Last summer in the Observer, I praised Ukraine for its public transportation, close families, and libertarian sensibilities. I was flamed, in Internet parlance, for expressing one of the world's biggest taboos - that the United States could possibly, somehow, be inferior to any other nation in any way. I felt as though I had committed a mortal sin, judging by the response to my article.
But I'm not completely blind to Ukraine's faults. As I prepare to leave the country, I want to register my complaints, particularly with regard to the Ukrainian ideals of good health, material success and organizational sense (or the lack of it).
Upon arrival in Ukraine by train from Budapest, I knew things were going to be different. My border crossing at Chop was a dismal exercise in customs bribery and registration formality.
The border police were so surprised to see an American at their station that they bungled an attempt to extort a bribe by not knowing how to ask for it correctly. It seemed as though I had my own chaperone as I was shuttled from baggage inspection to customs office ahead of other passengers. Outside, shabbily dressed kids competed for handouts with a scruffy dog.
Kyiv, by contrast, offered itself as a monument of a city. It had a huge train station, an impressive subway system and huge statues everywhere. Prior to my arrival I only knew it as the birthplace of Chicken Kyiv and as the USSR's third-largest city after Leningrad and Moscow. My knowledge of these eastern lands and of the peoples that inhabit them was pitifully limited by my American education. Sure, I could name the ABC's of dead Russian leaders - Andropov, Brezhnev, Chernenko. I knew little else about Ukrainian or Soviet history.
After almost two years in Ukraine, I've learned something about the local history and the culture. It's no wonder that a newly independent country that has been under the control of different empires for many of the past 1,000-or-so years has a blend of cultures and attitudes much different from the United States, which was dominated by an entirely different set of empires.
In would be an injustice to try to contain Ukraine's impressive cultural history in just a few lines, and I am by no means an expert anyway. Most Americans may be familiar with Ukrainian-born artists like Mira Sorvino, Isaac Stern and Isaac Asimov, but consider them part of the United States' cultural panoply.
I also quickly learned that Ukrainians have a quite different idea of what leads to good health than do Americans. Counter to the American practice of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," Ukrainians are adept at using preventative medicine. Combining folk remedies, urban myths and wives' tales, Ukrainian health customs are sometimes pragmatic and often ridiculous, at least to the uninformed observer. Americans, on the other hand, tend to spend millions of dollars on miracle pills and other alleged cures with the hope of extending and improving its quality of their lives.
The Ukrainian health care system, which I praise for being free in theory, can be criticized for its inefficiency and corruption. But if it weren't for professional treatment by Ukrainian doctors, I might not be here today. Last year I had an emergency appendectomy in a very typical Kyiv hospital.
Ukrainian health beliefs include the cardinal adages that one not sit on cold surfaces, that one not drink ice-cold beverages, that one not be exposed to drafts and that one keep babies sealed in layers of swaddling clothes to protect them from the elements and disease.
While it's true that Ukraine suffers from nasty endemic diseases including tuberculosis, diphtheria, hepatitis and influenza, its difficult to believe that sitting on cold concrete will bring on these maladies.
Given the interest in health and the prevalence of preventable cancer, heart disease and injury attributable to alcoholism and automobiles, it strikes me as strange that Ukrainians disdain the use of seatbelts and have failed to curb the use of alcohol and tobacco. The national rate of AIDS infection also warrants concern, as does the apparent lack of government involvement in introducing awareness of safe sex and of the dangers inherent in intravenous drug use.
We were lucky to have our daughter born in our home in Kyiv about a year ago. We were assisted by a midwife and a doula. We couldn't have asked for better prenatal care from our midwife, and our only disappointments were in meeting underpaid and disgruntled doctors within the Ukrainian health care system. It was part of the reason why we turned to home birth in the first place.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, another child was born at home in our neighborhood just two weeks earlier. And if our midwife's schedule is any indicator, home births are popular in Kyiv, despite government disapproval of the practice. Knowing that in Holland, for example, home births represent 50 percent of the total birthrate, we felt that we were making a normal and healthy choice.
Having visited maternity wards around Kyiv and having seen videos of births in Ukrainian and Russian cities, I learned that mothers and their children are often treated as disease-ridden invalids. Fathers are sometimes banned altogether from visiting their partner and child, and mothers sometimes are required to wear masks while they breastfeed their babies. The children are filled with vaccines, usually without the consent of the parents, and kept from their parents for up to two weeks. The choice not to have our child in these circumstances was obvious.
Materialism, the bane of communism, has caught on strong here. But there is another side to the equation of wealth. The main quality of life indicators - according to the United Nations - are not expensive cars, entertainment centers and luxury shopping malls, but are access to clean drinking water, education and health care. When the Cabinet of Ministers buys expensive German automobiles instead of Ukrainian-made cars, somebody's priorities are out of order.
Ukrainians should buy more Ukrainian products and build a middle class. When there is better quality of life for all, people can afford to buy some nice things for themselves. But to cover up Ukraine's inadequacies with the veneer of luxury goods is to ignore the plight of millions of incredibly poor people. It's like having a very expensive new car with a rusted out chassis, and a big hole in the gas tank.
That brings me to my final critique: Ukraine's bureaucracy, which can be maddeningly nonsensical and opaque.
When I came to Ukraine, just after the end of mandatory registrations for foreigners, I was in the situation of needing to extend my private visa for a three months. This required me to visit that hell of hells, the OVIR building on Shevchenko Boulevard. You would think they had never had a foreign person walk through their doors before. No signs or information was posted in Ukrainian, much less English.
Even though I did manage to find the bleak office that handles visa extensions, I was pained to find the staff uncooperative and surly. They insisted that I buy health insurance (a fraudulent scheme, I came to find out), and that after paying more than Hr 200, I was sent back to wait with dozens of other poor souls for hours. Later, they handed out our passports in a random, meaningless fashion. All the while, young women lucky enough to have paid a commission for quicker service entered and exited a back room, smiling and carrying completed documents.
"If only I had done that," I remember thinking.
I'm a seasoned expatriate now, and I understand that these experiences are part of everyday life for most Ukrainians.
Ukraine is far from the only place burdened by red tape, decreasing public health services and an increase in the disparity between rich and poor. These elements of injustice accompany most societies. I often ask myself these days, "Am I part of the problem, or part of the solution?" Perhaps it is a question I will be able to answer by the time I return to my beloved Ukraine.
Dan Miner-Nordstrom has started a family, worked with anti-nuclear and environmental groups, taught English and traveled extensively in Ukraine over the last two years. With his wife and daughter, he's returning to the United States to attend graduate school in his native Wisconsin. He hopes to eventually return to Kyiv to live and work.
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