I’m performing marchrutka-cises (my word, mind you), the daily calisthenics required to ride in a people-packed minivan driven by a man five minutes out of his hug-himself white jacket. Currently, I’m squatting (very good for conditioning calves and thighs). Other days, I’m standing hunched over, clinging to an overhead strap (very good for the upper body).
Marchrutkas are capitalism’s answer to a communist failure. The old Soviet accordion-style busses could barely be kept running after the collapse of the USSR, the state unable to provide for them as they are barely able to provide for street repair, building refurbishment or garbage collection (have I mentioned yet the smell of the half-dozen or so trash fires burning continually throughout the city?). Into this transportation void stepped a few forward-thinking city employees that eased tax laws, sold the machines to themselves and started the franchise-without-a-franchise concept of marchrutkas. Now, hundreds of these privately-owned little minivans, packed to bursting, dart about the major cities and actually provide faster and cheaper (the capitalist mantra) transportation than the few remaining busses.
I do not apply the adjective “safe” to these little speed demons (also, when I say “speed”, I am not referring to the quality of going fast, but rather the hysterics-inducing amphetamine). I feel the safety factor of taking a marchrutka was best put forth by the U.S. Embassy head of security, who addressed the Peace Corps volunteers the very day we stepped off the plane. His speech was long, convoluted, and full of politically correct phrasings, but one of his points amounted to this: “if you ride on a marchrutka, you will die.”
This sentiment was later rebutted following by our Ukrainian coordinators: “that man has a private car and a chauffer.” In other words, if you want to get anywhere in Ukraine, get on the damn marchrutka.
The sight of a marchrutka, despite the Mercedes symbol on the front grill, does not inspire confidence. All have dents and dings (some have fully-imploded panels), and all but one I have ridden on required help from the 3M company to keep going. I don’t know how the Soviet Union existed before the incorporation of that company known for Post-It notes, but I feel it would still be around today had it discovered earlier the now omnipresent products of masking, cellophane, and duct tape.
Take the marchrutka I’m riding on now. The spider-web cracks that spread the length of the windshield are being held firm through cellophane tape, and it is through that tape that I see а hapless car being bared down upon before the marchrutka dives into oncoming traffic and then back into the proper lane, leaving the car to suck down dust. Marchrutka drivers, despite taking off with the side door still open, making change for the fares en route and never letting the gas pedal off the floor, always drive as if they’re running late. Late for getting an iced-down heart to a transplant patient, that kind of late.
This type of driving isn’t limited to marchrutkas, mind you. Every driver in Ukraine drives this way, weaving in and out of traffic, barreling straight at pedestrians (who most certainly do not have the right of way), and driving on the sidewalk. Although I have not heard it uttered aloud, there must be a Ukrainian proverb that goes: “If God did not want me driving on the sidewalk, he would not have paved it.” My host father in Zhytomyr admonished me for putting on my seatbelt, saying I did not need it in Ukraine. I put it on anyway, telling him it was habit. I think the reason seatbelts are not required is that no one would survive a Ukrainian car wreck, so why bother wrinkling your suit? After pulling a very illegal U-turn in the middle of the street and barely making it out of the way of oncoming traffic, my host father told me not to worry. “Ya droog miliziom,” he said by way of explanation. I am a friend of the police. Which is almost a superfluous thing to be in this case, because in a month and a half of traveling between cities on marchrutkas, I have never, ever seen someone pulled over on the side of the road. I have seen babucias selling onions, horse-drawn carts and an SUV on fire on the sides of Ukrainian roads, but never the police.
So really it’s no surprise when my marchrutka nearly hits a grandmother walking on the edge of the road , literally nearly hits this woman as it's trying to dodge around a too-slow car, and this babucia doesn’t even bother to have an expression of fear or disgust on her face, doesn’t even bother to shout an obscenity (not that it could be heard over the Ukrainian reggae music blaring from the driver’s radio) and instead stolidly kept walking as if her life had not been put on the line by a man driving with one wrist on the steering wheel as he tries to make change for the twenty sardine-impersonators in his minivan.
So it is in this way, as it is twice a week, that I partake of my morning workout session en route to the city of Ukrainka, having no doubt that I will arrive on time (provided I survive) for my technical session on how to stay safe in Ukraine, riding the whole way in the eye of the marshrutka.