Prison, Banana Bread, and Marriage

People always ask me two things: how did you end up in Russia, and how did you meet your husband? In honor of recently celebrating nine years of marriage, I decided to answer the 2nd question in this blog post.

It's impossible to tell our story without first telling his. Rashid was born in the republic of Karakalpakstan (today located in Uzbekistan) in the Soviet Union. His Ukrainian mother and Russian Tatar father had both moved there with their extended families to work in the booming cotton industry. Rashid grew up headstrong and determined, driving his teachers nuts and forcing his school director to say she had never met such a boy in her 20 years in education. He found himself a bad group of friends and often got into fights with other boys.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in the 90s, Karakalpakstan was hit with financial woes, as well as ecological disaster. The Aral Sea had shrunk to 1/3 of its original size, due to over-zealous irrigation, and the cotton fields were polluted with unregulated fertilizers and pesticides. The health of the region plummeted as the water became dangerously dirty and the infant mortality rate shot sky-high. Rashid's baby sister had been born sickly, and the family decided they would move to Ukraine, which had been known as the "Bread Basket" of the Soviet Union.

In Ukraine, like any place after a revolution, there were also financial difficulties as one collective farm after another went bankrupt. Rashid's parents were hoping the change in scenery would help him find a better group of friends, but he was soon skipping school and hanging out with a bad crowd. One day in their village they saw a Volga--not the river, but the car. There were few cars in the village at all, and the Volga was the coolest car of them all. Rashid and his little brother hotwired the car and took it for a joyride, then left it a few blocks from where they'd found it. The car, it turned out, belonged to the county prosecutor. The boys were arrested for car theft, and Rashid received a sentence of 4 years.

Rashid soon found out that life, even in juvenile detainment, has its own order and he did his best to get in with the "bad guys." In prison he was in constant fights, so he was often punished and sent to solitary confinement. He figured when he got out of prison he would become a part of the Ukrainian criminal underworld, what Russians refer to as "bandits."

After he had been in prison for about 3 years, he found himself repeatedly stuck in solitary confinement. Finally he was put in there for 3 months. After a while, even his hardened heart began to despair. He began to think. A lot. There was nothing to do in there but think. They even folded up your bed during the day so you couldn't sleep. Soon he began to go back over his life. He realized he had done nothing his whole life that he could be proud of. He thought of his mother and how she wrote him tear stained letters, begging him to wisen up. He realized he was nothing, that nobody wanted him or needed him, and even society thought him a burden. He began to think if he could just change his ways, maybe he could do something helpful for people like become a surgeon. He asked the officers for books and they brought him books from the prison library. He began to read book after book, teaching himself how to speed read, but the emptiness inside of him grew and grew.

One day he remembered how, as a child, he had seen his grandmother reading a Bible. After she had laid it aside and left, he grabbed the book and started to read it. His uncle then came and took it away and said, "That's not for you to touch. That's the Book of Life." That phrase "Book of Life" now stuck in Rashid's head. Maybe that book, he thought, will help me to change my ways. He asked the guard for a Bible. He brought him a little Gideon's New Testament. Rashid quickly sped through it, understanding nothing. He decided to read it again, slowly. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with what he read. He felt like he had been searching his whole life for what was written in this book. And more than anything, he was sorry for the way he had lived, and he wanted to live like it said in the book.

Rashid came out of solitary a man changed. The emptiness in his heart was gone. His fellow inmates couldn't believe the change in him. They began to call him "Batushka" or priest. No longer did he hang out with the hardened criminals. Although that can be punishable in some cases by death, they left him alone and almost seemed to respect him. When he was released from prison, his parents were in shock. The neighbors also heard that he had become a Christian and they came too to see. His neighbor kept saying "I can't believe it's you. I just can't believe it's you....you're so different."

Work was scarce in the village. When a group of young people from a church in Perm, Russia came to vacation in his village, they invited Rashid to come back to Russia with them and study in their Bible School. "I have no money, and almost no belongings," he said, "I've only just been released." They assured him that he could work for his room and board. So Rashid left for Perm. He studied a year in the Bible School, and then stayed on, working and serving in the church.

OK for those of you who are still reading this very long tale, this is where I come in! I came to work in Perm in 2001. I worked with the local church, serving in their orphanage for street kids. The building that housed the orphanage was also a dormitory for some of the people at the church, including Rashid who worked making furniture, remodeling the building, and fixing and building all sorts of things. So I met him and knew him as one of the guys at the church.

