Ukraine Journal 2022 08 31 Departure
I haven’t explicitly shared my exit date with the National staff. I don’t particularly like goodbyes and my replacement has not been clear — so there is no continuity story I can give to them. But it is fast approaching and so that becomes obvious to Kateryna my admin assist. Monday will be my last day in the office and we will have to do some financial things like reconcile the amount of cash in the safe — and she does the journal entries for our cash transfers.
Tuesday afternoon I am passing the Vorskla stadium on the way back from the grocery store and notice that the team store has a sign on the front showing the hours they are open and I can tell they are supposed to be open twice a week. It always looks dark and unoccupied, but it is off-season and who knows if they have any hours at all with the war. I’m not usually passing by midday midweek, but we closed the warehouse early (for security) and I stayed home anyway because Gorong wasn’t feeling well. I can’t tell which days they are open because the sign is in Cyrillic, but I figure I’ll take a photo and get someone to interpret it for me at work. I still have almost a week left in town and maybe they will be open one day over the weekend. As I sit down my groceries in front of the sign and get out my phone… the door swings open! The woman looks at me quizzically, but excitedly ushers me in. There is very little inventory. The only jerseys they have are small or kid’s sizes — but there is a single adult large polo shirt in the team colors with logos. I nab it! : )
Friday I wear my new emerald green Vorskla jersey to work. I get a very positive reaction from the warehouse team. : )
Friday night I am staying late at the warehouse to help unload a truck that is behind schedule. We’ve been donating medical supplies to an organization that makes supply runs to medical clinics across the front lines near Kharkiv. It’s been a few weeks since they have been able to make it across because the shelling has intensified, and now they have finally given up and want to return the supplies so that they won’t be wasted.
Gweneth went home at 5:00 and Gorong is out until he gets a negative PCR test result. So, it’s just me, a new storekeeper who started the day before, and Vlad. Vlad is the son of our warehouse landlord. I was told that he kind of came with the lease — in a negative sort of way, but he is a “fixer” who arranges all our shipping and does our local purchasing. We announced that we were hiring 2 new storekeepers a few of weeks ago. Vlad immediately came to me complain that his title is “storekeeper” and yet when he looks at the advertised position, he does a lot more than is shown in the job description.
The first day I was in the office he came to the incumbent to ask about the path from level 4 (storekeeper) and a higher position. The guy leaving told me he was just angling for more money and that while he claimed he had been promised the higher salary… no one in MSF promises anything, blah, blah, blah. I had taken note and put it on my to do list to meet with Vlad about the route to a higher position, but it had been a low priority. Now that we were hiring 2 new storekeepers I spent some time understanding all the job descriptions and roles and realized that Vlad had been doing the level 5 job all along. I made a push to get the change made, but it had bogged down in paperwork and approvals.
Another thing worth mentioning is that in my first week in this role Vlad came into my office and asked for a couple of hours off one day to go down to the government office to submit paperwork — because he was getting married. He got married like 2 weeks ago. And didn’t take a single day off. He asked permission to do a celebration BBQ lunch at work and it was really nice. We all pitched in some money to buy him a present. At noon all the dudes (me, Vlad, the drivers, and the cleaner) hung out around the grill making chicken while the gals in the office set up a long fancy table, and we had a little celebration. Kateryna came to me and said that after buying a wedding gift there was some money left over for champagne — and could we do toasts at work. It was 2 bottles and about a dozen people, so I gave my approval and led off with the present and the first toast.
But back to Friday night. I’m killing some time on the computer and Vlad comes in and plops himself down on my couch. “Waiting is the hardest job”, he says. There is this calendar on the wall with a magnetic sliding mechanism that marks each week. I’ve never paid any attention to it, but every now and then he has adjusted it — and he slides it down to the next week. This week. He turns to me and asks “How long will you be here?”. I tell him I have to be out of Ukraine by the end of August because my medical insurance will lapse. He shakes his head, chuckles and pulls down his sock to show me a tattoo.
He has shown me some of his tattoos before. He has his favorite anime character. He has a couple of video game “things”. My favorite of his tattoos is his first. When he was younger his had a dog that was his best friend. In case it got lost you could register the dog and have the registration number tattooed in the dog’s ear. When Vlad turned 18 he got that number tattooed on his arm.
