|
<< back to Writing
5 july 2001 5:15pm The Moscow customs holding tank is dark and packed beyond capacity. Everyone wears black here. There are at least ten passport control stations ahead of us, but only two of them are lit. There are no lines, just a clogged mass of people all nosing toward the same two doors. The progress is painfully slow; we count one person for every 90 seconds passing through to relative freedom and fresh air. We stand for two hours without moving a single step forward as the crowds from several more 747s pack in behind us. At some point in the third hour, a few tired-looking officials materialize and three more stations are opened. This triggers a surge of crosscurrents in the crowd that take me by surprise and almost knock me off my feet. 6:05pm For our own peace of mind, we avoid looking at the clock. Our
connecting flight is departing in just over an hour. From a different
airport. Finally we are through customs and running for the baggage
claim. Nothing in Russia happens quickly it seems. The claim
area is filled with the mountains of suitcases that have collected
throughout the afternoon. Kevin goes to scout the taxi situation.
I am climbing around on the piles looking for our bags. We arrive, clinging to the door handles, and the driver immediately starts to argue with us. No, he meant $30 per person, he complains loudly. We look at him in disbelief, bleary-eyed and dazed. I hand him two twenties and drag my bags to the curb.
Somewhere around this point, I begin to realize that this is not the end; this is just the beginning. In comparison to this “Moscow Airport #2”, Moscow
International was a dream of efficiency and comfort. We run in
the front door, tickets in hand, like hurried Americans. For
future reference, if you are ever traveling in Russia, this is
the wrong frame of mind, the wrong approach. The first step to
success is to assume that many things will go wrong or at least
differently than expected. In most situations, the circumstances
will gladly comply. 7:20pm After much running around, we have yet to even understand the check-in procedure, much less identify a departure gate. This is something we will laugh about someday. Finally I find an airport employee who speaks English. I mention to her that our plane is scheduled to leave right this minute and if she would be so kind as to point us in the right direction we would be ever so grateful. She looks at my ticket and, typical Russian bluntness, demands to know why I’ve missed my flight. This doesn’t seem like the time or the place to go into the details. “Our plane was delayed,” I tell her. We are instructed to go to office #11 which, it turns out, is empty and dark. It gradually becomes clear that there is really nothing we can do about anything. As we slide to the floor we realize that the terminal is full of people who look the same as us – tired, resigned, silent. After about ten minutes a small, harried-looking man unlocks the door to the office. “Impossible,” he says. This seems to be a popular word here. We are too tired to move so we stand in the doorway looking at him. He utters a sigh and picks up the telephone, “Go to window 3 or 4” and closes the door. 7:55pm Behind window 3 the two women talk between themselves in Russian until finally one comes outside the office. “The next available flight is on July 11,” she says matter-of-factly, even sweetly. Something must have been lost in translation. Is she aware that today is July 5? “Sorry,” she says and walks away. The adventure finally turns the corner to pure exhausted hilarity. We stand looking at each other, laughing. We wander outside, throw our bags down and join the crowds of people loitering on the sidewalk in front of the terminal. The long July evening is on our side at least. There are hours of daylight left before sunset. 8:30pm The details blur. Haggle with another taxi driver. $42 to Red Square. We wander looking for hotels. Finally Hotel Russia, a dark, hulking box of a building not far from the Kremlin. Room 5-256 must be literally a half-mile from the front desk. We walk down interminable dark paneled hallways. Every hundred yards or so we find a key woman sitting silently behind a desk. At least we think that’s what she’s there for. Each one stares in silence as we trudge past. Kevin is dragging his bag of equipment along on the floor behind him. From our room on the inner courtyard I count 1400 windows on the inner courtyard, not including the tower. The phone is difficult. Eventually we get in touch with home and Irkutsk. 11 hours ahead of California. 5 hours behind Siberia. I am discovering that almost everything about Russia is complicated. Finding what you need. Getting where you need to go. Getting anything done at all seems almost overwhelmingly difficult. After awhile it starts to make sense to keep your head down and to attempt little.
