From the US to the Ukraine

June 2008 From the US to the Ukraine
My world is full of extremes. I came from the USA and was home for 4 days then left for the Ukraine. Now there is not a single thing about these two countries that are the same. Oh yes there is, I just remembered, the terrifyingly miserable security guards! They look like they are just about to haul you out of the queue, strip you naked and ask personal questions like “do you wax your chest?” To which, one would reply “er….yes… er no…no, defiantly no” from there they would beat you with electric probes and ask things like ‘Do you know Osama?’, while exerting something very painful in any orifice of their choice. Apart from that, it’s a very different country.
What is quite astonishing is the very truthful fact that in the Ukraine 80% of car drivers never actually passed a driving test but bribed an official. Now this is seen immediately at the point you find yourself hurtling down a under developed motorway system at 150k.
The hotel we stayed in was comfortable and close to the motorway and our conference was situated less than a 500m away on the other side of the road. It was the Getting picked up or taken back to our lodgings that scared the hell out of me.
To navigate from one side of the motor way to the other involved finding a gap in the barriers and doing a u turn while hoping that neither the oncoming traffic or cars racing up from behind take you out. We witnessed 3 accidents there in 3 days and I was in one of them! Other pastors who have been to the same place have seen children die here. Yet incredibly they keep on coming, throwing themselves along a road that was never built to take the volume of traffic and drivers who are not qualified to drive on them.
Ironically the most puzzling question I am left with as I leave the Ukraine is not about road safety but why when the Ukrainians have exchange most of their Lada rust buckets for new BMW’s Audi and Mercedes in the last 10 years could they not exchange there crap filled bog holes with cultured porcelain flushing toilets?