The Making of Freedom Microfon Exhibition Kyiv July/August 2014

Last night I was Kidnapped.

To mark the completion of our observer mission in five separate districts there was an obligatory chat at the Canadian embassy. We all said our goodbyes.

The rest of the evening was spent next to the stage.  Such a relief to be ourselves again and able to openly support Ukraine, sharing the hope that Ukraine will overthrow president Yanukovich and finally ditch its dependence on Russia.

I was told to return to a house near the center of kyiv to have dinner and coffee and stay over. I didn't mind . The lady seemed very patriotic, a young Ukrainian woman who was doing her Phd in London.  And the Canadian guy, maybe in his 30s or 40s in a suit, very Ukrainian in a Canadian way, was cute.  He offered to carry my miniature rolling suitcase. 

We spent the evening and long into the night sipping Canadian spirits and discussing the plight of Ukraine, formulating our plans.

Outside the Kyiv City hall

Sundays drew big crowds

the windows of the City Hall

The Rada Maidan 'Council Maidan' invited people to sign up to be a member

Other inhabitants of this huge house was a German guy - another election observer - and a wounded Maidan revolutionary complete with bandaged arm and a limp. He was one of the ones who had been beaten by the Berkut. He spent the day watching footage of the attack on the Maidan and Mykolyvsky Church, on the 30th November, I was mesmerised.  The cameraman, speaking English.  arguing with the police, much running, people are curled up on the floor, being hit by police rubber batons , a policeman running towards the camera, a woman screaming.  The picture turns into a kaleidoscope of psychedelic colors yet the camera keeps rolling.  Glimpses of the floor, lights, boots, a police uniform and then it goes black. 

I sat wondering how I would react to a violent attack by the police.

Saving the Barricades

The square is filled with people I don't know.  these new guys do not smile or say hello. It feels to me like they have been imported in from somewhere for a reason, maybe to clear the original Maidan smoothly. The Square was in the past always filled with happy people willing to chat, drink tea etc. Now if someone recognizes me they practically drag me into their tent or makeshift patio, chat in broken English. Perhaps they are starved for a lack of friendly banter and familiar faces.

Today I saved a barricade, well part of it anyway. Several huge diggers and dump trucks were removing most of the debris from the gate near European square on Kreshatyk street. Luckily I found the the commandant. Despite ruining his clean Nikes wonderful and curious Dima helped me carry the huge metal barriers that had been painted and graffitied by activists over the past few months. he didnt understand why I was saving these rusty huge pieces. Later they were stolen and taken to the scrap metal dump where most of the barricades ended up.

Third day of the Russian Invasion

Today it was the third day of the russian invasion. it seems that the Maidan war was won on feb 25th, there was only maybe two days of peace which was spent in mourning and shock and then straight away Russia invaded crimea and all Ukrainians know that he will not be satisfied with that. its 3am in the morning. I'm still awake because Oksana came round, gave me the medicine and brought me the spoils from Presidents Yanuks house in Mejergeria, I'm assuming from Maidan security but who knows. His house had been broken into as soon as he fled the country first by a feisty journo Chornival and then other journalists and activists followed. It was said that already the gold, fur coats and cars had been taken. it was unclear who had taken them and where the items were now, and speculation was rife. despite these strange situation the house had become a top attraction for activists and onlookers, observers and the curious. I was unclear wether it was still open to the public and the likes of me, but i was determined to visit (after my initial repulsion that gripped me at the thought of entering a dictators house and gaining any pleasure from his sick lifestyle that had produced such misery in Ukraine) and to make a film in english of the tour which now had a guide and map.

A New Zealand guy arrived in a flurry into the small apartment. He towered in the hallway, I  becons him to come to the kitchen where there were two french people in deep conversation about plans to help the revolution. it seemed appropriate that Tom had made friends of the french in the middle of the revolution and that they were plotting something in my kitchen. I was proud to have created such an alliance and to have facilitated and nurtured their ongoing friendship and plans. He wanted to try to help bring the politicians together with the people of Maidan in order to bring about a kind of joint plan, she wanted to set up a think tank in Strasbourg France or Brussels. He was a small man in his forties, with round smiling face, and she was a glamourous beauty, just what you expected a refined women from paris to look like. she had arrived into my haven on the edge of the revolution wearing black high heal boots and the prettiest black fur jacet, her bright red lipstick was always plentifully applied and made you want to kiss her on the spot, even more when she burst into sweet french accent which made the lips curl repeatedly into pouts. A great distraction for my recent heart brake from the day before had started to make me pay more attention to the gorgeous girls around me...perhaps a relationship with a women would be more fulfilling.
Relationships were more flexible in this time of uncertainty. We could all be dead any day or moment, or our lives changed forever from injuries caused by a sniper or shrapnel rules of engagement out the window.
I imagine it was the same in ww2. falling in love fast didn't think about the consequences.

