Our Life Together

Belarus: An Anecdote.

To remember and treasure the strange experiences I had overseas, I’m seeking to write anecdotes about my time there. It would be a dream to see these published after writing and substantial editing, but right now, I am just doing it for myself. This is my other coping mechanism in readjusting to life in America: remembering, writing, and maybe even sharing. My biggest fear has been to forget what it was like to be an ex-pat and live in a former Soviet nation, and let the memories fade with time into inconsequentiality.

I don’t know if I will share these anecdotes often or not, but given the focus of these past few blog posts, I thought I’d share one snippet written this past April about one cultural shock: grocery shopping. The writing is, I suppose, in the style of creative non-fiction. This anecdote is in its nearly-first-draft form. I would love feedback in the comments or by email. If you enjoy it and would like me to post more overseas anecdotes on the blog, please let me know and I will take it into consideration!

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There is a strange currency in Eastern Europe: the currency of plastic bags. Plastic bags might as well be likened to flecks of gold that you save up, thinking one day they will be enough to plate your wedding ring. One of the first shocks upon settling into Eastern European life occurred while buying groceries. The entire grocery experience is far from the modern American norm to begin with. Most “stores” for grocery shopping are non-existent. The most common venue for buying food is the public market. Food stuffs – including raw, bloody animal carcasses and slabs of meat – are laid out on tables in open air or pavilioned areas. (I can only imagine what the FDA would have to say about their systems!) Lines don’t exist; everything is determined by mobs and forcing your fist in first with a wad of money to the vendor. That and having a loud voice. Imagine me doing this in the Russian language. (Those of you who knew me would chuckle at the thought.)

Courage being in small and ever-diminishing supply while sojourning on foreign soil, I sought out an alternative. I was relieved to discover that “super” markets did in fact exist… but they were far away and much too difficult to reach by bus. By the grace of God I stumbled upon a newly opened store, striking the balance between hole-in-the-wall shop and supermarket, that was only 4-5 blocks from my first apartment. It was like hitting a gold mine of American comfort in the foreign landscape. When I first walked in, the site was beautiful to behold — grocery carts! Aisles! More than 1 cash register! An ATM machine in the front lobby!

This beautiful place was a home away from home, that is, if I squinted and pretended all signs were in English. It was also a luxury… I had CHOICES! Could there be any more bizarre thing to have choice in than toilet paper? Not just one single roll of toilet paper, but packs of four! In blue, green, yellow, pink, and white. Some scented as daisys or perfume or pine, some unscented. Some packaged in plastic, others in paper. But Americans know how to be decisive. Myriad choices assail them every second as they walk down the aisle of the local grocery, a store that is akin to an amusement theme park for an Eastern European. So boldly I chose – 4 rolls! Plastic wrapped! Yellow! Daisy! And the day suddenly felt accomplished.

I could also fill pages of a book just listing the amazing array of choices when it comes to tea and juice. Tea, or chai as it is called in Russian, is the modus operandi of hospitality to one’s guests, the companion to any dessert, the go-to between classes for a snack, the afternoon delight. There may not ever be a Starbucks in Belarus, but if someone were to take the coffee chain idea and turn it into a tea conglomerate, riches could be unearthed overnight on Eastern European soil. But Americans, by contrast, tend to not be tea drinkers. If they are, they are not generally tea connoisseurs; they prefer a mass marketed tea bag that carries a brand name, indistinguishable from the actual substance being drunk. Nothing clues you in to the type of tea. This is the American way: brand names pave the way for marketing to tear any semblance of quality or substance away. Most non-black-English Breakfast teas are unfamiliar – green tea, red tea, white tea?!

Not so half a world away. Few Belarusians could tell the difference between instant or freshly ground coffee beans, nor the difference between frothed and steamed milk, but get them in a tea store and their delicacies of taste and preference emerge. The teas are even imported from Turkey and Britain among other Russian vendors. The pictures and titles entice you, the descriptions replete with poetry and beauty fit for an ode. Every box, indeed, is an ode to chai in of itself. So as I stood standing in this aisle, staring at the shelves upon shelves filled with teas in abundance, I began to appreciate the tastes of the Eastern European. While bereft of an Americano, I had the wealth of choices in chai to keep me company. Soon enough my daily routine could not be without this small pleasure.