But he pulled down his sock to show me a different tattoo across his ankle. 1–9–1998. September 1st 1998. His birthday is tomorrow. He is the same age as Alex. I get pissed off. Angry at the MSF bureaucracy. Disappointed that I hadn’t been able to overcome it to right a simple wrong with respect to his contribution and recognition. I wait until Saturday to send off a calibrated email and get the result on Sunday. Gorong announces Vlad’s new position Monday in our morning meeting– before I announce my departure.
Of course, my announcement surprises nobody. I don’t want to be emotional, so I look at no one in particular and tell them that I am proud of what our team has accomplished, that I appreciate how warmly they have welcomed me, and that I wish them all the best in the future.
A couple of hours later Kateryna sticks her head in my office and asks if I can join her in the conference room. I know I am being ambushed. Gorong and Gweneth are not invited — it is just the Ukrainian Staff. Kateryna has a bit of a speech prepared and gets choked up, I get choked up. While I’ve been here I occasionally need to pop into the local stores with our drivers to buy supplies. Whenever we do I am on the lookout for what I consider decent beer glasses because we don’t have any at the house — which has an R&R function. I am always complaining to our drivers that I want a nice light English pint glass — and all they have are heavy beer mugs. So they present me a heavy beer mug with “Poltava” on the front. : )
The “Thank you for coming to Ukraine”s and “Please come back to Poltava in a better time”s are powerfully earnest.
The drive from Poltava to Kyiv Tuesday is relaxing and it is nice to see some familiar friendly faces back in Kyiv.
It is a 7:00am departure from Kyiv. Driving out through the western suburbs feels like a movie running backwards. I have seen all these exact images before — just coming from the other direction. It surprises me that it hasn’t changed in the 3 months since I came in. There is about a 10 mile stretch of blasted warehouses, burned out gas stations, and office parks reduced to rubble on the outskirts of Kyiv.
It contrasts with what I have heard from our teams about shelling in Kharkiv. There, they send teams right out to clear the damage. If they go out in the morning through a route that has been shelled there will be teams in the early hours clearing rubble and sweeping up glass. If they come back that same route at the end of the day there will be no street level evidence of the damage. There is a push to return to normalcy as soon as possible.
My cynical self realizes that that specific highway into Kyiv is used by every visiting delegation — and they are nonstop. Boris Johnson was in town last week, but some European head of State or US congressional tour is happening every few days. That highway is part of the theater of international politics that helps to feed the military machine.
Twice today, on our drive west we were practically run off the road by convoys driving east at breakneck speed. Police escorted, driving down the middle of the 2 lane highway with sirens blaring, I can only assume they were transporting weapons from Poland to the front. One convoy was semis with cloth covered sides, the other had oddly shaped cargo on flat bed trailers covered in white tarps.
My trip today from Kyiv to Poland is too long for 1 driver, so the way we arrange it is for one team to take us to the halfway point, and a team from the other side to meet us there — where we switch vehicles and go on our way. They are called “Kiss” points. Today we had a kiss point near Lviv where we switched drivers, and as is typical it was at a gas station with facilities.
I jump out of our van and notice there is a coach load of soldiers milling around. Not an unusual sight. At the WC I find myself behind a dozen of them and realize they are Americans… for the most part. Some are speaking Spanish to each other and a couple have Arabic insignia and mouths shut — but they are mostly American knuckleheads. Some of their uniforms have patches that are half US half Ukrainian flags.
One thing I appreciate are soundscapes. 3 months in Ukraine give me a different appreciation for some of the sounds I normally hear. I never heard a jetliner. I heard (and saw) helicopters in Kyiv about 4 times. In Poltava there was a 5 day period early in my stay where you could hear (but never see) what sounded like jet fighters screaming by a couple of times each day. Then it stopped and never returned.
Without a doubt, the ubiquitous sound of this time and place is the air raid siren. You never go more than a day or two without hearing one. Sometimes there can be 5 or 6 in one day. They come early and late. Day and night. After Vlad got married he showed me a video. When they got to the point in the ceremony where the priest says “you may now kiss the bride” he turned to his new bride and as their lips touched an air raid siren started up. Perfect timing. : )
The second soundscape that I will remember is the railroad. Poltava has a curfew from 11pm to 5am. I sleep with the windows open and in the middle of the night, under darkness and protected by curfew, a lot of stuff is moving by rail. Relentlessly.
I am back in Poland now. And while I never felt I was ever in any danger in Ukraine, I do feel like I can relax a little more than I could while being in a war zone.
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