Life has been an absolute whirlwind of craziness for us these days, so luxurious things like blogging, not to mention laundry, have been temporarily put on hold. However, today’s little piece of exciting news is worthy of a brief interlude in our insanity. What is so thrilling that it can actually make the forces of work and school pause and take notice? We have heat. Yes, the city has decided we have been bundled in extra sweaters long enough, and our radiators are beginning to radiate. Of course, that also means that we will start paying for heat until the city deems the weather warm enough to turn it off again, but for now, my toes are extremely thankful. Though our apartment has an abundance of windows, it doesn’t get much sunlight on these fall days, and our un-insulated concrete walls constantly breathe cold air. Our old but reasonably efficient radiators will provide enough heat to keep out the winter frost. Just in time, too…after a late-night trip to the loo last night, I was thinking that without heat, we would soon need to keep an ice-scraper in the bathroom so we could sit down. That would have been most unpleasant.
One of the great features of our apartment building is that it comes equipped with a cellar. It’s an attractive addition to a small apartment – or at least it could be. Before you even open the cellar door your nasal passages start sending out warning signals that something isn’t quite right. Upon opening the door, you are immediately struck by the noxious odour of sodden earth and mildew. Along the walls crawl furry black trails of mold that appear to be completely undeterred by the crumbling condition of the damp foundation. The low ceiling is draped with sticky masses of spider webbing; like an ornately woven fabric, haphazardly encrusted with hundreds of ghostly-white spider carcasses. The air is foul with the smell of rotting wood, cardboard, and other remains from the people who used to take shelter in the unused space.
The building’s main water pipe runs through our cellar, and has leaked since long before we moved in. We tried once to point out the leak to a worker from the city water company, but the full bucket of water in our designated room, and the steady drip from the pipe only garnered a bemused look. “There’s no problem,” he said, and walked away as though I was clueless as to how these things were supposed to work.
We recently decided that the extra space the cellar would afford us would be worth the effort of making some repairs. With the help of our friend Vaidas, who has an unusual flair for getting things done, we found a starving student who needs some extra cash and has the skills to fix up our dungeon. Arturas got to work cleaning, plastering, and repairing our space, and cleverly used one of our old doors to make a more secure entry to the room. He is hard working and, despite our efforts, he lives off Coke and potato chips which he somehow manages to consume down there, despite the smell.
In our effort to get the leaking pipe in the cellar fixed, we left the cellar door open one day, in case the plumbers came and wanted to get in. This seemed like a reasonable thing to do. The next day, however, we discovered that not only was our leaking pipe still leaking, but Arturas’ tools had been stolen. When he rang our doorbell to tell us the news, he was the most awful shade of green. Poor thing. He was exhausted from a long day at school, and was understandably shaken over the loss of his tools. Still, we wanted him to be assured that it was our responsibility, and his things would be replaced. Nathan and Arturas walked down to the big hardware store, where they picked out shiny new tools to replace the old ones. Thankfully, the thought of new tools brought some colour back to Arturas’ face, and he was revived enough to make the twenty minute walk to his apartment; he and Nathan both loaded down with Black and Decker boxes.
I choose to see our little adventure thus far as a right of passage in a new culture. Mistakes made and lessons learned are all part of the process. Besides, seeing the “new tools” look on someone’s face is priceless, and it just might have been all worth it for that one moment.
The following is an excerpt from an article posted on Urbana’s website. We have the same ticket-punching system on our buses in Lithuania, and I had to laugh (sympathetically, of course) at this girl’s story. The ticket inspectors really are an intense bunch, and being ushered into one of their dark vans would be frightening, indeed.
Excerpt from: Being Who God Made Me
by Lucy Wynard
http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=940
Directly after college I moved to a country in the former Soviet Union to work with an emerging evangelical student movement. I was only twenty-two years old, but it was already my seventh cross-continental move (but my first to live in a non-English-speaking country).
One day, a few months after moving to my new home, I took the bus to the university where I was studying Russian. The bus was so crowded I couldn’t reach the ticket press to punch my ticket - thereby proving I had paid my fare. At a stop a fierce-looking group of ticket inspectors pushed their way on and pretty soon I knew I was in trouble. They physically took me off the bus and into their curtained van where three of them took turns yelling at me while several others sat and laughed at the strange, and scared, foreigner. I struggled to explain who I was and why I hadn’t punched my ticket.
In the end, I paid a fine, took back my passport (phew!) and walked the rest of the way to class. I was near tears already but when I arrived at my third floor classroom it got worse. It seemed half the Russian Department was waiting for me – someone had seen me and rather than stopping to help, had run ahead to tell the story. I was humiliated and felt the full negative burden of my foreignness in those moments. As the only foreigner studying at the university, everything I did (especially such a public mistake as this) was fascinating and amusing for them. My teacher gruffly told them all to go away and as we sat down he quietly took the cap off my pen for me, handed it to me and said “Here, write this down: Punch – my – ticket - please.”
That night, in faltering Russian, I went over my humiliating morning with a friend who’d come over bearing ice cream. Sveta spoke very little English, so I practiced some of my newly-acquired vocabulary: “fine,” “punch my ticket,” “bus inspector,” “embarrassed.” Together we laughed and I felt the warmth of friendship and the miracle of connecting with someone different than me.