published in Eastern Economist #453, October 8, 2002
The
other day, my cleaning lady brought over a ‘dozen’ eggs. I say ‘dozen’
although, in fact, everything here is metric, so eggs come in sets of 10, not
12.
Ever
since I came here, the standard way to buy eggs in Ukraine has been to tell the
saleslady (believe it or not, in all these years, I haven’t ever seen a man
selling behind the counter in a grocery store) how much you want. She then
counted them and carefully packed them, one by one.
Used
to be that she would make a cone of stiff paper and carefully place the 10 eggs
in there, then fold over the top, so they didn’t fall out. You then had to
carefully place this paper cone with 10 fresh eggs somewhere safe among your
groceries. More often than not, you got home to find one egg cracked and
leaking.
When
plastic bags became fairly common, the ladies started packing eggs in
small-sized transparent bags and tying them up. You still had to place them
very gingerly on top of all your other groceries and pray nothing smooshed them
before you got home.
Yes,
you could buy eggs in carton. You just had to buy 30 or 40 and then they were
literally sandwiched between two flats and tied with string. The
only manufactured “egg purses” – hard plastic egg cartons complete with snaps
and handles – were generally for 5x6 eggs. 30-40 was enough to last me three-four
months, so I never used the cumbersome thing.
This
time, my eggs were in a carton. Not a 5x6 monster, not two carton layers
wrapped in string. A nice factory-made carton. Not paper or polystyrene. It was
a light plastic, transparent egg carton with a colorful professional label. It
even snapped shut neatly. Reusable. Moreover, each egg was quality stamped.
It
got me to thinking of the things that have changed most radically. (Remember,
this is nostalgia time. No politics.)
Packaging
is a big one.
Gone,
for the most part, are the soviet one-style-suits-all
jars with the separate plastic lids that also came in two standard sizes that
would fit anything from a 250 ml jar to a 5-liter one. The good thing about
these jars was that they were recycled.
Gone,
mostly, too, are the metal lids that had to be pried off very, very carefully,
then tossed and replaced by the standard plastic ones.
Service
is another.
The
first time I drove around Kyiv, back in 1992, it was like being in a low-grade
spy movie just to get gasoline. Les, the man who was showing me around, would
drive along some main road until he saw a few men lingering around a
battered-looking truck. He’d then jump out, grab a jerrycan and go over to
them. They’d negotiate a little, gesturing at the car and at the truck.
Sometimes
there’d just be a chorus of shrugs and he would come back, disgruntled. Other
times, a wad of bills would cross hands and he’d come back with five or ten
liters of gas for the car.
“Don’t
you have any gas stations here?” I asked him.
“Not
any more. They’re all shut down. Deficit.”
Les
was also very cagey about just how he knew where to get gas and how he
determined a fair price.
Later,
when I started living in Kyiv, I noticed that there really wasn’t anything
resembling gas stations, operating or abandoned. Occasionally, you could see a
shack with one or two WWII-issue pumps nearby.
About
four years ago, it all started to change. First one station, then two. Then,
about two years ago, a dozen chains with unfamiliar names (other than BP out by
Boryspil) began sprouting gas stations across the country like mushrooms after
the rain.
Now
you can whizz into a spiffy hi-tech, white-tiled gas station, have a coffee
while a guy in uniform fills your tank, and sometimes even pay for it all on a
credit card. It’s almost too easy, really. Takes the adventure out of
travelling in Ukraine, if you ask me.
Vocabulary
has changed, too.
The
word “deficit,” meaning shortage, was probably the most popular word in Ukraine
in the early and mid-nineties. That’s because the soviet system had its own
“peculiarities.” (Another popular word that was essentially an excuse to do
things your own way no matter what the rest of the world thought or said. The
great conscience-salving term of all times.)
The
“peculiarity” of selling was that everything went to the saleslady’s buddies,
relatives, in-laws and so on, first. Only then (if there was really no other
option, such as shutting down for technical breaks, lunch or inventorization or
chit-chatting with your fellow saleslady, your back implacably towards the counter and any customers, for 40 minutes)
to customers off the street. That meant that mostly everything was “in deficit”
most of the time.
Supermarkets
have taken care of that, much like the spiffy gas stations.
“Chornobyl”
also cropped up in conversation, as predictably as the word “can’t.” As in, “My
kid has a sore throat and can’t go to school. It’s Chornobyl.” Or, “I can’t
figure out how to do this math problem. Must be Chornobyl.”
In
the last few years, even before the 3rd block was shut down in 2000, the word
“Chornobyl” seems to have disappeared from the vocabulary of most people.
Children no longer look so sallow. They even seem to like going to school. And
adults no longer bellyache about their health from dawn till dusk.
Maybe
in another 10 years, Ukrainians will also look back on all this with simple
nostalgia… •
