Ukrainians of both sexes, all faiths and marital statuses came and keep coming here, both eighteen-year-olds and those not so young. Once in a trolleybus I embarrassingly saw a picture familiar from childhood - arthritic hands swollen from water and garden work, a flowered blouse, always the same, wispy hair combed with a brown comb, the smell of bleach and pig dung, thick calves in threadbare brown stockings. This Ukrainian woman was over 60...
But Greece, despite everything, is one of the few European countries where they still treat us, Ukrainians, more or less decently. Both common history and common religion make themselves felt (they have no idea that during the Bolshevik times, in our churches that were not blown up, stables were set up for 40-50 years, and icons were turned into counters in rural shops), as well as our common European-like mentality with a light layer of Asianness. Although we ourselves still don't know who we are: either Eastern Europe or very Western Asia.
Belief in fate is sustained by its blows. Greece began in Chernivtsi. Through acquaintances and relatives, people learned about manna from heaven that falls on the chosen ones in the land of plenty. The search for money began, and that was approximately $1,000-1,500 - the road, visa, and for the first while. And so, using the services of one of the local firms, after a two-day exhausting journey by bus, which turned out not to be so comfortable, and humiliating procedures at the borders, another batch of female and male migrant workers descended onto the land of Hellas wearing Turkish tracksuits that, even new, were fit only for making floor-washing rags. The latter, by the way, were far fewer. All this happened under the condition of a favorable arrangement of stars in the sky and the very accidental goodwill of Greek customs officers and border guards.
Abstracting from the number of buses and individuals turned back, from the numerous facts of illegal crossing of the Bulgarian-Greek border under the guidance of Bulgarian or Albanian criminals, and the terrible case when wolves in that area simply tore a Ukrainian woman to pieces, and the not-uncommon facts of freezing to death during such actions in winter, we consider that everything is behind us. Although legends about this still circulate around Greece to this day, compared to which Hollywood horror films resemble something like cartoons about Cheburashka.
It's good if in Athens these people were met and taken in by some acquaintances, friends, or relatives. A few went there already having work and housing.
Let us try to put ourselves in the shoes of those very first ones. Newcomers then, as now, were met by the so-called grafies - small employment firms run either by Poles who had ended up here about 10 years before ours, or the already mentioned Pontic Greeks. The secretaries in these offices had such busts that they could work at the computer only by touch. And the 'bosses' brazenly and indecently eyed and groped the 'fresh goods' all day long.
Then a woman who does not know a single word of Greek, only 'English with a dictionary' (and here you need to speak not with a dictionary, but with people), is sent to an unfamiliar city on her own, in the best case - taken to the place of work, after first fleecing her a fee ($100-150) for services. And that's it. That is probably how a stray dog feels when someone finally puts a clanking collar on it, places a bowl of slop in front of it and, ruffling its scruff, allows: bark...
Problems piled onto them like a sumo wrestler onto a featherweight boxer. First - to pay off the debt incurred at home. And then every month, or even more often, some amount home - to parents, children, husbands. And you have to live on some money here. What remains? Almost nothing. And so for years, denying oneself everything, it is impossible to save anything. And at home they think they have long been nouveau riche and millionairesses.
The main obstacle to free migrant labor has been and remains the lack of the necessary documents among newcomers, the so-called green cards. They are not issued immediately, but after almost a year, in practice even longer, of a 'probation period.' They are issued for a considerable sum of monthly payments of the so-called IKA (taxes) during this period and a fairly significant one-time amount directly upon receiving the green card. But far from all migrant workers have such cards for various reasons: came illegally, did not make it within the specified deadlines, etc. Therefore, the real raids that the Greek police conduct almost daily greatly ruin the nervous systems of thousands of people.
Our first ones long learned to use ordinary telephone cards, which we didn't have yet then, modern refrigerators and other appliances, and to tell dishwashing liquid from shampoos. Also, not to eat tangerines growing right on the city streets, because they are wild and taste like the liquid in which devils drown sinners in hell. Mobile phones were a marvel, which almost every janitor in Greece had at the time. One compatriot once ran up to her friends and said: 'God, girls, these Greeks are so stupid, they walk the streets talking to themselves.' Poor thing, she didn't know that a mobile phone can be equipped with hands free - a device that allows you to talk on it without using your hands...
All work in Greece, for both men and women, is divided into two large groups: 'exo' - when a worker comes to work, having his or her own corner somewhere, and 'mesa' - when they both live and work at the employers'. Anticipating possible questions, I will note that the specific work of prostitutes is always 'mesa', because in Athens there are no 'hundred-meter streets', but there are legalized brothels with varying quality of service. This work, it seems to me, is done there for big money, but quickly. Therefore, there are no queues for the brothels. However, this important sphere of social activity, unfortunately, I do not know thoroughly; I have not seen prostitutes from Chernivtsi or from Ukraine in general, so I will not talk about it. Although, perhaps, such exist.
