I took a breath...

Some friends and I got a chance to get out of the city this last Saturday. We were helping our friend Luda to move some belongings to her parents' house in her village. We went about 30 miles and entered a completely different world. It was like taking a few steps back in time. Our friend Luda grew up in this small village and it seemed like everyone we saw was her cousin or aunt or some other relative. There were great expanses of open land...it took me by suprise...there is nothing like this in Kiev. Some of it farmed, a lot of it open and rolling. There was a stray cow or goat here and there dotted throughout the town.

I had become so used to city life here in Kiev that I had forgotten what it was like to get out into open spaces with few to no people around. I was able to breathe deeply for the first time in a while.


There were animals galore at Luda's uncle's house. Rabbits, ducks, chickens, a couple of dogs running around with his 6 children. It remined me of my childhood. Grass to tromp through, trees to climb, hammocks to rock in, brothers and sisters to play with, kids flying off branches and rope swings... all in the cool air of a late summer afternoon. It was fun to talk to the kids and have them show off their pets and toys and yard. It's fun to talk to kids in russian. They also practiced their english words and we taught them a couple of new words.


I learned that this village, named after the Luda's family, was the very first village to accept the relocated Chernobyl victims. The Ukrainian government gave the families plots of land and houses and resettled them here, 60 miles South of Chernobyl. Luda was telling us how small the village was before the government started giving away the land to the uprooted families.

Luda's family is building a house here. They have been working on it for a number of years and complete it in parts...as they can afford to do so. The government limits the amount of sq. footage a house can be by taxation, so most of these houses are not very wide, but end up being about 3 stories with a basement. This is how they can skirt the taxation b/c it is based soley upon the 2 dimensional area of the house and not the actual sq. footage. Ukraine is illogical and wierd at times. But because the houses are skinny and tall, they have a sort of charm to them that ranch homes don't have.

Everybody here farms. Even if the house owners live in Kiev, they always come back to farm the land. Ukrainians love their own fresh grown vegtables. I respect them for that. It reminds me of how my Grandaddy was...with his plot of land and fresh tomatoes, beans, watermelons, and scuppernogs.

With fall approaching, the neighbors often recruit friends and family to come over and help them farm potatoes, or harvest pumpkins or do the unfinished summer renovations. Some parts of Kiev are so drab and dreary because of all the gray, concrete high rises. But this village was amazingly colorful in comparison. The houses can look a little shanty and makeshift, but just about all of them has fresh coats of whitewash and paint on them as well as on their fences. The gardens weren't the neat and tidy british type, but rather the collective outworking of colors from patches of scattered seeds. No nice, neat rows of flowers and plants but rather patches of color exploding behind green chain-link fences and tractor tires. I loved it. My soul loved it. It took a deep breath.