For Cats

Entering Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow two days prior to our November Lighthouse Project trip, I am amazed to see crowd control stanchions separating lines at immigration. These bestow a Western sense of order, replacing the line jumping free-for-all I’ve dreaded most of my flight. The queue for bearers of electronic passports is so short I fear selecting it, but I waltz through in record time, and collect my luggage among the early bags on the carousel. In the arrivals area, a throng of taxi drivers plead, “Tahk-see? Tahk-see?” I feel a twinge of guilt in refusing them, but I’m seeking Dima. When he finds me, he grabs the carry-ons from my grateful shoulders and greets me with a polite, but scratchy, kiss. From touchdown to airport departure is a felicitous 25 minutes.

Outside, I rejoice in the chill, thankful the smoke and heat of August are relegated to miserable memory. I think I recognize Dima’s vehicle in the distance, but when we get closer, he tells me it’s new, and asks if I like it. I admit I’d seen no difference, but he smoothes it over, saying he painted it green to match his old Nissan. After depositing my bags in the back, he climbs in and turns the key in the ignition, to silence. “Sorry,” he mutters, as he springs out to swap batteries. Once the van is moving, Dima looks pained when I ask how long he’s been driving it. “Since yesterday,” he confesses, chagrined, adding it’s the best he can afford.

We are inspecting possible new lodging for our trips, visiting a tiny, well-heeled hamlet northwest of Moscow. Along the way, the only snow I’ll see the entire trip descends. Leaving Moscow’s city limits and entering the country, I peer out windows I defog with my sleeve every few minutes. As giant flakes light on birch forests lining the road, we speed through slush to a soundtrack punctuated periodically by a breathy male announcer. Everything about this ride is quintessentially Russian, and I love it more than ever on this, my eighth foray into the Motherland. After several calls to the house manager for directions, we arrive. Our host meets us with tea so hot that I recoil at my first tentative sip, splashing it on the floor. While I take the grand tour, Dima waits in the kitchen, watching his van out the window. Fearful it might not start again, he’s left it running. An hour later, when we’re driving off, the temperature inside feels more equatorial than Russian.

I’m desperately tired, but breakfast food shopping, Ashan-style, looms between me and the hotel. Gloom fills my heart as we park; the store is always grossly overcrowded and unwelcoming. As I deliberate the merits of products whose labels I hardly understand, I impede hordes who don’t bother to disguise their annoyance. Shopping for 25 souls, my cart begins to overflow, necessitating a second, then third. Dima suggests I leave the first cart by an end cap, and reclaim it when we’re done. I am profoundly hesitant to abandon my hard-won foodstuffs, but I take comfort seeing several other full carts alone. More than 30 minutes later I collect cart one, untouched, where I left it.

Back in the parking lot, the snow has changed to a hard rain. I’m hacking from a cold that sleep deprivation will not let me fight. I try to help Dima load the van, but I can tell I’m in the way again. I don’t object when he directs me to the van because I’m “coughing already.” His excuse is transparent, but I don’t care in my cold, wet stupor. I nod off on the ride to the hotel, so Dima wakes me when we’re there. I am loved by the hotel after all our stays, and staff greets me by name as I enter. The receptionist sets my key on the counter as I walk by, and I take my usual room without any of the typical hotel formalities.

After I’ve wrestled my groceries into the refrigerator, I am cooking rice for my dinner when Nancy, the lady who started our director Hope in adoption nearly twenty years ago, drops by the hotel. She’s in Russia separately, but forgot something at home, which I’ve brought for her. Now, after years of hearing about her, we meet. She says I’m “a doll” for carrying her things, though right now I look more like a drenched rat.

The next morning, my first family arrives. Melinda is meeting a four-year-old, and has to catch the train tonight to the region where we work. She treats me to lunch, then we visit the circus to buy tickets for later in the week. The saleswoman speaks no English, and I struggle to convey to her that I want our seats together. As she tires of my attempts, I give up and hope for the best. On the way out, I peruse the seat assignments, relieved to see they are grouped in two areas, rather than the hodgepodge we sometimes get.

Beggars, street musicians, and the ragged elderly selling flowers, kittens, and fruit are omnipresent as they vie for the compassion of passersby in Moscow. At the end of our August trip, returning from a late-night visit to Red Square, I witnessed a young man in the metro hunched over from kyphosis. While his condition was less grave than many beggars I’d ignored in the past, I’d scarcely bypassed him before I felt a crippling shame. I tried to salve my conscience with thoughts that our group was exhausted, and that the money I carried wasn’t really mine. But leaving him helpless haunted me, and I vowed next time to have my own money.

On the way back from the circus, Melinda and I walk the main street leading to the hotel. Up ahead, an ancient babushka, in padded coat and headscarf, perches on a folding stool, pan at her feet. Two cats robed in sweaters keep her company, one a Siamese mix, the other a lilac point Himalayan. I covet a photo in the worst way, but worry if I ask I’ll be refused. Shooting surreptitiously from the side, I am unmasked by my flash in the twilight. The lady rebukes me so vehemently no translation is required, leaving me thankful she doesn’t wield a cane. When my dressing down is over, I sheepishly step up and hand her enough rubles to guarantee my forgiveness.

