Last Wednesday I left Konotop and went to Anya's country house in a village named Hijki. It is a small village and I didn’t know at the time but her house had no running water and the toilet was outside. It has been a long time since I have done anything interesting by way of Ukrainian culture and I figured this would be my last opportunity so I agreed to go.
So I met her at her house early in the morning. We packed up the kids and went to the grocery store for some last minute items. I had no idea what to expect so I didn’t know what to bring or even what to pack. What kind of food we would need, what we would cook it in, nothing. I would assume her house had a stove but we are in the country things could get interesting. Little did I know they did get interesting. We were running around trying to get some food and watching the three little ones get into things. Anya has three children; 3 years, 5 years and 8 years. The youngest is her only girl and she is as cute as a button. We finally get everyone ready, grab some food and get on the bus. We take the route bus to the center which is where we are going to transfer and take the out of city bus to the village. We are assuming that the bus comes at 1:25pm but we aren’t really sure. It is a little past that time now and finally a bus comes to Hijki.
We hop on the bus, there are lots of people as this is the only bus that goes to this village and the only time on this day that it will go out there. Tomorrow is a holiday as well so this is prime time travel time. So it is about a 40 minute ride out of the city to her village. We finally arrive and we start walking. What seems like another ½ hour goes by and we are still walking. Finally we come to a yard which appears to be her yard and we start breaking out keys and opening doors. I immediately noticed the outside bathroom. Most country houses have them but if you are lucky the main house will have one too, not so much in this case. We get through the first two doors. It is so cold! Then the third and final door opens up to a two room house. There is a wood burning stove which I am assuming is the heating apparatus then the next room is clearly the bedroom. So we have a make shift living room/kitchen and a bedroom. Now don’t me get wrong I say kitchen and I mean a cabinet with dishes across from the wood burning stove. I notice immediately that there is no running water and now I am nervous.
I am not really sure what to do. The house needs to be cleaned and it is freezing. The kids go outside and start to play as there is no real difference between outside and inside right now. They are playing around with all the wood in the yard as there are many sheds with wood piles. I am nervous for them as this is not very safe but this is apparently what kids play with in the village. Anya asks me to help her clean and to help bring water from the well. This is exciting I always wanted to know what that was like. I carry two buckets with her a little ways from the house and we get water from the well. One of the buckets has a chain and a rope attached to it and you drop it into the well using the assistance from this metal piece on the side of the well that helps roll the bucket down smoothly and helps bring it back up so you don’t get water all over the place. There is a method here. You get just enough water in the bucket as it floats around on its side, then pull it up and drop it back down so that the bucket actually goes under the water filling up the bucket. Nice move! Then you bring it back up, fill the other bucket and then drop that one back into the well. This is all very exciting for me.
We take the water back to the house. We put some on the stove to heat up. The water that we heat up is used for washing the dishes. We didn't bring any dish washing soap so I am disappointed. We are going to have to wash the dishes with water and our hand since a sponge or some type of washing cloth is also not available. The house hasn’t been opened in quite a few months so dirt and soot are covering the dishes, the floors and the furniture. We do our best to clean up the mess from the animals that took to hibernation there in the house over the cold winter months and then begin to make the beds. There are 4 beds in the bedroom. One nice two piece that sits on top of each other, a child’s bed that Anya slept on when she was young (as this is her grandfather’s house) and a larger bed that in its time was built for two people. It is just a bed frame with a few wood pieces straddled across the frame poles in order to hold up a potential mattress or something soft enough to put under one’s body for sleeping. That was my bed. It was about 2 feet off the ground and they put some blankets on the wooden planks to soften the blow to my hips!
After we get the dishes as clean as we can do with hot water and our hands we start to make some lunch. We had bought some salami, cheese and bread for lunch. We also bought meat for shashlik (aka shishkababs) and some farsh for cutlets and she had potatoes in the house from last season that we made French fries out of. We cooked, cleaned, watched after the children all day. While we were making dinner the room started to fill with smoke and we had to keep opening the door to clear out the room as it was hard to breath. At one point we realized it wasn't the food and we went into the bedroom and there was a pillow on fire. How did that happen you ask? Well on the other side of the wood burning stove is a wall in the bedroom and that wall gets as hot as the stove and since there is a bed leaning up against the wall and there were pillows and blankets leaning up against the wall the pillow got hot enough that it caught on fire. While the kids were playing in the room. Thank goodness we caught that!!
After dinner we retired to the room as one big happy family. I was reading my book and the kids were all doing their things in different parts of the room. We all were pretty tired from such a trying day so we went to sleep around 9pm. I tried hard to go to the toilet and relieve myself enough to last through the night but that never works out because I drink a lot of water. At 10pm I went out and I thought for sure I would be ok until morning but sure enough I woke up at 1am and had to go again. I wasn’t sure that I was going to move but then Sergey got up and he had to use the bathroom so I went outside after him. Somehow I made it until 6am the next morning before I had to go again. There are three doors to the outside of this incredibly tiny house and on each door is about 3 locks all of which make tons of noises in the middle of the night while you are trying to open them and stay quiet enough not to wake the kids.
The next day we made shishkababs on the fire outside. After breakfast, getting the kids dressed and cleaning the house again we started to make the bobs. Then Sergey cooked them on the fire. Shishkababs is a time honored tradition for Ukrainians and it is a favorite among the Americans as well. This is pretty early for cooking outside but we made it work. It wasn’t that cold out and as long as the fire was lasting we were fine. I was afraid with leaving so early in May that I would not get my shashlik fix so I was glad I came for this.
They had invited some of their friends to join us for lunch. We had the bobs, potatoes, some salad and of course homemade vodka. I was doing my best to get drunk and the rest of the day would fly by or I would fall asleep and wake up the next day but we only had a small bottle of vodka and I was worried about my hydration situation. Didn’t worry enough about it because after that we had coffee. I was falling asleep while drinking it and it was only 6pm. I was dehydrated double time but I didn’t want to drink any water because I didn’t want to have to pee outside a number of times. Well I didn’t work out the plan well on that one. I went every two hours!!! I didn’t even drink any water and I was still getting up to pee often. It was miserable!
The next day after breakfast I went to the bus stop and went home. I was an interesting time in the country. And that would be the last time I would spend so much time with my Ukrainian counter parts in the country side!
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