8:00am The morning starts out with good news. There is a “miracle guy” in Moscow. He is already at work on our problem. We are to wait near the phone for instructions. Running out to forage for breakfast we are stopped by police who demand to see our documents. A little worried, we empty our pockets onto the cobbles of Red Square. We have absentmindedly left everything in the hotel room. The full extent of our paperwork includes a wrinkled copy of our flight itinerary and two hotel room keys. This does not impress anyone, least of all the commanding officer. Do me a favor and don’t mention this story to my mother. For some reason, the hotel keys get Kevin and Lori off the hook. I, with only my tattered Lufthansa schedule to defend me, apparently look the part of some nefarious spy. “You must come with me,” the officer says cryptically. I have read Solzhenitsyn. “You must come with me” is usually not a positive development. We spend the next half hour attempting to convince the police that they should not haul me off to the station to be held for questioning with the captain. Or at least I do. Kevin attempts immediate surrender; “You take him to the station and we will bring documents later,” he says with a conciliatory smile, “OK?” This is just wonderful. I begin to look around for a sharp stick to poke him with. I am already envisioning long haired, gaunt pictures of myself showing up on CNN with captions like “American on trial in secret Soviet court” or “Aid worker last seen leaving for the Gulag.” I remind him under my breath that he has no car, almost no cash and no idea where the station is located. The officer is not much of a negotiator. He points to the roof of the building across the square, “There are cameras. The captain is watching,” he says and shrugs. In the end, apathy saves the day. A trio of beautiful Muscovite women strolls past and all attention shifts away from us. We are suddenly boring. “Go on,” the officer tells us and looks off into the distance. Back at Hotel Russia, Andre, the miracle man, is on the phone. He has flight for us at 9pm tonight. He will pick us up at 4pm in a dark blue minivan, license plate 831. He will be wearing gray pants, tall with glasses. He wants to know what we look like. I tell him he can’t miss Kevin. It will cost us $40. Everything else is taken care of. “Don’t be late,” he says. “Don’t worry,” I tell him, “We won’t be.” We dance little celebrating dances in our hotel room, completely mystifying the maid who has come to collect for our monstrous phone bill. Kevin and I plan to spend the afternoon taking pictures of Red Square. I pack my cameras and film and every piece of identification I have.
Out my window an orange moon is hanging a few degrees above the horizon set in a sky of deep, cobalt blue. The endless marshes of Siberia below blend into the blue of the clouds and sky. We’re in the air finally – weren’t sure if it was going to happen. Even as we fly we remain unsure; this aging Tupelov-154 was looking old in the 1970s. I am remembering the news from last week: a Tu-154 falling out of the sky into a field outside of Irkutsk. No survivors. Kevin spends the night editing video on his laptop like some kind of Apple computer commercial come to life. Children from down the aisle stop to look over his shoulder as he works. 7 hours later the plane begins to descend. There seems to be only two settings for the powerful engines on the tail of the plane: Off and Full. We drop through dense cloud cover, alternately gliding and pinned to our seats by the acceleration. Flashes of tree-covered ridges appear just a few hundred feet beneath us. Suddenly we burst into the clear, 50 yards off the ground, torrential rain streaming across the windows. We hit the ground with a bang and brake hard. Welcome to Irkutsk. 7 July 2001, 8:00am 7:34am, Irkutsk time “Remain seated for the remainder of the flight. However,
it is now 14 degrees Celsius in Irkutsk.” On the runway we sit in a darkened plane for 15 minutes with the engines turned off. The Russians are good at waiting. Americans would go nuts, complain loudly, write letters to the management. Russians wait in silence, listening to the rain pound on the fuselage.
