Marshrutkas

As you can see you need to stand right at the edge of the footpath to see which bus is coming.  You can also see we are not the only early risers (I am on the left of the photo :))

It is dark and fairly cold and we are standing on the footpath outside our unit block.  It is 6.30 am and sometime in the next ten minutes a Marshrutka will come along.  These are the privately owned fixed-route taxis (we would say mini buses) that provide a great deal of the public transport in Kyiv. Actually many Marshrutkas will come during the next ten minutes but just one of them will be the one we want. They have a card, about forty by twenty centimetres on the lower footpath side of the front windscreen with the number of the route on it.  Because it is dark, it is now almost impossible to read the number by the street lighting but you do your best.  The vehicles also tend to be going at quite a rate as they approach a stop and unless you hail it they will go straight on. Some of them have numbers that glow, but not all.

We had to take a picture of our first real snow- fall in Kyiv. We had snow showers for about twenty minutes about two hours before this photo was taken and the snow had not melted. It was quite cold but my coat is very warm. I am standing in the school grounds and behind me is the bus stop we use.  You can see a banana trolley-bus at the stop.  For the last couple of weeks or so we have first been catching a trolley-bus part of the way to school.  They are frequent and quick.  The one that goes past our unit does not come to the school so we have to change to a marshrutka after about three kilometres.

There is a very distinct Marshrutka etiquette for the process of entering and leaving these vehicles. The entering process is that everyone who is boarding, enters one after the other as quickly as possible.  The vehicle then moves off.  No one has paid. Sometimes people who have the correct change just toss it down on the bench beside the driver, but otherwise you just board and stand or sit as the case may be.  Then people start to pay as you drive along. Some people walk down to the driver, but usually people just tap the person in front  of them on the shoulder and tell them how many people they are paying for and give them some money. So you feel a tap and then hear 'one', or 'two' as the case may be and some notes will be handed to you. (This is all done in Ukrainian or Russian of course). You then relay the money and the message down the bus until it reaches the driver.  If there is change it comes back in the same way.  The right money always seems to reach the right person. The leaving process is of course very simple.  The front and rear doors and mostly both are opened at all stops.  There are rarely any bells on these vehicles.  The only ones there are on some are at the rear door.  When you want to get off off you simply call to the driver that you want to exit at the next stop. As I have said before, you need to be agile  in Ukraine.  The drivers usually stop for the very minimum time at stops. There are though, signs at the front of the Marshrutkas which say that if the Marshrutka stops and remains stopped do not ask the driver when he will be going again. He may wait at a stop for up to 5 min. The usual thing is that as soon as the last person exiting has their second foot on the road the vehicle takes off.

Well about ten days ago on arriving at the school stop we were leaving our Marshrutka and Bill left by the front door and a young woman and I left by the back.  All I can think of is that the driver didn't realise that two people were leaving by the back door and before I was off he shut the door which is a fairly heavy door that swings shut.  Well it hit me as I was taking a step and it knocked me off my feet and I feel heavily onto the road. There I was lying flat on my back in a muddy gutter. That would not have been too bad but I was carrying a backpack and a handbag and they had been caught inside the closing door and the Marshrutka started to take off. As the door hit me I know I called 'I'm not off yet',( this off course was not much use because I called in English) but Bill tells me I was calling as I was lying in the gutter.  I am sure I was because I knew I was caught and I couldn't free my arm from the straps of the bags. All I could think of was that I was going to be dragged under the back wheels. Anyway between us, Bill and managed to attract the driver's attention and he stopped quite quickly.  Bill helped me up, saw that I was just shaken, and indicated to the driver that he could continue. The only effects were that I was shaken up for a few minutes and a little muddy and for a few days was sore down my whole left side and my right shoulder was wrenched.  I now leave the vehicles at the same door as Bill and I leave first so he can race the closing door!

The last marshrutka event for now is that Bill and I have a new 'hobby': marshrutka chasing.  It is cold and dark when we leave school in the afternoon so it is not great fun to wait for long on the cold footpath for transport.  The 455 marshrutka comes fairly frequently ( every ten minutes or so ), but the 465 may only come every half an hour.  The 465 is by far the better for us so if we see one we desperately try to catch it. A few weeks ago just as we came out of the school gate we saw a 465 just leaving our stop. At this point the next stop is only about 230 meters away. It wasn't travelling very fast and there is a set of traffic light just before the next stop.  Bill called to me and suggested to me that we try to beat the marshrutka to the next stop. So we took off.  Bill had a somewhat heavy backpack on and I had a bulky but not too heavy bag on my shoulder. We both had good walking shoes on. We sprinted as hard as we could on a somewhat uneven footpath and managed to catch up to it at the traffic light and climb in at the bus stop while still out of breath.  You do see people running for the buses. They sort of glide along at a sedate trot for twenty or so meters at the most.  I have never seen anyone else sprinting for about 230 m.

Since this occasion we have tried to do it four more times. The next two times we were close but missed by about 30 m. :(  The time after that we made it again but had misread the number and had chased a 455 by mistake.  We decided to wait for a 465 and nicely only had a four minute wait. Our last try was last Wednesday and we made it - just. I think the driver noticed us in his mirror and drove just a little slower to give us a sporting chance.  I am glad we do it when we make it, but my legs are a bit jelly like by the last twenty meters.  Once the footpaths are icy this will be a thing of the past, till perhaps middle or late spring.

We thought we would add some general photos of or life and work here.

We find it intriguing how some of the trees have these small balls of leaves that haven't fallen At first we thought they were nests, but they are just clumps of stubborn leaves.  Why they are in these clumps we don't know.

This market is right outside the school gate.  We buy our fruit and vegetables there.  Some of the produce is from Kyiv  but some drive up to 400 kilometers once a week to sell there.

This is my classroom and most of my students.  I have since had another boy added and one boy was absent that day. The girls are all from mission families. It is very handy having the big windows because the other day we had a power outage most of the day and by 2.00pm it was very dim in the room.