«ZAPORIZHIAN SHASHLIK»

Lesia Klenovych 
Zaporizhia

 
It was on this optimistic note that we began a party celebrating with my journalist friends' daughter Valeria. Valeria had just entered Pedagogical College. We were drinking "Saperavi," just as my friends and I had drunk when we were students. It has been a time when we could go almost an entire night without sleep and on the following day listen to 10 hours of lectures at the university with surprising easy. Even more, at the lectures we could apprehend what our professors were planning for the next seminar, appreciate the hilarity of STEM competitions, (student improvisational comedy comparable to KVN) and still have energy for God knows what else! And what was more, we did all this on a stipend of only 40 Karbovanets.
"And now, what?" complained my friend Maryna. "I can't buy my child even a backpack for that money! Just count it out, I, a journalist with fifteen year working experience, receive 255 hryvnias of salary after paying the [national] television taxes. My cameraman gets a hundred more, because their wages were recently increased. And we, the "creators", were passed over. We're public servants, so to say. And what kind of state servants are we, if we get this status only when start drawing a pension? God help us when we try to live on that kind of money! For Kseniya's school and transportation we spent half the salary, the rest we spend on on bread and student breakfasts. Count one loaf of bread for Lesia every day at 1.80, another to Valeria. Then maybe a hot-dog and coffee…
A piece of fat shashlik stuck in my throat at my colleague's confession. "Enough, Maryshka," I said, "because I'm not felling well. Though… wait a minute, my friend. How do you live? Your children seem to have modern clothes. Their shoes don't seem any worse than those of their fellow students. And your husband has decent outfit."
"Necessity is the mother of invention," my friend quoted, "We buy shoes at the market just like everybody does, hoping they won't fall apart until next season. Though that means we can't even afford decent food for 2-3 weeks. And the clothes are, as usual, second-hand. But they look like new! My girls have already learned how to find some great things there. And Edick has also gotten used to second-hand stuff, he doesn't mind anymore. Why would he: they're not wrinkled or patched."
"And you honey?" I asked, "Have you also worked your way to second hand?" 
"Are you kidding? I don't have time to loiter about in the garment sections. There is one woman on television. She has a business in which she buys "cheap clothes from Europe" by weight and then brings them to us, poor wretches, already cleaned (washed) and ironed, almost shining, and sells them for 20-50 hryvnias. Everyone is satisfied." 
"There you go," I sighed to myself. I remembered the times when, as students, we went hiking in the mountains in the summer and we needed only two and a half of the stipends we had carefully saved all semester. The Carpathians, Caucasus, Altai; in the winter we went skiing in Karelia, in the Carpathians, and in the Caucasus. Then there was the cosy huts, shashlik, and mulled wine, the tourist outings, heavy rains, frozen ears, epiphany and twelfth night celebrations in Carpathian villages. There were happy hutzul holidays and fascinating Georgian songs. I remembered tanned faces, matured wine, tea "ç äðèíîì", special homemade mazzoni cooked according to a special family recipe. We had suluguni cheese with corn rolls and slept five people in a two person tent. But we were still so slim, so joyful, and clamorous. We saw glaciers and snow-slips, German tourists on the Elbrus and Muscovite students on the Ushba ("Zaporizhia is somewhere near Melitopol, right?" they asked us). We listened to guitar songs almost until dawn, which came so suddenly in the mountains! All of that we could do on our two and a half stipends! 
A one-way ticket to Mineralny vody in Russia now costs $100. Leaf lard-a key part of any hiking ration- costs 10 hryvnias per kilo, a kilo of chocolate costs as much as a stipend. Even tea is unaffordable at 4-5 hryvnias for one Dixie cup!
Everyone sighed. And sixteen-year-old Valeria, excited at our reminiscences, asked Maryna, "Mom, will you let me go hiking if our group goes to the Crimea?"
"What are you talking about, my child! Just look in a tourist equipment shop! By the way, I looked in one recently. I felt dizzy! A tent cost 480 hryvnias, a backpack - 230, special boots - 280, a sleeping bag - around 200. Why buy the bag? You could never fall asleep in it after you remembered the price." 
After that, our party degenerated into a sad little accounting report. Maryna and Edick forgot about the shashlik and "Saperavi". Instead they interrupted each other as they counted off family expenditures.
"Just imagine," Edick said angrily, "our kid bought herself a pencil for 3 hryvnias. That's a whole liter of beer! She would have been better off giving that money to me. I could have brought her a pencil from my office. They give us editorial trifles like that.
"Leave the child alone!" said Maryna, "All you think about is beer!"
"And why shouldn't I! Don't I have the right to relax after 12 hours of work?" Edick said feverishly."I work like a horse for my 700 hryvnias!"
All this mathematical calculation by the journalists influenced me as well. I calculated: 255+700=955, 955/4=239, 239/30=8. 8 hryvnias per family member per day. Minus 2 hryvnias for public transportation, minus utilities, minus "requisitions" at school, minus colleague birthdays, minus, minus, minus. I got tired of all the subtraction.
"Relax, my friends!" I said, finally, "Are your children are healthy?"
"Yes, thank the Lord!"
"There is enough love and harmony in the family?" 
"Yes, thank God!"
"Life difficulties don't influence your creative work?"
"God save us from that!"
"So take it easy! And let us drink that our wishes may coincide with our opportunities!"
"Cheers!"