Pulling My Hair Out....

April 17, 2006

One of the most frustrating things we deal with here in Ukraine is our email. It’s not that we get so much (we don’t compared to other people) or that I hate answering it (I don’t – I actually LIKE answering email!). It’s that we have such a hard time downloading it. Very often we have no idea if we get all of our email, or if what we send out actually arrives where it’s supposed to go.

I just finished a very frustrating session trying to get email this morning. After one and a half hours, being kicked off several times, having the two numbers we dial up both busy over and over, and then sitting here while nothing happens but we are paying for the time – we finally downloaded 9 emails, two of them 3 times! Three of them were very important family issues that need to be answered. Three of them were my FlyLady reminders, one was an exciting prayer letter from a collegue and two were obscene advertisements that got through the filters.

We have been trying since Feb. 20 to get cable internet. As I began to write this journal entry, Mel received a text message from one of our friends who contacted the cable internet place for us again this morning. Sergei wrote that once again we have been put off another week. When we first returned to Ukraine in Feb. Sergei called several of the internet providers around town to see who might have internet cable in our district. Only two of them do at this time.

Sergei called the first company and they told him they only had cable lines installed up to a building about a mile away and didn’t think they’d have it in our part of this district for quite some time. They told him to try and call another guy and gave him the number.

The second guy said he didn’t have cable in our part of the district and who gave us the number for him anyway? When told, he responded to Sergei that he had only known of the first company for two weeks, how did they get his number and why were they giving it away?

Sergei called the third place. They told him they were in the process of putting the cable lines in our section of the district right now! Call back in a week. A week later Sergei was told that the man who controls the key to the door to the roof in our building refused to let their workmen up on the roof to install the cable lines. (It’s a power/control thing – this man has his own little area of power and control , the key to the door to the roof! and he wields his power however the mood takes him. If he needs to feel powerful – then no one gets on the roof, and apparently he needed to feel powerful.) The following week Sergei called again. The answer – we are building our office right now and can’t come, call again next Monday. Today is that next Monday. Sergei called and the answer? Sorry, no one can come today. Call next Monday.

So, someday, maybe, possibly, in our dreams, we might actually get internet cable. Maybe. Possibly. We aren’t holding our breath, believe me!

This is normal here. This is the way life works.

There are many things about the slower way of life here in Kherson that we enjoy. It’s so much nicer than living in the big cities of Odessa, Kiev or even Kharkov or Dniperpetrovsk. And believe it or not, getting things done here in Kherson is no more difficult or slower than trying to get things done in those larger cities. It’s not a small city attitude verses a big city attitude. It’s a Ukrainian attitude. It’s one of the “things” that puzzles us as Americans. It’s one of those West – East “things” that often makes no sense to us. One of those “things” that make life here so very interesting at times, and at other times, makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.

This morning is a “pull out my hair” morning.