Woo! We are out of there. Actually my last two weeks on the Black Sea were a blast in most ways, but it is still so lovely to be away from cliquey, officious Belarussians and extend my diet beyond red meat and greasy starches. I miss the kids, the hills, and the lazy Novo nights on the beach eating Arabsky bread and drinking Baltikas, but I am loving the bright lights and blini stands of Moscow.
My last two weeks, in addition to the long pointless boring stretches and the hours sitting on hot rocks in the sun, were full of gorgeous sunsets, long talks with Joslin and my co-vozhatiye, hiking, partying, random kindness, and of course my great kids from Lensk in Siberia close to Lake Baikal. There was no internet in Novomikhailovsky for our last two weeks there. We went to the dungeon-like cellar with the one internet terminal in town a few times, and each time they said, "There will be internet tomorrow," and each time it still didn't work, so I have been pretty out of touch for a while.
I think the day after I wrote last, Joslin and I skipped out to the beach to watch the sunset, and on the way to our favorite promontory, we passed another couple of vozhatiye (counselors) whom we smiled and waved to. A few minutes later, one of them came running back to catch up with us and asked us where we were going. We pointed to the promontory. He asked why, and we said to watch the sun go down. He looked kind of stressed out and worried as he tried to say in English, "I think it would be better if you came with me to the..." He trailed off trying to think of the word, and I thought, discretionary court? Disciplinary committee? We were AWOL after all, but AWOL from duties we were never really needed for, and I'm not as big on empty shows of pointless duty as I am on sunsets.
Turned out, though, that he was just stressing out trying to remember the word in English for "stairs," and we followed him to them and climbed up for ages on some rusted-out steps and blackberry-bramble-strewn paths to a rusty observation tower from which we enjoyed an incomparable view of the sea and Novo's valley and many hazy hills beyond, and a livid red sun sinking out of a clear sky under a crown of glowing cirrus clouds. Valentin and his girlfriend almost missed the sight just to come find us and show it to us as well, and that is one of those acts of kindness that will stay with me forever.
Afterwards we hiked back down to the sea to watch the quarter moon glitter off the waves and bask in the knowledge that when it was full, we would be on a slow train drinking champagne.
A couple of days later I was doing my post-sunset workout and had just done my first set of push-ups when a boy came and asked me how many I had done, and I said nine. He showed me up by doing 20, and then a soldier from the training camp next door wandered over and asked the boy how many he had done. The boy said 20 and asked the soldier how many he could do, and he said 50. This started a long and interesting conversation between me, Joslin, Misha the first army guy, Sasha the taller and quieter army guy, and a troop of boys who gathered around and offered the occasional redundant translation ("He is Russian soldier." Thanks, kid).
The army guys next door are snatched from their homes at age 18 or 19 and stuck in a camp next to the Shaft for two entire years, ostensibly training but pretty much just marching around in circles and doing push-ups and bumming smokes off kids from the Shaft and missing home. I asked if they got a salary, and he said, "What kind of salary is 100 rubles in three months?" My jaw hit the floor. A ruble a day? Suddenly I felt rich making my 15 rubles, or 50 cents a day. What a waste of human potential! What a waste of two prime years of life. What a boring, depressing way to spend two years. He was a cutie, though. Shame we met when I was leaving so soon. Like many other Russians we met he asked me if there were many Russians in America, and I said there were some on the coasts but not many in the middle, and he mentioned Brighton Beach.
The next day, Tuesday, was one of the nicest of my life. We had hiked the north fork of Novo's river a couple of weeks before and had a great time, so now we decided to take off down the south fork and see what we could see. It was cleaner and wider than the north, and there were clear swimming holes with a tinge of blue green against the pale, tawny rocks, every 200 meters or so, some of them occupied by fish and/or swimmers. One cluster of swimming holes was situated around what looked like the concrete columns of what once might have been a bridge, but if you squinted a little they almost looked like ancient Roman ruins, faded white over the aquamarine pools.
The day was sweaty hot but not too bad, and the farms and hills and trees along the banks were as lush green as usual in the northern Caucasus summer, and the wildflowers and blue sky and stacked white cumulus clouds marching across the sky, it was just idyllic. Prettier than you think places can really be.
Both of us had lost our appetites for camp food long ago, so we were looking forward to the picnic we'd bought in town of a parcel of cheese, some sweet bread and tomatoes, fruit and chocolate and water, all for about $2. We hiked for three hours before we couldn't stand it any more, and then we kept on for another half hour looking for the perfect place to sit down and enjoy our feast. By the time we found it, we were falling in on ourselves with hunger. So we untied the parcel of cheese and broke the white bread with sugar crystals sprinkled on top, and the cheese was strong and white and delightfully rubbery, salty and pungent and stuffed with spices ground up in oil, and that contrasted with the sweet soft white bread and the perfect red flavorful juicy tomato, sitting by a river pool in the shade of a passing cloud... there are no words, but it was bliss on the scale of a lifetime.
We kept hiking a bit after lunch and were not particularly looking forward to the hours backtracking to Novo, but we found a road that was easier on the ankles than the slippery rocks and started walking. We'd gone on about an hour when a car stopped not far ahead of us and a head poked out. "Where are you going?" he asked in Russian. "Novomikhailovsky." "Hop in." He said something else we didn't understand, and then he said in surprise at our confusion, "You're not Russian?" I said no, I was American, and he motioned us to get in again and we took off. He took us first to a place by the road where he had an errand to run and asked if we were hungry. I said, "Chut'-chut'," not wanting to be rude and refuse hospitality but also not wanting to be a burden or get stuffed. I should have known better. He motioned us over to a cafe by the river with tables under a canopy of shade trees and had Tyotya (Aunt) Something-or-Other fix us up a meal of spicy lamb, polenta, crumbly Cherokee cheese, soup, pirozhki, marinated cabbage, and pineapple nectar. I said I didn't have much money with me, and he looked almost offended and said of course it was on him.