For men with higher education or academic degrees, there has always been extremely little work. Mostly heavy and cheap. This is construction, bakeries and agriculture, less often - gardener (sweeping leaves in the garden, nothing more), watchman. Few intelligent Greeks will go to work as a builder or baker in a country where for nine months the heat reaches from 30 to 45 degrees above zero, from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, for some $500. Although the press, on a wave of xenophobia that periodically rolls over society, constantly grumbles that due to the considerable number of foreigners the country maintains a fairly high level of unemployment. However, only Albanians, Ukrainians, less often Poles, are willing and able to do heavy and low-paid work. But not Greeks. The work of washing entrances and staircases in buildings has long been taken over by Albanian families; besides, it is also poorly paid. Filipinos (who were invited to the country together with Pakistanis back in the days of the junta due to serious staffing problems in the Greek merchant fleet) have been working in the homes of the wealthiest Greeks for about 30 years, as whole families (or tribes?). Only men with some unique profession (electric welders, car mechanics, computer specialists - all highly qualified) and, in principle, able to earn decently even at home, can find work here provided they know the language. Thus, objectively speaking, the vast majority of our men, who are unadapted to life, morbidly polite, fastidious and delicate, have the same chances of earning a decent living there as a pickpocket on a nudist beach. Proletarians of all countries - fly by!
Women have a wider range of opportunities, but no one will pay attention to their education diplomas either, even if they are from Harvard or the Sorbonne, not to mention, say, a medical college. They are general maids, cooks, waitresses, babysitters, workers caring for the elderly, the feebleminded, or the sick, or all of them at once. With intimacy and without. It depends on the woman and her preferences. Sometimes, along with a Greek husband, his wife also comes to Greece, in order to, under the guise of a maid, pick an "official" mistress for him, so that he wouldn't hang around brothels and waste money. This is quite normal for them.
Overall, the philosophy of the Greek labor market for Ukrainian migrant workers is very primitive: the most sought-after has always been, is, and will be the same type of worker - who, on the one hand, is smarter than an Albanian, in order to successfully solve the most complex tasks, and on the other hand, is a complete blockhead, in order to receive such ridiculous money for it.
The main problem for "neophytes" is undoubtedly the language, because even the famous English humor arose from poor translation. They learn it in various ways, but as quickly as possible. The most common method is watching and memorizing dialogues from old movies with Aliki Vougiouklaki or Nino Rizo, and about five or six other actors who appear in all old Greek films without exception. The films are black-and-white, like life at home, and simple, like Lenin's "Iskra".
Greeks often and sincerely wonder how we manage to master their difficult language so quickly. Among a dozen literate Greeks (and such are far from 100%), perhaps only two or three will write the Greek word "chemistry" in their native language without mistakes. It is just that some identical sounds in this language are spelled in different ways, the same "i" sound, it seems, in seven. After forming a minimum vocabulary, we have difficulties only with stresses, which sometimes change the meaning of a word to the opposite, and with the use of words that sound the same but have different meanings. For example, the word "malaka" with the stress on the last syllable means "soft", but if you put the stress on the second syllable, you get the most common local swear word, which we have already unjustifiably thoroughly analyzed above.
A woman from Kitsman we know caused two dozen trolleybuses to stop, dozens of taxis to collide, and Homeric laughter from an international crowd accidentally led by a local pimp and part-time sommelier, when she wanted to buy a magazine at a periptero but, due to the wrong stress, asked whether the male seller had, excuse me, periods.
But in general, for a decent mastery of the language, a Ukrainian man or woman of average mental abilities needs about six months. Oleh Blokhin, a "Greek" with experience, speaks Greek approximately the way V.V. Putin would speak Ukrainian if he took it into his head. Grammatically correct, but with a terrible Kyiv accent and our linguistic "airs". Like, you wanted me to learn your language - here you go, but I will speak as I see fit. And you can do as you like. Some of our less titled compatriots do the same. Because knowledge of Greek grammar greatly spoils the pleasure of conversation.
After initial mastery of the spoken language (which, by the way, differs from the one written in newspapers and broadcast on television), you are surprised to discover that your native language has far more words of Greek origin than you had always thought. And then your progress with the language becomes much faster.
The second more serious problem is relations with the masters. This is sometimes the most dramatic part of being there. I will not reopen wounds or resort to retelling tear-jerking stories, although I know quite a few, limiting myself to a few general observations.
Quite often, migrant workers are not paid the agreed amount of money for their work, or they are not paid at all. The moral aspect is very simple: if you treat your servants humanely, you should not keep them. Whom can you complain to if you have no documents or do not know the language? Sitting up to your ears in mud, you will not particularly open your mouth.
