Somewhere around 1997-8 I got an e-mail out of the blue from Scotland. A fellow had found our website, "Friends of Ukraine."

We adopted that name because a long time friend and colleague from Norway saw, "Friends of Ukraine" in a dream and wrote me about it. Somehow it rang true, so I chose it as the name of our project. Today you can find oodles of "Friends of Ukraine" associations on the Internet, but I'd like to believe we were first.

This Scottish fellow was helping to operate a small Christian radio station in Glasgow. He wrote and asked how the conditions were in East Ukraine - "is it really as bad as they say?" After some emails back and forth, he asked, "if I can get a shipment of humanitarian aid to Kiev, would you be willing to deliver it to a family we would like to help near Kharkiv?" I liked the idea so we answered, "sure, we can drive the shipment out to the village."

The kind folks from Scotland got a load of pallets together and sent it off. Unfortunately it went astray and got lost somewhere in Belorussia. Well, that didn't deter them! They organized another shipment, which finally made it to a Baptist church in Kiev, ready for us to pick up. By this time autumn had become winter, meaning a 1400km round trip on snowy roads.

Three of us set out on the journey from Dnipro (also known as Dnipropetrovsk) in East Ukraine to the capital Kiev to pick up the shipment. Much of it was packed in Scottish whiskey boxes, except for three bicycles, one of which had to hang on the back of the van. By the time we took off from Kiev it was starting to get dark. Kharkiv was seven hours drive to the East.

We made pretty good time in spite of the weather, until shortly before midnight when I heard crunching noises from the front right wheel. Ouch! We pulled in by a roadside cafe which was just closing. The rim on the wheel was hot, which indicated a crushed wheel bearing. There was nothing we could do but to spend the night huddled up in the cold van. I did not want to risk going on with the possibility of losing a wheel. I remember trying to sleep in the cold van with a bicycle steering wheel poking my back.

Sometimes a problematic situation can turn into an amusing anecdote.

Morning finally arrived, and while we were waiting for the cafe to open a police car stopped by the cafe. The officer was a jolly fellow and we asked if he might be able to change a few dollars for some Grivnas (the local currency), in order to be able to call for help. He searched his pockets for a moment, and seeing he didn't have quite enough, he said, "wait a few minutes." He then proceeded to flag down passing cars and started fining them for anything he could think of.

"Dokumente pashausta (papers please)!" In those days you could be pretty sure you would not get your driving licence back without paying a fine, it could be for any kind of infraction... a broken turn signal, a claim you had been going too fast, or simply a dirty licence plate. Anyway, pretty soon he had enough to change a few dollars to the Ukrainian currency.

While eyeing the bicycle on the back of the van, he suggested that perhaps he could help to get the van fixed. We apologized, saying that unfortunately the bicycle was not ours to give away :-)

Thankfully we were able to get hold of an Italian friend of ours, who was working in Kharkiv as a volunteer. He had been racing motorcycles in his early days, so he knew about mechanics, and he was able to locate the needed wheel bearing and drove it out to us - so far so good! Now we needed to locate a mechanic who could change the bearing.

We were told of a fellow over in the next village. The man had an ancient Moskvich car, which started right up when he turned the key. I thought, if he could get that old jalopy going in the dead of winter, he was our man! Where I grew up in Copenhagen, a fellow in the neighbourhood had that same kind of Moskvich, and he would always have difficulty getting it started in the morning, and that was a new model, well "new" 40-some years ago!

In any case, with a few basic tools our mechanic was down on the icy road under the van and got the bearing replaced in no time at all. I had the impression that in those days everything in Ukraine could be fixed with a hammer, a screwdriver and some grit. I found these grainy photos from an old newsletters. You can barely see it, but that's the mechanic under the car working on the front wheel bearing.

The mechanic was happy to collect a modest fee and a bit of food for the feat. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing chaos many were paid in goods, or not at all, so often people had to find ways to supplement their meagre income.

By then it was too late to get to our destination, so we spent the night with our friend and his family in Kharkiv.

The next day we continued our journey to the big family in the small village south of Kharkiv. The father of the family turned out to be a humble Baptist pastor. He and his family lived with babuska and deduska (the grandparents), in a house they had built by themselves. The old house, where they had started, was little more than a mud and straw hut. The family managed to make a living, as many Ukrainians did, by growing food in the garden and storing potatoes and cabbage and preserving foods in glass jars for the winter, apart from what his little flock was able to offer.

Naturally they were over-joyed to receive all the things the kind people of Glasgow had collected, and we were treated to zir-niki, home made sweet buns with cottage cheese filling, and other goodies.

With the help of Tim, our interpretor, the pastor told me many stories while taking us on a walk in the neighbourhood. He had started a Sunday school for the children in the next village over, but when the local Orthodox priest heard about it, he had confiscated the reading material given to the children, including the Gospels of John, and made a bonfire out of it in the public square. "Such subversive literature and false doctrine could certainly not be tolerated!" Imagine!

Some of these dear believers had endured 70 years of Communist persecution and stayed true. I was so impressed with their great faith and cheerful hospitality in the face of such humble and dire circumstances.

It was late before we arrived back in Dnipro, but it was a happy feeling of "mission accomplished!"

In the next chapter, I'll go back in time and give you a bit of the background, and how we ended up in Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.

Chapter 1 ~ From Bangkok to Scandinavia   ( TOC )