Another Boring Day in Ukraine - Hah!

Very early this morning a construction company started tearing up the main road outside our bedroom window. We are not sure what they are doing – never saw any pipes or anything else that looked like it needed to be repaired. But they dug a ditch clear across the road, totally stopping traffic. This road is the main traffic artery on our side of the city.

So – where do the cars, trucks, vans, taxis, buses, semis, motorcycles and every other vehicle you can think of – where do they go?

Down our quiet little street in front of our building. Let me tell you – this has been an awful day. Noisy, the clothes I had drying on the balcony stink of exhaust. One vehicle after another after another after another. Thousands. I am serious – thousands! The street is barely one car wide and the traffic is going both directions, passing each other on the sidewalk or even as close to the trees as they can get with out scraping the sides of their vehicle.


So, what do you do? If you are a babushka you take things into your own hands. You get together some of your friends in the building and you go out and you move the dumpsters into the middle of the street. You stand in the way of the cars and buses and big trucks while the drivers open their windows or doors and scream curses at you. You yell and scream right back, as loud as you can. And inbetween you laugh with your friends and encourage each other in what you are doing, what you are trying to accomplish. You try to stop the occasional driver who gets out and start throwing the dumpsters out of the way, but they are much younger than you, and just as angry at you as you are at them.

In the end, you lose the battle. I’m not sure what happened, but they have now moved the dumpsters back where they had been originally. The traffic continues to roar down our quiet little street.

I admit, I don’t understand why the city did not direct the traffic another way. There are several other ways to get around the hole in the street other than this little road. Wider streets that are used to the traffic. It makes no sense to me.

All I know is that I also am tired of the noise, the traffic, the stink of the exhaust. I hope they finish the repair quickly and get the main street reopened. Someone could easily get hurt if this continues. If I were just a little braver, if I understood the language a bit better, if I knew I would not get arrested and thrown out of the country for civil disobedience or something – I would have gladly joined them. We are all heartily sick of it.

Just another boring day in Ukraine!