I leave ashamed, both for the photo and the donation. As a veterinarian and cat-lover, I’m allowed to help a granny feed her pets. But somewhere in Moscow there’s a broken man, with years of dependency on the goodwill of strangers ahead of him, and I left him in the heat and smoke of August, alone, with nothing. Then I made my first donation into a pie tin.

For cats.

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Out of the Frying Pan

Three Saturdays ago, initially generalized abdominal pain later localizing low to the right prompted my call to my doctor’s office. A nurse directed me to the emergency room, and warned she’d call back in thirty minutes to ensure I’d obeyed. Her threat to check up on me was instructive, and I made a beeline for the ER and was diagnosed with appendicitis. When an appendectomy was ordered, my first fear was for the August trip to Russia, but my surgeon gave his blessing for travel thirteen days hence, somewhat allaying my reservations.

Home on Monday, I was busier than usual and conducting Lighthouse business from bed. Speaking with a North Carolina family whose calling is to keep sibling groups intact, I thought of Zulya and Lora, for whom hope had expired (Her Lora, 4/9/10). The family was interested, and went through heroics to obtain passport and visa in an astounding nine days.

The week of the trip, Lighthouse Project director Hope told me Moscow was in the throes of its worst heat wave in the last century. Checking the weather, I was dismayed to see 104°  forecast for our arrival. Later, adding that wildfires in old peat bogs outside the capital were shrouding the city in clouds laced with carbon monoxide and other pollutants, Hope suggested I bring face masks. Initially resistant in my vanity, I eventually acquiesced, but secretly planned to return them unused after the trip.

***

On Friday, my journey commences at 4:30 a.m. Having traveled to Russia four previous times the past ten months, I’ve accumulated many frequent flyer miles. On both legs of my flight, this status lands me a coveted complimentary upgrade from economy to business class, especially desirable for the trans-Atlantic portion. For once, I can stretch out and sleep mid-flight, though my pleasure is a guilty one as I remember my two host families holed up in economy class, unable to catch even a few winks.

On our descent into Moscow, I’m appalled at our low altitude when I finally see the ground. I am still marveling at how close we are when acrid fumes of smoke waft through the plane. Nauseated instantly, I barely suppress the urge to vomit. I panic, then pray for calmness and dispersion of the pungent fog. Usually, I worry about my luggage arriving, but with the American Lung Association's slogan, “When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters,” tearing at breakneck speed through my mind, I fear only for my precious masks. At landing, everyone seems stunned and nobody claps, foregoing this celebratory tradition at touchdown in Mother Russia. The flight attendant’s “Welcome to Moscow,” seems a heartless joke rather than a flight formality, and I want to scream at her that I don’t feel welcomed and I want to leave now. Inside the airport, it’s stifling and infiltrated with a suffocating smoke. I try to quell the desire to breathe deeply, but finally inhale and am punished with paroxysms of hacking. The lines at immigration are the shortest I’ve ever seen, making my subsequent wait for my luggage seem longer and more harrowing.

Dima picks us up. With my bags safely in hand, I offer everyone a round of masks; Dima shrugs it off as a crazy notion, and tells me I’ll be “ugly” if I wear one. This sentiment, so disturbing before the trip, now earns a snort at its powerlessness to dissuade me from donning respiratory protection, no matter how unsightly.

On the drive, Dima offers to show us a stable he operates for the benefit of handicapped children. Hoping the weather might be better in the country, we agree, though the price is a longer ride in his oven on wheels. Down a wending road where we gently rear-end one vehicle and nearly bowl over a pedestrian ambling across the road, the smog decreases appreciably. We arrive at the barn, an eclectic structure cobbled together out of materials Dima has collected from here and there. He proudly shows us several horses, Russian breeds, all of whom seem anxious to see him. One snarling dog, several panting rabbits, a miniature donkey, and a goat whose milk Dima offers us complete the menagerie.

After the tour, we shuffle down the road to a wooden movie set depicting eighteenth-century England, where they're filming a soap opera.  Dima enters like he owns the place, and we follow in his wake. An actress wilting in a heavy costume hides behind the structure, dragging on a cigarette made laughably redundant by the omnipresent smoke.  She seems flattered when we ask for a picture, but then she unleashes a Russian tirade when one photo is snapped as she puffs on the cigarette.

Back on the road, we stop at a flea market featuring tired odds and ends that look like ancient Goodwill rejects. It’s disheartening to see human beings sitting in smoke all day, trying to eke out an existence peddling such meager wares. Our presence encourages them in vain, as we buy nothing, though a retro-looking Russian alphabet chart tempts me until I discover it is battery operated and new.

After the flea market, our last stop is Ashan, to grocery stores what airplane hangars are to garages. I pick out the breakfast food and derive a perverse satisfaction when one of the families, loyal blog readers, agrees my description of the store as a dehumanizing melee is accurate (Breakfast, 6/30/10). Smoke hangs just below the ceiling, and the lack of air conditioning inside a store so cavernous and enclosed is oppressive, and not conducive to loitering.