Tom the New zealand guy, settles into the kitchen and after I put all the rememnants of food away askes if he can eat some bread. So I get it out again.
i share my stories about the two days of fighting on the square and he shares his about the medical volunteer girl who was shot in the neck, his personal friend, thank goodness she survived. I said that there was a story that she had died.I wondered why I was not touched personally by any deaths or serious injuries . we all watched videos on youtube of what had happened on the frontline at the peak of sniper activity on Institutska. A man was giving out commands . amazing, bravery and I felt proud that I was a personal freind of such a man. 

Two nights ago a filmmaker  Dan and James sat for many hours watching online footage of the attack and there was clear video of when the bullet hit individuals and they fell to the ground, sometimes still moving sometimes not. it was addictive to watch and yet deeply disturbing, somehow I felt I wanted to learn something by watching this but really there was nothing to learn, maybe to know what kind of government could expose young protestors to individuals that would kill for money and as a job.
 There had been much speculation about who were these shooters were and even in the video, the people being shot at were wondering which side the shooters were shooting from.

Heavenly Hundred

Sleeping on the Square

So far, I've slept out in the street, the ' Maidan' Square now on several occasions, in the union building and now in a van on Kreshatik. Quite cold in the car really, there was a drop down bed but the covers kept falling off,  the engine would be switched on until it got baking, temperature would drop, a dampness inside would envelope and cold would seep into every crevice of any gaps in the additional rough sheep wool Karpathian blankets that topped a thick cheap synthetic quilt borrowed from a cossack tent. 

Places available to sleep on the square were the Trade Union Building where the press center was and other rooms for different civil groups, city hall, various tents, whoever you could make friends with, the October Palace and cars. The important thing was to stay close and available to defend the barricades and fend off any attackers who wanted to clear the square. 
When I arrived on the train sunday afternoon I got a metro train to Kreshatik which strangely is a tube station that exits right in the middle of the street that holds protest camp and is in fact inside one of the scrap metal, wood and old tire barriers made by the protestors.It was now becoming quite colorful raw planks of wood painted reminiscent of adventure playground in London. I noted some of the tires featured everywhere  Food is plentiful at the independent square these days. Where usually food would be got from fast food places like McDonald's there are two in the same square block fancy 24 hour cafés where cappuccinos and food are available. Now just go straight to one of the tables giving out white plastic bowls full of buckwheat, stew or cup of chicken soup with rice. Open faced sandwiches which they call canapés provide baloney and cheese combinations unexpectedly 'smachno' (tasty) treats, accompanied always with black sweet tea or coffee made with fresh grounds mixed with hot water in thin plastic cups which look flimsy and maybe would melt but seems to work fine.

Beautiful Drone of the Stage

I collapsed last night,in my own bed at home in Lviv, a small picturesque city on the west side of Ukraine close to the polish border.  Yesterday was a blur.  I picked up money sent from my mother (my job here hasn't started yet) and it was enough to buy myself some simple food and get a train ticket back to Kyiv I indulge in delicious raw honey and raw milk from the "babas bazar" and a friend visits and helps me get to grips with paying bills in my new Ukrainian apartment. red tape concerning the gas boiler. nothing is easy here.

I bump into an old patriot friend.  Lviv is a small picturesque city, likely you will bump into people you know esp in the centre where I live. She tells me she does not agree with joining eu and wants Ukraine to stay as Ukrainian as possible. no point arguing with her about how Ukraine's only hope of getting rid of Russia is to go towards EU, if only for a little while until Ukraine gets stronger.

 I surf the web today catching up on links and news about the Protests back at ground zero, the independent square in Kyiv, The capital of Ukraine. I was too busy and nervous to read while there at whats known as the 'Maidan'. People seem to have have dropped the "Euro". In the evening I tap into Aronets live video stream of the independent square. It's been two empty days away and I'm hungry to see how things are and if its the same as when I left on New Years morning. Relief.. It is ...and the beautiful drone of the loudspeaker with protest voice is suddenly for the first time in my life extremely comforting.....touching something deep......i need to be back as soon as possible. tonight?

Surprised by emotions I don't understand: how a screaming male voice over a loudspeaker about Ukrainian nationalism (I'm guessing as I only understand limited Ukrainian words) in indiscernible language could have an effect on my emotions. this is the longest I have been away from the square in a month. I walk in the cameraman's shoes, smell the wood burning smoke, the musty smell of unwashed clothes, campers huddled by burning barrels, the soup cooking on the open fires and tea with lemon and jam. I think I miss the 24 hour excitement that something will happen. Anything could happen at any moment.