Rob and Lisa have moved here recently, after months at home in the States working at language study. The challenge of adjusting to Siberia has been increased by the fact that they are coming here with two small children. We are to stay with them for our week here and my respect for them quickly grows as I watch them balance ministry with kids and the daily adventure of living in Russia. Some facts about Irkutsk. Originally an army outpost, it was registered as a city in 1686. There are 632,000 residents of which 1 in 10 is a university student. There are 36 institutes and colleges. It has the highest per capita percentage of AIDS in Russia because of IV drug use. The mafia is very strong. In Siberia, 90-95% of the men will be addicted to alcohol by the time they die. 80% of them will die drunk. We spend the afternoon in a daze walking around the city with Rob, not quite believing we’ve made it. 8 July 2001 We have lunch with Kim Lee, one of the other members of the CRM Irkutsk team. Her living room is tiny but comfortable and apparently almost always full of people. She tells about the origins of the church the team is starting. Russians, by nature, are very relational. Friendships are built through many hours of time together, not in minutes “penciled in” to be spent “networking”. The church grew naturally out of friendships like these in the community, neighbors, the babysitter, etc. Gradually it began functioning as a church with 25-50 people meeting on Sundays and growing fast. Kim’s primary focus is to work with women, teaching English, leading Bible study and prayer groups. She says that every woman she has counseled in Irkutsk was abused as a child. Most of them are abused by their husbands as well. While we are talking there is a woman’s voice from outside the 2nd floor window, “Keem!” When she returns to the room, Kim tells us, “This woman says to me, ‘My mother gave me life, but you have taught me how to live.’” Later in the afternoon we meet another woman named Olya who came to Kim battered by her husband. At the time she was hardly able to speak having been ridiculed by the husband for her speech impediment. Now there is a smile on her face as she talks quietly to us in steady, shy English. Kim envisions Olya becoming a mentor and a church leader in the future. In the afternoon, Rob walks us around the small center of Irkutsk and recounts to us one of his blunders in learning to speak the Russian language. Trying to say to someone that he likes “driving in the countryside” he mistakenly implies that he “likes to drive naked.” We tell him that, knowing him, we’re not at all surprised by this.
We wake up to gray rainy weather but determine to make the best of it. We send off emails to home asking people to pray for clear skies before heading out into the city to capture images of people and place. Here is something interesting; there is no word in Russian for privacy. There is also no word for fun. Monday evening is a church night. There are maybe 25 people crammed in a tiny room at the CRM office. There is loud singing and friendly faces. This is the heart of what CRM is doing here, finding and developing new church leaders. In Russia this takes a long, long time. People are not used to trusting each other, not used to opening up to foreigners. The idea of church being a safe and loving community doesn’t register here without much labor and many hours spent building friendships. 10 July 2001 Yesterday we prayed for better weather -- today the sky is clear blue and sunny. Rob tells us more about life in Irkutsk. Getting popcorn is complicated. There is apparently plenty of the stuff around, but you have to get it from the popcorn mafia. First you have to find the contact person. Then you have to drop by and give him your telephone number. Then you wait, sometimes for days or weeks, until you get the call. At this point, you place your order. Instructions follow. This makes planning a movie night difficult. You have to schedule it weeks in advance.
A few days in Irkutsk and I begin to understand that to be a mission worker here demands vision and courage. Vision to see beyond the present moment with its disappointments and frustrations and courage to understand and accept that transformation is a lifelong process that demands lifelong commitments. Having a good sense of humor doesn’t hurt either. 11 July 2001 In the morning we spend time at a local orphanage. I pick up
a little girl from her crib. Maybe 18 months old, she wraps her
arms around my neck, holding tightly. When I set her down a few
minutes later, she doesn’t make a sound, but her eyes follow
my every move until I leave the room. Later, Lisa tells us of
her dream of bringing teams to clean up the rundown buildings,
fix broken plumbing, offer medical assistance, hold the children.
The long shadows of the Siberian summer stretch around us as we spend our last afternoon in Irkutsk at the Moran house. There is a sense of peaceful determination in Mike & Kara’s words as they describe their goals and hopes for the future. I find myself listening, smiling, convinced. It is swimming against the current, it seems, to feel a sense of hope in this place where nothing seems to work out right. But on an evening such as this one, with the sun still shining at 10pm and the warm breeze playing about the grassy backyard it is easy to dream big dreams and to pray for God to do big things. “ Sit long. Talk much. Laugh often.” -- above door at Moran house
|
7:00pm
6 July 2001
10:22pm - Somewhere over central Russia.
Lisa Thomas meets us inside the dimly lit terminal with a big
grin on her face. We must look pretty beat up. The parking lot
outside apparently doubles as a river during damp times. We wade
our way to the minivan, glad to be breathing fresh air. “You
were on the mafia flight,” she comments as we pull away. “You
can tell by all the black SUVs in front of the airport. No one
else here has that kind of money.”
9 July 2001
Mike and Kara Moran and their three children have lived in Irkutsk
for a number of years and through careful work have begun to
embed themselves in the community. We spend the afternoon at
the office watching as Mike leads a young men’s Bible study,
concentrating on building strong foundations of responsibility
and faith in a culture where men are mostly irresponsible, hardened,
addicted to alcohol.
12 July 2002web design and contents © 2003, 2004
peter schrock.
use only with permission.