The Little Things, Part One, Passport Paranoia.

Everyone is asking for snippets. Little pieces of the far away trip to share. The stocking stuffers to add flavor and texture to a place you have to live to begin to digest. Ukraine is just like that. Something you have to live, but no place anyone should want to go, at least for right now. 

kept in my passport keeper

There is the omnipresent pervasive black cloud over Ukraine. It exists, or so it seemed to me, over the entire country from the first to my last minute there. True the skies grow darker and the cloud cover closer the closer you move East, but it manifests from the clear skies at the border of Romania you leave from and arrives as you cross into Ukraine. (The borders are oddly like that,, that snippet I will share at another time). I asked myself for a long while whether this was just placebo effect. Maybe I was just imagining it? But, on the way home to Romania my carmate admitted, in fact she asked me, if I had noticed it too?

There is an overarching sense of despair, of sadness, a gloominess you cannot wipe away. Sleep away, or awaken from. Even in the off moments of peaceful aloneness it is there. Every step of every minute of your life has to be thought out. That in itself is excruciating and exhausting. At minimum you have to plan an exit for every possible scenario. How fast could you run? What do you need to take? Where would you go and how would you get there? (Remember there might not be roads, or gas, or open roads). What would you do if they (Russian troops) are at your door? Knocking, Invading, Intimidating or Interrogating? What documents do you have? Are they with you at all times? (Let me talk about passport paranoia).

one of the tokens that I carried with me to Ukraine

So I will start here..

passport paranoia. I bought a travel purse before leaving. The kind that goes around your neck, hangs at the chest. Multiple pockets to hold things. A drawstring to cinch higher or lower based on the threat and quickness for access. It was never out of my sight, save for traveling. We keep the passports in the dashboard for quick passing to the checkpoint guards stationed about every 30 minutes, and at every major town, and every key place of transport, military base, communication tower, and not so inconspicuously hidden troop bunker. I don't speak the language, and I am a visitor. My USA passport is the one thing anchoring my safety in this warzone. Yes, I guarded it with my life. There is no embassy here, and no way to call out for rescue or retrieval. The group I was with had lost all sense of passport paranoia. They were far more comfortable with fate as it might fall than I. There were many times I heard one of them inquiring as to which vehicle, or when, they had misplaced theirs? 

not so sexy,, but a needed accessory...

This was a common theme for me. Trying to grow more comfortable with the war and nullify its impact by the number of sands that have passed through the hourglass. Two weeks there wasn't long enough to soothe or ease the passport paranoia. It was just one of the many I entered and left Ukraine with. The rest of the group, who had been there for months, or multiple trips back and forth, to and from had outgrown their passport paranoia. The newness, the risk, the danger, and the paranoia had been misplaced some miles/days/weeks back. Mine remained overhead, the Linus storm of grey over the neophyte clinging a cheap no brand purse close to the heart but clung to nonetheless.

Please see my other Ukraine posts.. and please remember to hope,, you can never surrender tha,, #peaceinUkraine