Travel story: a trip to Russia

As a second generation South African, Russia was as much part of my heritage as was sunny skies, biltong, braaivleis and tikkiedraai. And yet it was also so far removed from my daily reality that I never imagined travelling to that far away land.

Then, in 1996, the opportunity arose to close the circle begun by my grandparent’s exodus from Russia in the 1920’s. Armed with a lifetime of anecdotes about “The Home Country” I boarded the flight for Russia.

Within minutes I was dispossessed of this thought. The mad traffic, with no traffic lines to guide them, make a cut-throat dash to force themselves into the traffic flow. Drivers hoot and scream in gothic rage. There are ancient Brabants, Lada Nevas, and decrepit Samaras... it is like a bad Hollywood movie on Russia, circa 1920.

A car is in the way, blocking the traffic flow. From nowhere, a police car arrives, lights flashing. The occupants of the offending car are dragged out and beaten. No-one moves. Everyone looks straight ahead.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” I whisper to my driver.

He doesn’t turn around, but answers between clenched teeth, “What is there to do? Nothing is happening.” Seventy years of fear and oppression lie heavy in his voice. He pulls away as the traffic clears. The beaten men are left to lie in the gutter where they fell.

Moscow is grim, decaying, dirty. ‘Stalinist Gothic’ buildings, topped with a hammer and sickle, tower rudely over crumbling Byzantine buildings. Moscow is a working class city, with working class people. Young men spit constantly and with no apology. The citizens are grim faced, making no eye contact. The nine million people thronging the streets and Metros by day are strangely silent. Even the children are sombre.

Only the young women, like animated butterflies, bring colour and life to this bleak city. They are the antitheses of their bowed and broken ‘Mamushkas’ who shuffle towards the taxis, selling onions. The ‘Mamushkas’ are perhaps fifty years old; my own age. ‘Is this where I would be, if my grandparents not left so many decades before?” I wonder. The traffic light changes. We leave the ‘Mamushkas’ behind; their pathetic offering of onions burned into my mind

Sweeping into the Kremlin is both magical and foreboding. Red Square is an eerie presence.

St. Basil’s Cathedral, with its candy-striped spires, looks exactly as I had imagined it. All around me golden spires and domes reach upwards, imploring a sullen sky.

I decide to walk the streets like a Muscovite. Except that the Cyrillic writing renders me illiterate. Now I know how dehumanizing illiteracy is. It means you always have to ask: “What does this say? “Where does that go?” “What does it cost?” “Am I in the right place?”

On asking for help I meet only suspicion. There is nothing with which I can identify here; nothing to ground me in a known reality. I am blind and deaf to the strange language, spoken and written. I feel dislocated from reality. Two weeks begins to feel like a life sentence.

South Africa is so very, very, far away.

I travel on Moscow’s Metros. They have a strange allure, bedecked as they are with some of the best examples of Communist Art. Crystal chandeliers, wholesome statues, colourful mosaics, glorious paintings; all triumphant Propaganda Art. That these priceless, public, treasures are untampered with, despite the poverty, is truly amazing. They wouldn’t last five minutes in the ‘new’ South Africa where bronze gazelles and leaping horses are hacked to pieces and sold as scrap metal by itinerant hobos and ‘tsotsis’.

On to Zagorsk, the Golden Ring, so called because of the literally thousands of golden domed cathedrals that form a solid ring of gold around Moscow. Before the advent of high-rise buildings this ring of gold was clearly visible from Moscow’s city centre thirty kilometres away. Now, the golden ring is only visible from the air.

Zagorsk is Byzantine, ornate, majestic and magical. The ancient buildings are still used as seminaries and theological colleges. Russian Orthodox Fathers, in their flowing monk’s robes, scurry by. A weak sun teases people out of their coats. Ah, this is more like it; my affection for Russia improves a jot; until I need the toilet. Ablution facilities throughout Russia being positively medieval, I pay to squat over a hole filled with excrement. Later, back in Moscow, I thank heavens for the nearest Macdonald’s – where the long queues lead not only to hamburgers but also to FREE and CLEAN toilets (so advertised). It is a clever marketing strategy, luring people who queue for hours to use the clean and modern toilets, then stay to buy a burger!

The next day I queue with hundreds of Russians, of all ages, to view Lenin, frozen in his crypt. If anything quantifies the immense divide between Russia and the West it is this macabre display. Here, in death, lies a human being ‘owned’ by anyone who wishes to see his dead personage. I try to imagine South Africa’s beloved Nelson Mandela condemned to the eternal purgatory of a sub-zero, glass enclosed crypt. It is an unthinkable thought.

The weather, approaching winter, grows colder, the joyless sky reflected in the faces of the people I meet.

I ask one young man, ‘Why don’t Russians smile?”.

He replies, “We leave smiling to our Southern brothers. Life is too hard here for smiling’.

A few days later, while waiting to board the return flight to South Africa, I hear laughter and Afrikaans for the first time in two weeks, and find myself crying with joy. I am going home! “East, West… home’s best! ….”