We know in advance the hotel will not be cool, but depression sets in when we find there aren’t even fans to circulate the foul air. Long, cold showers proceed our dinner at a restaurant selected merely for its possession of air conditioning. At night, I check the weather, and find the temperature reached 97° today, obliterating the previous record of 84° on this date. Weather conditions on each half-hour report only “smoke,” with no relief projected until at least Wednesday. Right now, that seems an eternity away.

An online slide show depicts the fires under whose ravages we now suffer. In one village, completely leveled by fire, two women rummage in the charred shell of their home, rescuing sooted jars of pickles stored in their cellar. I finally cry at the devastation in Russia. Their home is gone, and so little remains that all they can salvage is pickles.

I always want children to be adopted, but as I melt under my mask in a morgue-like room, I pray harder than usual that our efforts are not wasted.

I’m in the fire. But if we can help the kids, it will be worth it.

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Breakfast

I arrive in Moscow Friday morning, thankfully ending a journey void of blog material. Dima, our usual driver, dislocated his shoulder last night so his friend Ivan meets me instead.

Striving to improve future trips after my earliest jaunts for our Moscow Lighthouse Project, I surveyed the travelers upon return. While all respondents were unfailingly constructive, they took a dim view of the included breakfasts. So starting with our third Moscow foray, I asked the hosts before I left home what foods they hoped to see on the table. Most suggestions were predictable, though there was one request for chocolate and Coca Cola.

On the way to the hotel, Ivan stops at Ashan (uh-SHAHN), a Russian mega-market that makes Super Wal-Mart look like an upscale convenience store. From a parking garage under the store, a gigantic conveyor belt carries us and our cart up one floor to the store. The cart’s rubber wheels turn 360°, but are immobilized on the belt. I try moving the basket, but fall backward into Ivan when it won’t budge. His catch saves me humiliation in front of everyone but him. The dark garage and the glacially-moving conveyor are poor preparation for the cacophonous scene unfolding inside. I commence my jet-lagged scavenger hunt armed with a sizable shopping list and pounding headache. Wall-to-wall carts are jockeyed by shoppers on missions, none predisposed toward patience. Attempts to decode Cyrillic packaging, while trying to match reasonable American requests with their Russian manifestations, might be an adventure were I less sleep-starved, but as possessed carts ram my derriere for the umpteenth time, I decide it’s nothing but a pain.

One of my easiest purchases is juice, though the selection is staggering; Ashan is not your Soviet’s grocer. I choose a brand auspiciously dubbed “Da!”, Russian for “Yes!” The “100% something” emblazoned on the package engenders my confidence in the product’s ingredients, and I don’t bother to seek Ivan’s guidance. Later in the week, when someone asks if it’s pure juice, I nod affirmatively, pointing toward the 100% claim. A bilingual observer corrects me, announcing the word after 100% says “quality”, not “juice.”

Soy milk is the most perplexing item; Ivan has never heard of it. The first worker he asks doesn’t know where it is, and tells him so with a condescending shrug that comes off as rebuke. Chastened, I tell Ivan we’ll go without, but he seems to view finding the product as a matter of honor. He asks four more workers: two who point us in the wrong direction, one who says they don’t carry it, and one who points vaguely somewhere, leaving us to wander the aisle again. No one offers to take us to the shelf, and we never learn the truth. With Ivan’s determination to find the milk, and the workers’ opposing determination toward evasion, I fear the charade will be interminable. I finally insist we stop, but even then have trouble convincing Ivan that I will e-mail the family, still at home, and suggest they bring their own.

Coffee is on my list, so Ivan leads me to an end cap display with pride in his knowledge of its location. After the soy milk fiasco, I am reticent to tell him Americans don’t drink instant coffee, and that I wouldn’t pay this price even for premium java. When he shares that one of my friends brought this coffee back to the States with them, I have no choice but to swallow hard and plunk it in the cart.

Buffeted continually as I shop, I eventually find most of the items I seek. But rather than reveling in my task’s completion, I feel dehumanized by the rush, rudeness of the clerks, and jostle of carts in our supersized pinball game. I wonder if Ivan notices the annoyance with which the clerks regard him, or that browsing is impossible in the melee, but he appears oblivious. I worry I’ll dehumanize him further by acknowledging it, but curiosity overcomes me. When I ask if it bothers him to live like this, the question surprises him. He tells me no, politely, but I can tell he’s puzzled at my suggestion it might.

We have our choice of about eighty checkouts, all open, when we’re done. Our cashier rings up our entire order wordlessly, breaking her silence only to bark the total. Despite the lack of welcome, she gives me my biggest thrill all day when I pay without her realizing I’m not Russian. Bagging our own groceries, the flimsy plastic sacks, which tear at the least hint of abuse, almost defy us to make them open. Our sluggishness adds to the spectacle, to the irritation of both the cashier and the shopper behind us.

When we finally reach the hotel, I put the food away and collapse into bed. I’ve had this room often enough that I feel strangely home. I sleep without effort, and then wake late in the evening, rejuvenated. I’m excited again, waiting for the hosts and kids, anxious to see the families who will be created on this fourth trip.

Tomorrow’s a new day, and breakfast is ready.

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