying to prepare myself. So, keep on writing. Good luck with your job and life there. Very nice pictures