Chapter 7 ~ A Phone Line Balancing Act

In the west we take many things for granted: when we turn on the tap clean drinking-water flows, relatively reliable utilities and uninterrupted communications, supermarkets stocked with everything your heart may desire - and then some!

To the contrary daily life in Ukraine was a struggle. The ground in the area was soaked with heavy metals, so the drinking water was poor quality. We were shown a well that was believed to have slightly better water, but even that was questionable due to suspected radioactive residue. Hauling containers with water took time. Simple everyday living was a drain. To speak nothing of attempting to help and support others around you.

We rented place number five in Predniprovsk. It was a nice big house sporting two outhouses in the back. It was a couple of kilometres further out from Vladi's place across the Samara river.

Our landlord couple were quite nice. Sadly, the day before we moved into their house, their son was found dead in the street. His new leather jacket was gone. It is disheartening when poor people rob and oppress each other. It is so devastating and discouraging and I hope we will never get used to it.

The internet was extremely slow in those days, and I was checking my emails with an acoustic modem hooked up to the phone line. I remember being annoyed whenever people would send large attachments. It took forever to download anything other than plain text.

One time a friend, who didn't have email, asked if we could receive some photos an American wanted to send. The high-resolution pictures took ages to come through and were blocking other timely mail. On top of that the phone line dropped out a couple of times and I had to start over - oh man!

One day our phone line went completely dead! Someone had removed the telephone copper wires going out to our area. Stuff like that happened often. It could have been to sell as scrap metal to supplement earnings, or sadly, so someone could get their next bottle of vodka.

Alcoholism was a big problem in the former Soviet Union. I was told one anecdote about that whenever Moscow had to issue an unpopular law, they would lower the price of vodka, to make it easier to swallow! So many sad stories... Another one I heard was of a fellow in the neighbourhood who tore his garage down to sell brick by brick every time he needed the next bottle.

In any case, our phone was down for several weeks, and I really really needed to check my inbox. It was before mobile phones and before the arrival of wifi or hot spots, so I desperately needed to locate a working phone line.

I decided to drive over to Vladi. I was pretty sure he would be accommodating. Alas, Vladimir wasn't home - what to do?

I was sure that he would have given permission. The phone line came into the back of the house, and lo and behold there was even an electric socket on the veranda for the laptop - because of course my battery was at the end of its life span, and there was some scaffolding standing around.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so after considering my options, I moved the scaffold up on the veranda and climbed up. Then I hooked up my modem to the copper wire with a pair of crocodile clips - you had to come equipped for any eventuality, and I always carried tools and odds and ends in the van. - The power chord to my old laptop could just exactly reach the electric plug on the other side of the veranda.

So there I was, on top of the scaffold operating the laptop with one hand and holding on with the other, praying for dear life that the phone line wouldn't drop - and that nobody would interrupt my experiment. I'm sure people would have had a good laugh if they had seen me balancing on top of a wobbly scaffold downloading my emails.

Thankfully it worked! I managed to both send our timely emails and download the ones that had accumulated. Vladi had a good laugh when I told him about it later on.

In the next chapter I'll tell you more about some of the dear friends and fellow labourers we found and their admirable fortitude.

Chapter 8 ~ Friends and Fellow Labourers   ( TOC )