One Chernivtsi family came to Greece urgently to earn money to pay off a significant debt. The owner of olive tree plantations took them all in, promising to feed them and provide housing. He would pay after the full harvest, when his partners settled accounts with him. The poor people slaved under the heat for two or three months, and when the work was nearing completion, the owner called the police, and they took the poor souls away because they had no documents. Of course, these people did not receive a single kopiyka.
How many deceived and unhappy people I saw there! People are psychologically broken due to years of separation from their relatives. Almost all women start smoking frantically, and sometimes looking into the bottle, periodically finding at its bottom a sparkling diamond of truth and losing it every morning. Many zombify themselves in Protestant sects of various kinds. They tearfully ask the Lord or someone else to save them from misfortunes, but the Almighty, obviously, is often busy elsewhere and each time gives them the opportunity to extricate themselves from their problems on their own.
Some are in depression and despair for months, with wounded souls. And this is not when you don't want anything, but when you want not to do what you have already done. They feel like a tool in the hands of the masters - something like a shovel, a plow, a hammer. Yes, they are supposedly free, but this is conditional - an early recognized necessity.
Some women (fortunately, not many, although no one, of course, counted them) find consolation in banal intimate betrayals left and right to the men left behind in their homeland. Having broken out into imaginary freedom, they become one-man women repeatedly. Yes, outwardly they are real Greek women, but only metal dentures, ill-matched or bright lipstick like that of Amsterdam prostitutes, or yellow shoes that absolutely do not match red pants, give them away completely. Even the sluggish local male demand, say, in the Greek winter, is wildly suppressed by the domestic female supply.
A few words about marriages with Greeks, because I don't know of any facts of our men marrying Greek women, these women are too much, as they say, for amateurs. Frankly speaking, many Bukovynian women count on a successful marriage when heading to Hellas. And I know of cases when Chernivtsi women arranged their personal life quite successfully there. And let them be lucky. But these are rather isolated exceptions.
Therefore, usually, if some Aris promised you to marry you immediately after your weakness, it means that he will first divorce for about twenty years, and then another twenty years marry you. The difference between theory and practice in practice is greater than in theory. That's first. And second, I noticed that such a step as marrying a Ukrainian woman, not a Greek woman, is taken, as a rule, by losers and poor souls, people who have not succeeded or have not fit into life. Third, for a Greek, children are the most important thing. Therefore, you absolutely should not count on receiving a rich inheritance after your husband departs to other worlds.
And yet, as they say, everyone has their own shoulders under their head. But according to my observations, all modern "Aristoteles Onassises" are more or less settled. And also - in Greece, purely "male" love has been very widespread from time immemorial. And you can easily get into an intersex misunderstanding.
The third problem of new migrant workers is, unfortunately, themselves. We Ukrainians are somehow not like everyone else. From birth we are sure that we are wonderful in ourselves. If we are in a bad mood, that doesn't mean someone else should be in a good one, and to feel completely happy, it is not enough that everything is fine - it is necessary that the neighbor feels bad. We are clearly distinguished from others, as in the famous anecdote: Stirlitz walked through Berlin, and nothing betrayed the Soviet intelligence officer in him, except for the parachute trailing behind him. For us, it is an axiom that a cultured person spits only into specially designated souls.
Unfortunately, among female migrant workers, facts of appropriating other people's jobs are very common. It is, probably, impossibly ugly when you go home for a few weeks to visit your relatives, leaving your long-term job to someone you know or even to a friend, and upon return you find yourself without this job because the comrade turned out, to put it mildly, dishonest, simply slandering you before the employers. A completely uneducated person can rob only a freight car, while a university graduate can steal a whole railway. Probably, this is about such people.
One can see a great deal of interesting things in Athens on weekends, when compatriots gather together to complain about the masters and remember the distant homeland over a glass. This is quite natural. But in Ukrainians, a simple "Let's be!" turns a banal drinking bout into a significant celebration. Athenians have already had their fill of seeing our people in small cheap taverns around the famous church on Omonia! But this is far from the full palette of diverse manifestations of our nature.
At the end of each month, near the kiosks selling travel tickets for all types of transport, large queues gather (like in our time for washing powder), in which mostly migrant workers of all skin colors stand, because locals usually use cars. Greeks, as well as representatives of other peoples, will never reach such "shining" heights as ours in the dexterity of bypassing such queues or in proving that "you, goat (she-goat), did not stand here."
Painfully overcoming their habits, our "new Athenians" took a long time to get used to validating tickets every time in transport, because there are small orange boxes installed that stamp the date and time on the tickets, and this does not allow using this ticket several times as under socialism. And the fines reach the size of a Ukrainian civil servant's salary. But when the inspectors caught "hares," they mostly turned out to be ours.