He said he'd seen French, German, and Italian people here on business (he was a lumberjack), but he'd never seen an American. Joslin is from South Africa, somewhere even more exotic, but I think people generally don't realize that South Africa is a country where many white people live. I think they just think she doesn't speak Russian very well and is confused.
I asked him how life for him was since "communism" fell, and he said definitely worse. There's no money around anymore, no way to make an honest buck, and the mafia control everything. "Even here?" I asked. "Here, there, everywhere." "So the director of Zolotoi Kolos, is he mafia?" He said without blinking and without irony, "Sto protsentov, sto protsentov." 100 percent. I nearly spit my nectar out laughing. So Chemodanov is as crooked as he looks. Mr. Suitcase is ripping off the Golden Shaft as sure as you're born. Probably one of the many reasons there's nothing there and it is in an abhorrent state of decline, disrepair, and general dismay. (Of course that might also be because the number of kids goes up by 20% every year, so it is completely overloaded and getting worse.) The guy running the army camp next door is probably skimming off the top of their pitiful paychecks as well. I don't get it. People in Russia are so generous and kind, and then there are crooks running everything and hoarding all the resources for themselves. Where's the incentive to stay honest and fair?
We finished eating under the trees by a swimming hole and then enjoyed a blissful air-conditioned drive to the center of town that would have taken almost two hours' walking, and he never asked for money, gifts, our business, our numbers, or even our thanks, although we gave that of course.
As my time at camp was winding down it was time to start getting rid of the gifts I'd brought as well as some other excess baggage. I gave little ten-year-old black-eyed Armenian charmer Ruslan my ultimate frisbee with a message inside that said, "You are such a cutie. Call me in about 15 years." Hopefully he'll be able to read it by then. He loved it. I gave a full set of American change to my three favorite boys from Lensk, Vitaliy, Vova, and Sasha, and I gave my co-vozhatiye some postcards, coins, and mixed tapes with some of the lyrics written out for them. I gave Harley (his name's Ivan but he always wears this Harley Davidson t-shirt that says, "Legends Live where Legends Roam") my good slingshot, and then I started handing out random things to random kids who were so appreciative and often found something they could give to me in return. The best was when Sasha, Vitaly, and Vova came out and gave Joslin and I Yukos hats with messages written on the brims. Yukos is a gas station, but the caps are nice and we treasure them anyway because we love the boys.
Two nights before I left it was Roxana's birthday, and Katya invited me (after she asked someone in front of me if I was indeed invited even though she knows I know those words in Russian) to the party that night, which was fun and hilarious. Belarussians are interesting people. There was a lot of sweet wine and champagne and cheese and chocolate involved, and I gave Roxana a teddy bear from Stanford that she liked. The next day Katya asked me if I liked the party, and I said sure, and she said, "Hm, it is a pity we've never invited you to anything before." Funny that.
The night after that I was supposed to meet Katya and Roxana to go to the beach for a last midnight swim, but they flaked unapologetically, so Joslin and I went without them and met up with a group of three traveling students from Moscow whom we had met earlier at our favorite cafe. They were funny guys, and they spoke enough English that we let them practice and they let us laugh at their "pronunkiation." They bought us some drinks, we danced a bit, and then we went for a swim in the sea that was indeed black under the stars. They walked us back to camp like gentlemen in the wee hours of the morning.
The next day was our last day at the Kolos, and surprise surprise, the administration finally seemed to notice that we existed. We were treating like human beings that day and brought before the big cheese himself who blew smoke at us and asked us what we'd tell the Camp Counselors Russia program about his camp and was none too pleased when I said I had some reservations. We somehow made it through that unpleasantness and ended on a polite note, got a picture with him and everything, and then they drove us to our train and we were only too happy to buy some champagne and chocolates and get out of Dodge.
There's a lot of bad stuff to tell, about idiotic bureaucracy, unaccountable administrators, and cruel and/or schizophrenic co-vozhatiye constantly trying to take us dumb foreigners down a peg or steal our food, but I will save it for now.
We'd been joking all summer about the hot Russian men who would share our train with us and rub our feet and make us forget all about Zolotoi Kolos, and sure enough after we'd gotten settled into our train cabin, two tired-looking overweight 50-somethings stumped in and sat down with some cheap vodka and Baltikas. Oh well. They were cool guys, a little too free with the vodka (champagne and vodka are a dangerous mix it turns out), and we talked quite a bit during the 26-hour return journey. They were both Muscovite chauffeurs, one of whom had driven Jacques Chirac around, and we all shared our food around and talked about this and that as we watched the world go by.
And then there we were, back where we started. We met up with the other counselors, and some of the camps were worse than Zolotoi Kolos, some were an absolute blast and involved skydiving and constant local television coverage or getting drinks bought every night by shirtless gold-toothed Armenian men and getting guns pulled on dates at clubs. It was a one-off summer for all of us, though. Most of us definitely want to come back to Russia.
My internet time is rapidly clicking down, so I am going to cut it short. Write if you can. Much love.
Pam