With an armful of chai boxes, I continued my grocery experience. Where else can you find birds hopping around the freezer section? Grocery workers, seemingly unaware, let them flutter to and fro, landing here on the yogurts, there on the milk bags. Yes, that’s right: milk comes in bags. Floppy things that spoil so quickly after you open them, I could never understand this phenomena. Yet some of the orphans my friend Rand took in would down a whole bag of milk at once, sucking it out the way American kids would sip up a Capri Sun pocket of juice. But all I saw was a mess of milk waiting to happen — set that milk bag in your fridge and in two seconds, it flops over and milk gushes all over the floor. My American mind was already thinking of convenience and elements of design. But it had me on the novelty factor, that is beyond a doubt.

Emerging from the dairy section, it finally came time to check out and head home. I had a cart full of food that resembled the American foodstuffs back home enough to be considered palatable. Before making it to the cash registers and check out lines — there were more than 1 in this grocery mega-store, still small by American comparisons — I had to meander my way through the displays of… chocolate. Some things do not change, and marketers in Eastern Europe were no different than their Western counterparts. The deluge of sweets were waiting for you before you could make your getaway, luring you to grasp your very own chocolate bar in a fit of sweet tooth passion. Yet this wasn’t just your brand name candy bars; there were bars of chocolate, chocolate with nuts, chocolate with mint or orange, chocolate with crispy rice, chocolate with raisins… whole flat bars of chocolate, with an astounding array of choices. Chocolate, like chai, soon became a regular element to my overseas diet. I claim that fancy chocolate bars with colorful wrappers were often the one element of my day that made me feel like I could make it to sunset and still get up the next morning. Nothing like hot tea and a few — by which I mean at least 10 — bites of chocolate to end the day and help hold back tears after feeling lost and lonely.

Yet on this occasion, I somehow managed to resist the callings of these colorful wrappers to make my way to the cash register. Now came the scary part: I had to interact with a native. My Russian vocabulary was sub-par and fledgling, at best. If I said a single word, they would know instantaneously that I was a foreigner. They probably could even pinpoint me as an American. Somehow this made me freeze up. I somehow felt the need to try and conceal my identity. Afraid of pick pockets? Maybe. Afraid of standing out? Absolutely. By speaking Russian, I would draw eyes and ears my way. While my friend Rand would surround himself with orphans, speak Russian loudly and boldly, and dance in the streets as though leading a cast of Annie, I somehow could not embrace the thought of being a circus act. “Oooh, come quick, the American is shopping here!” (And now we all come to see the irony. The very thing I feared from others, I find myself somehow doing now to them… observing, analyzing, talking about and drawing attention to the “foreigners.” The thing I once feared has metamorphosed into my saving grace toward understanding and embracing these strange years in a stranger land.)

Yet I unearthed the smallness of my courage out of my heart, and managed to even smile to an, as expected, unsmiling cashier. Now came the unexpected. How was I going to cart my purchases home? Where would the boxes of chai fit? Why, grocery bags of course! And yes, there they were, at the end of the counter! So, after no action on the part of the cashier after ringing up the tally and fumbling through my wad of strange bills to pay my tab, I start to put my purchases into the plastic bags. And you would have thought I lit the fire that started Mt. Vesuvius in the cashier’s brain. Streams of hurried and angry Russian words flowed from her mouth. I felt like I was committing a crime. I mean, goodness gracious, it’s a plastic bag, can’t I bag my own groceries if no one else is doing it? I must have had a priceless deer-in-headlights, knocked-off-my-feet-breathless look coupled with incomprehension and anxiety to cause the cashier to pause. The volcano sizzled just a bit. She repeated, stared at me, spoke slightly slower. I realized then that I, in actuality, was committing a crime. I had paid for all my groceries but had neglected to shell out 20 rubles for the plastic bag. Thus, this ignorant American meets yet another culture shock: the value of plastic bags. Both from a monetary standpoint, and as a cultural lesson.