In the fall of 2001 I got a phone call from another street kid worker, telling me that Rashid was sick in the hospital with tuberculosis. His condition was serious. He had contracted TB in prison, where it's an epidemic among the malnourished and perpetually under dressed (read--freezing,) prisoners. Rashid's TB must not have been treated completely, and now it was back.

The other worker and I agreed to visit him in the hospital. We visited him twice, bringing him vitamins and fruit, and both times he talked only to the other girl, and ignored me completely. I decided not to visit him again (what's the point of visiting someone if you're just going to be ignored??) But then one day, late in the evening, I got a call. I was so surprised to hear Rashid's voice. "Are you going to come back and visit me again?" he asked. I didn't even know how he got my number! I asked if he wanted me to come, and he said he did, so I said I'd come.

I began to visit Rashid weekly in the hospital, bringing him banana bread and other baked goods. The bus ride from my apartment was an hour and a half, so I wrapped the things I baked in several towels so they'd stay warm, and then prayed I'd find a seat on the jammed-pack bus so I wouldn't have to hold the pole and juggle banana bread for an hour and half ride. That winter we'd had a ton of snow. After I got off the bus I walked through a park to the hospital, where a path had been cleared. The snow on either side of me towered almost as high as my head. Rashid waited for me every Thursday evening, and as I arrived in the small TB ward, the other male patients would smile at me and start calling down the hall "Rashid! Rashid! Your visitor is here!"

Rashid would bundle himself up and then we'd go outside the hospital to the park and talk and talk until the last bus was ready to leave for the city. When Rashid was released from the hospital several months later, he met me with a bouquet of tulips and asked me to marry him. 

Our official wedding ceremoney, Skadovsk, Ukraine November 2, 2002

Since we're both foreigners (Rashid has Ukrainian citizenship) Russia refused to marry us. But we still wanted to have our ceremony in Russia, where we had our mutual friends. So we traveled to Ukraine in November 2002 to sign our marriage papers. Our civil ceremony was scheduled for noon, but there were no buses at that time from Rashid's village to the county seat. Rashid thought it would be no problem to catch a car, but we stood by the side of the road for an hour without a car stopping. I began to wonder if I'd miss my own wedding. We finally found a ride and made it to the ceremony just a few minutes late. They had waited for us, and as we stood in the lavish Ukrainian hall of culture, Rashid in jeans, and me in a corduroy skirt, with no marriage party, they began the ceremony. I understood almost nothing, since it was in Ukrainian, and at one point the lady stopped and looked at me expectantly. I didn't know what to do, so finally she said to Rashid "Translate for her!" so he turned to me and said "Will you marry me?" I agreed, and signed my Ukrainian wedding license in English.

On December 21, 2002 we had our real wedding at our church in Russia, with our friends, and even my parents flew in and a friend from college. That was nine years ago. Rashid has been free of active TB since he left the hospital. I am so grateful to God for my wonderful husband. Life is truly an adventure.

Our wedding, Perm, Russia, Dec 21, 2002.

Dogs, Dumpsters, and Lunch

Once a week we make a hot lunch at our missions base and invite the men who live at the dumpster behind our building to come and eat with us. There are above-ground hot water pipes that run behind the trash area, and the men put their clothes and old mattresses on the pipes and sleep there. The pipes are a warm respite in the cold winter for those who are homeless.


While the girls and I make macaroni, hot dogs, and mugs of steaming tea, my husband Rashid goes out back and invites the men to lunch. Since Rashid was gone on a trip to the Arctic last week, I went outside myself, along with another guy from our mission.


With me leading the way, we wound around the dried out leaves and scraggy bushes down the path to the dumpster. I boldly marched up to the water pipes, where I could make out a figure slouched down and sleeping. I opened my mouth to call out to the man, but before I could make a sound a dog--black as night--came flying out of the air above our heads. He lunged for us and began barking and growling and showing his teeth.


