Randaja

I set out along the main trolley line to make sure I didn’t get lost in this new city and just kept walking. There was nothing in particular that I wanted to see. I had no business to attend to. The day was just about me discovering the city after all the tourists had left. The city was breathing again and its true nature was being revealed.

After a few hours of walking, I stopped to rest on a bench with my bottle of water and my travel journal. I scribbled away until a shadow spread across my page. I looked up to see a woman with a gorgeous flowing, belted skirt and a dark purple shawl draped gracefully over her shoulders. She held a child in her arms, maybe four years old. He too, was dressed in clothes that made me think of a time of knights and gallantry. It was definitely not something I would have picked out for a walk on an afternoon in July.

With her free hand, the woman crossed herself and begged for a hryvnia, but she was no ordinary beggar. She was a Ruska Roma, a member of a gypsy group that wandered through cities living off of the money they made by singing , dancing, and fortunetelling. She was a part of the culture that I had been looking for all day. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the five hryvnia bill I usually kept for street performers and placed it in the hand of her child. She smiled and blessed my journey onward, then walked back the way I had come. I sat for a while and listened to the tiny bells on her anklet die away.

Gypsies were misunderstood in Ukraine. People always thought they just spent their time being merry instead of worrying about the future. That’s what made them ageless. I felt a connection to them. Sitting there, I thought about the blessing she bestowed on me. I had four more cities in three different countries to visit before going home. I wondered if she knew that. I wondered if she saw me as a wandering gypsy too.