Knock, Knock, Who's There?

There is something odd we have run into since we have been here. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or not, but the Russians walk right into our house, often without so much as a knock.

It's a mite unsettling to turn around and suddenly have a Russian man standing in your kitchen babbling to you about something, which is exactly what happened the other day.

Shane was gone for the day. I was washing dishes at the sink and subconsciously noticed a man walk across the driveway through the view of the window. Not thinking much of it, I continued to wash. A moment later, the front door slammed and I turned around to see an middle-aged man turn the corner and walk into my kitchen. He kept talking to me in Russian, even though I stared at him blankly and helplessly shrugged my shoulders. I just kept saying "I don't understand" [я не понимаю] which is so far the only complete sentence I know. I kept trying to direct him outside to the office building, but enough time had passed with him trying to talk to me, that the security guard had made it to our house and answered the man's questions and escorted him out of our house. I locked the doors the rest of the day.

I asked an interpreter later if that there was a rhyme or reason to people just walking in without knocking, and she was confused as I was. She said in the villages visitors knock first and wait to be let in. So, it is still a mystery as to why they walk into our house at the farm unannounced.

We have talked to the construction people that are continually working on our house and they typically give a quick knock AND THEN walk in. The knock is a nice warning, however short it is. I try to just meet them at the door so that it doesn't traumatize my girls when one of them walks out of the bedroom smack into a foreign-speaking stranger. But I have been caught off-guard before. After having a late night of visiting with family back home on the phone, I went to bed and woke up to Rain telling me there were people in the house. Always an awkward moment, especially when they come looking for you if you don't immediately appear.

Although drinking is not allowed on the job, smoking is another story. The construction crew was working on our house again the other day and among the 10 or so workers, one of them was smoking every 5 minutes, directly next to our open windows. [Russian cigarettes stink worse than American ones.] So I went outside with my handy-dandy Russian traveling companion book and in my broken, laughable Russian, I asked them to please not smoke around my house and my children. They were polite and after that, they would smoke across the road by their shuttle van. 

They are respectful and always try to get my girls to smile. The girls found a small section of our driveway that had some sand in it and were playing "garden". Some of the workers who were hauling sand to build up around our house, saw the girls playing in their small pile of sand and hauled two wheelbarrow-fulls for the girls to play in. Another one gave them a ride in the wheelbarrow around the house.

The Girls' Garden.
Shane took this picture one night after he came home from work. The girls are always worried he will drive over their garden.

Playing in the Garden

A much bigger-sized sand pile

Perfect decorations always at our fingertips

Castle and dolls eating

Rain getting a wheelbarrow ride

Mesa being "brave". She even told me afterwards she was "so brave to go for a ride." This is true for two reasons: 1. Going for a ride in a wheelbarrow all by herself, and 2. Getting the ride from a stranger.

Hazards of the Job

The day after we arrived in Russia, one of the other American's lost the top of his thumb when he was roping a cow. From the story we heard, when he got to the hospital, they didn't have any painkillers to give him while they worked on it. The medical personnel apparently gave him some vodka for the pain and started sawing on his thumb. The American said the vodka did little to mask the feeling of them sawing back and forth on the bone. He is currently healing nicely.

Another American's wife got bucked off one of the horses that she has been riding for months. It was kind of a fluke deal, but she definitely got the short end of it. She broke 3 ribs, her collarbone, her shoulderblade, as well as deflate one lung. They removed 900mL of air out of her chest cavity. They said she would have to stay in the hospital in Pochep for 10 days. Her husband had to go back home to get her new clothes, a spoon, a plate, etc for her stay in the hospital because nothing is provided.

After a couple days, she said she was going home (to her Russian home), but they weren't going to allow it unless she agreed to a full body cast. They were chasing her down the hall with the plaster and tape. She was only able to escape after calling an interpreter and getting her to explain to the medical assistants that she refused to get the cast.

She is sore, but is healing now. It really amazes me that some of their practices are still so archaic.

Doctors don't cast ribs or collar bones, and haven't for a long time. Even with the digital age, and the flow of information, there is still so little that has infiltrated Russian life.

We haven't exactly escaped the casualties either. It had only been two weeks in Russia when our disaster struck. Since we are short-handed, Shane goes to help at other farms where the American managers are home renewing visas, or need extra help, etc. He was helping at the Vetlevka farm doing quarantine stuff. He typically would leave about 5 AM and be home between 9-10 AM, afterwhich he would start his work at our farm. He had done it already several times since we've been here.

He was on his way home from Vetlevka, in fact he was home. Our house is maybe, MAYBE 100 yards from M13, a major highway in our area. Shane was turning LEFT off the main highway and basically into our driveway, when a minivan tried to pass him on the LEFT side and started to T-bone him. Shane felt the impact and swerved back to the right, which made the other vehicle smear along side the driver's side instead. The other driver flew up the road quite a distance before he could get stopped.

Shane came in and told me he got in a wreck, grinning like a silly boy. I was so thankful he didn't get hurt. It was probably a good thing we weren't all riding with him that time either.

It took over 3 hours of waiting around for police officers, interpreters, farm managers, transportation directors, etc. to hash over the whole situation. As far as we understand, everything will be okay. Shane had used his blinker, soon enough according to Russian law, to not be at fault. In fact, even though the cover was broken off, Shane's blinker was still blinking when he got out. Speed was also a factor for the other driver. Shane obviously wasn't speeding since he was stopping to turn into our place. Back and forth, back and forth, "Let me see your passport", "What happened?", "Did you use a blinker?", "When did you turn it on?", "Do you have a fire extinguisher in your truck?", "Why don't you have a first aid kit?" "Does your wife have a driver's license?" "Does your wife drive?" Etc, Etc, Etc.

We are supposed to take the our "mighty ranch truck" over to the Trubchevsk office and drop it off so the insurance adjuster can come and look at it. Then it will have to go to Bryansk to be repaired. But they told us to do all this without mentioning if or when they would get us a replacement vehicle. Shane would be unable to travel about the pastures, or to other farms, nor would we be able to get groceries and such. So we haven't taken it in yet, and so far, there hasn't been anything said about it.

There was an accident last winter with another American couple when they were following a large truck whose entire wheels jarred free of the axles and came flying back at them. The American couple couldn't dodge them and wrecked their truck. The company was going to not allow the Americans to drive anymore, but so far that hasn't happened. It would be impossible for Shane and the other Americans to fulfill the duties that are required in order to keep this immense project rolling without their own personal transportation.

Shane's first (and hopefully only) Russian wreck

The bulk of the damage

Some of the officals and such

Distance from our porch

Echo trying to follow Daddy back to his truck

The girls had a sleep-over on the porch waiting for Daddy to be done

*A note about Russian drivers: They are CRAZY. They pass other cars with the smallest clearance and distance possible. They pass multiple cars at once. I've always been afraid that one would be coming from a few cars back and hit us while we were turning. Well, since that's already happened, hopefully we can be done with that.