This girl-who's-never-had-a-dog-before-in-her-life froze in fear. The dog continued to jump and lunge at us, barking sharply and snarling, but the man slept on. I was too stunned to do anything, but take little steps backward each time the dog jumped. Soon we were pressed back against some scraggly bushes and could go no further. I began to call out to the man, whom I recognized. "Valera! Call off your dog! Valera! Valera! Wake up!" He sat up and looked at us groggily, as if he couldn't remember where he was. At this point the other missionary at my side sprung into action, and jumped between me and the dog, spreading his arms out to shield me.


A guard dog is a great, sometimes life-saving asset for a homeless person. The neighborhood is not happy that some men are living behind the dumpster, and a few weeks ago someone set fire to the men's belongings. They lost most of their mattresses and warm clothes. The men are alcoholics, and spend the better part of each day sleeping, so a guard dog's protection is a necessary thing.


Waking up fully, Valera said one quiet word to the dog, and he immediately backed down. He still growled and snorted a bit, but stopped lunging. After trotting in circles in front of us for another minute, he disappeared.


Heart still racing, I quickly invited Valera, who was the only man there that day, to lunch. The rest of our time together followed the usual routine: thorough hand-washing, prayer of thankfulness for the food, lunch and reading the Bible together.


As one missionary read from the life of Jesus, he stopped to explain how Jesus befriended and ate with tax collectors, who were hated in that society. But Jesus didn't care what others thought, and loved and accepted all people. Valera listened intently. "You've done the same for me," he said. "You accepted me and spend time with me, even though you know I'm a drunk. Thank you. I sincerely thank you."


"It's Jesus who loves all people, and told us to do likewise," we told him. "That's why we do this." Solemn, Valera nodded, rose, and left to return to his place at the water pipes.


We've been trying to get the men into shelters, but they often don't want to go. Perhaps it's the lure of being one's own boss, or maybe it's the excitement of living in the risky underworld of homelessness and delinquency. We placed one man in a shelter successfully, only to have him run away a month later from warmth and food and choose to live on the streets. Despite these discouragements and challenges like attacking dogs, we continue to reach out to the homeless, believing that God loves all, accepts all, and desires to rescue all.

Spitting, Babies and Beauty

Life in Russia is full of adventure, and since my eldest son has started public school, I am amazed at the new insights I've received almost daily into Russian culture.


A few days ago I was helping him with his reading homework. We were reading a skazka, or fairytale, and it was full of magic and superstition. "What's superstition mean?" my 7 year-old asked. As I struggled to define the word, I had a flashback of the perfect example that happened 6 years ago...


I was sitting on a hard bench in the loooong hallway of my neighborhood health clinic, trying to hold my squirmy baby boy. It was one of the first times I had taken him to see the Russian doctor, and I was nervous about saying or doing the wrong thing. Russians love systems and uniformity, and being a foreigner meant I was always outside the box--outside the system.


As we waited my bouncing baby boy cooed and gurgled to the babushka, or elderly woman sitting next to us. She smiled at him for a while, and then eventually shook her head and...spit on him three times. Well, ok, it wasn't real spitting, she fake spit. Just made spitting noises. She continued to smile through the whole thing, so I knew it wasn't meant maliciously...but still, did this woman just spit on my baby??!!


I didn't know how to respond, and she seemed to see nothing wrong with it, so I made a mental note to ask my husband about it later. Even though he is Ukrainian, the cultures are very similar.


That night he explained it to me: spitting is to ward off the evil eye. Supposedly if you have something of value, like a beautiful child, then others may become jealous. In their resentment of your good fortune, they may give you the evil eye--so that you lose whatever you have that is valuable. Thus spitting is a way of "tricking" the evil eye--such as if I spit on him, then it means he's not a beautiful baby, and thus no one will be jealous of him and no one will be able to curse him with the evil eye. I even heard stories later of it taken to such a degree in parts of this country, where a baby is born, and no one is allowed to say anything positive about the baby for the first year. Instead only insults are to be given as "protection." Spitting is not just for infants, but can be used as protection in any good occurence or windfall.


As I told my son this story he got hung up on the saliva ("it was pretend spitting, honey") and I again tried to make sense of this huge, fascinating, terrifying, and enigmatic country, that has been my home for 10 years now. I see how the father of lies can so twist our perceptions and escalate our fears that we proclaim something beloved and perfect to be hateful and marred. My prayer is this: Help me Father, to see the beauty in this great nation and people, and to voice it, compliment and extol it. Help me not to be intimidated by the pressure of conformity around me, but to stand for truth and love.