If you urgently need to find a compatriot, and he is not visible nearby with the naked eye, don't worry. Stand near the nearest pedestrian crossing and wait for the red light. The one who will run across the road on red with a torn plastic bag will be him or her.
And here's another thing. In a cozy park near the National Archaeological Museum, an elderly Greek woman gracefully sat down on a bench to look through a fresh newspaper and walk her spotted dog. Beside her, like two aerial bombs, a pair of women from Chernivtsi, each the size of an advertising column, plopped onto the bench. Having spread an old newspaper, they impatiently tore apart a baked chicken, sprinkled it with a pinch of salt, and poured into faceted glasses brought from home a bottle of moonshine, the smell of which made the sparse leaves on the surrounding trees begin to fall. And after taking a swig, they started a lively conversation, generously interspersing it with obscenities in four languages.
Or this too. Laiki is a small market where vegetables, fruits, and small goods are sold. Up to a large box, where enterprising Greek Gypsies dump for sale shoes or faded, out-of-fashion rags bought for next to nothing at local factories, an embassy car with a native little flag on the hood pulls up, past the security guards. From it climb out several aunties from Podillia in tracksuits and sunglasses covering half their faces, like those popular with German female cyclists in the 1930s, with logos of globally non-existent brands, and they start rummaging in that box.
How after this will they treat us and Ukraine as a whole? Why do we, Ukrainians, hunt for the bird of happiness only to make a scarecrow out of it? Why do Poles, who are in Greece for the same purpose as our people, enjoy enormous respect among the local population? Why do they have their own schools, kindergartens, shops, newspapers, and even Catholic churches in a completely Orthodox country? And our people cannot be organized without a promise of payment for anything except drinking. We are surprisingly and cautiously "respected" only for our ability to "knock back" a glass of vodka without a snack, enough to poison a small Greek town.
Why did the very same Greeks, having spread around the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, earn money and invest it in the development of their country, giving birth to the Onassises, who rebuilt one of the poorest European countries, where there is nothing but citrus fruits, olives, and the sea, and then all moved from donkeys to Jaguars?
Why are we worse?
And Ukraine for Greece is gradually becoming a "cut-off piece of salo", which Greeks categorically do not eat, citing cholecystitis, but keeping their hand somewhere around, excuse me, the right buttock. They even look at it with careful disgust. The attitude of Greeks toward us over the last ten years has evolved from first enthusiastic and sympathetic emotions to decisive contempt and rejection. I will not cite lofty words about the authority of the state, one's city, human dignity, and so on. But one thing is obvious — we, Ukrainians, all together, do not deserve this. In fact, we are not like that. Although it is hard to prove that you are not a sheep if you have just vividly and clearly demonstrated the opposite.
But we are more educated than the local residents, we are more experienced and practical, we have golden hands and bright heads. Can a Greek guess that when the handbrake in a car does not work, you should put a brick under the wheels so it does not roll away? Greeks play at being geniuses among themselves, not understanding, like their great ancestors, that the next step after perfection is a fall. But we are just the same.
Greeks are struck by Kyiv to convulsions, to involuntary madness; they admire Chernivtsi. One of them simply fell face-first into the tall Ukrainian grass and long savored its aroma. Because they do not have that and never will.
But in reality, they are not like that either. Young and middle-aged Greeks, like us, earn money in America and Europe. But with greater dignity. And therefore significantly more.
I have come to love this people. Just as I love my own. We have largely come to know our counterpart. In any case, there is a durable contact, and we are destined to live together in a united Europe (or a united Asia?), mutually helping each other. For the highest national pride is displayed only by those who have nothing else to be proud of.
And I believe that soon in Chernivtsi or somewhere else a real Athenian tavern will open, and in it will ring out, say, a mournful and harsh Greek song interspersed with our melodious and wide, like mountain meadows, "Cheremshyna", and then into a swift dance will go sober as glass but cheerful Bukovinian lads together with, drunk with admiration, friendly heiresses of Greek goddesses with eyes the color of ripe olives, who dance a rather decent passionate hopak.
And also, our former migrant workers, who have finally returned home after suffering humiliation for a lifetime, will gather there. They turned out to be needed by their homeland, they are happy here and well-off, having miraculously transformed from "international-scale cleaners" into fully self-sufficient Bukovinian housewives. But the longing for Hellas, where they were forced to spend years, does not subside. Having exchanged a few words in Greek, they will strike up the same tremulous "Chervona Ruta", now washing themselves with tears of ordinary human happiness...
The best thing you can do for your country is to do nothing bad for it. Let us think and act this way.
Volodymyr KYLYNYCH.
Institute of Political Modeling.