Da - Di Mosca

Quickie...
Yeah, got off the bus in this 200,000 person west Ukrainian city. So far, I'm impressed: the centre is large and clean, lots of neon, stone buildings, narrow, widning streets and broad boulevards. Clearly, there's more money here than most Ukrainian towns: on a per-capita basis, perhaps second only to Kiev.

Yesterday was spent in Kamyanets-Podilsky, memorable chiefly for its 500-year old stone castle (actually just the towered walls), which replaced an earlier wooden fort of the 10th century. The castle had natural defences: deep, stone-sided canyons with a fast-flowing river meandering on the bottom, bent into a horseshoe with a neck barely wider than the tall, solid-stone bridge connecting the castle to the general area.

Bad-point: got hassled by Gypsy kids waiting for the bus. A girl with a cataract was doing the rounds. Funnily enough, from the Ukrainians a shake of hte head was enough to get her moving, but with me she persisted. I won't go into my no-giving-to-beggars policy, except to say that giving to them is prolonging their current cirsumstance: if you can't change their life in a meaningful way, so they don't need/want to beg, what's the point? I don't hold to futile action. Then there's jurisdiction, fairness ... all in all, I think welfare is best left to central governments.

Anyway, after I said no, she got on her knees, 'crossed' herself (guess she didn't know I'm an athiest), and repeated 'please please please' over and over. The royal treatment.

Pathetic, sure, but I'm afraid I lost my temper, after it went on for a while, with me shaking my head and saying 'Nyet'. I don't know Russian imperatives: usually I'm just asking questions. So I resorted to English ...
probably the first time that bus-station had rung with 'fuck off!' That didn't work, of course.

But when I said: 'do you want the police' she left. That's what I told to a boy in Odessa who wouldn't go away, and it worked then.

But the girl reappeared ten minutes later, with an even younger boy, maybe 8, who did the exact same thing while she hung back, watching. When I went back to the book, he stroked my knee.  Was it the girl's revenge? Had she lied: told him that I'd given her something? Anyway, the boy was even more persistent than she had been.

Some young Ukrainian guys thought it was funny, but I wasn't laughing.

So I packed up my gear, was followed to the watch-repairer's stationed in the building, where I asked 'where are the police?' in Russian. At which point the gypsy kids scrammed. The watch-repairer had seen it all and, laughing, said 'Gone!'.

I figure I should blame a: the kids' mother; b: the Ukrainian government (although begging doesn't necessarily mean a lack of social programs, e.g. in Australia) and c: the last foreigner the kids saw, who probably gave them money to make them go away.


Adieu,

Liam, jeudi 17 novembre 2005 22:10.