Here I was again in the country that my grandparents fled sixty years ago and abandoned for ever. seemed to me the country was headed towards the same turmoil and instability of a war-torn country (that they left behind) and was I running to it, wanting it, maybe wanting to finish off the job that they had started! England had been my home all my life but for Ukraine the roots ran deep. but why was the voice on the loudspeaker so familiar?

Was it a memory trigger for when I was a child? A two year old, California, Berkeley campus where my mother, a single mother student finishing her degree in English and Psychology. Protest voices calling for freedom, expression, young voices, frustrated, new at this protesting thing. protesting about sexual equality, race equality, to end the Vietnam war to express their freedom by turning a derelict space into a children's park. The next day the military tore down the park, students were hurt, maybe even killed. I remember playing in a dusty park with makeshift crooked metal fence and my mother giving me marijuana seeds to plant in the soil. later she described how I had been one of the children who played for that one day inside that illegally created park. Later it was to become a symbol and part of the sixties history, it was named "peoples park".

Our move to back to Europe and to England was spurred by my mothers experience of this moment in history and by a police raid in the middle of the night that landed my mother in jail overnight. Police came into my bedroom as I was sleeping and grabbed me out of my bed carting me away to an unknown place....officers arrested everyone in the house, and me too I thought (two year old child) really I was in a children's home. A week later my mother and my teacher got me out. I only remember it as a lonely place full of rows of children and hot chocolate. Would this explain why I have the protest fever.....at age two hearing "down with the pigs" and "this is the revolution" evening deep discussions, in the future things will be different. revolution, it all came to me naturally!.....

I continue watching video streams, nationalist marches for a commemoration day, live footage of walking around the crowds, hearing the sounds of the Maidan, the occasional chanting, singing, rustling of thick coats in the wintry night, boots on the cold concrete. There had been no snow recently, temperatures were mild of late ( a problem for the barricades made of ice bags that melted) On the phone to a friend at the square, there a loud bang in the background, she says there was an explosion, then says it was nothing. My mind goes wild with imagination, what could it be? and will I miss the big day when the authorities will come and try to sweep the people away? possible to do it?

These people seem so determined, so angry. They have been waiting for this moment a long time. The orange revolution had just been a false start. Now it was the real thing. This is what seasoned people were telling me. On Twitter, the post Christmas police and authority clamp down has begun. Central heating was turned off at the union building which held the press centre where I slept, a building leased by the protesters. At the city hall occupied mainly by supporters of the nationalist party, the hot and cold water was switched off today...I tried to picture it, people using large bottles of water to flush the toilets. Ukrainians are already used to this and always have a supply of a few filled gallon bottles of tap water by their toilets at home always. as the water supply can sometimes go off for half a day in the cities. And who need needs hot water in a revolution?

What keeps this revolution going is people, siting, standing, talking, walking. It's a brand new social scene, and all the networkers ran out of business cards in the first week. If a few police show up, out of nowhere there are a few hundred people immediately at that place. The Maidan is like a living breathing being with antibodies ready to expel the germs that enter. I read in the local news that the local authorities had a meeting yesterday and agreed to start blocking the roads bring in the supplies into the square, wood, food, water, come regularly in large trucks delivered to each camp. The fires are constantly fed with fresh wood to burn to keep people warm. Food by the truckloads comes in too. and endless jars of fruit preserves, pickled items in huge clear jars, large Slavic sausages, raw honey of all colours, and tastes, coffee and teas a whole assortment are always available for the masses. Ukrainians know how to stay well fed and watered to entertain, keep warm and comfortable.

A friend filming a group in a large tent, who had proposed an horizontal system of governance instead of a pyramid. Was the 'Maidan' a microcosm of the Ukraine the country? a political testbed for future government systems being tried out in miniature? perhaps. I had the feeling that different parts of the square represented a different approach how to run a country. In the union building it was definitely soviet communism, with people barking and obeying orders without question, and most of the building was off limits to the ordinary person and we have yet to determine how much money goes into it, where it goes and how much. Outside in some of the camps, 'olde worlde' medievals roam and beat their drums complemented by ginormous vats of cooked millet and rabbit stew, full Kozak Uniforms, swords and white furry hats. Then you have the fresh faced smiling liberal Eco types with their homespun cloths, rainbow hats, loose fitting garments describing clumsily alternative democracies while holding small children on the hip. A regiment of young men in balaclavas and orange hard hats march past. Are their lives so miserable that they would literally fight and risk injury or death by Berkut policemen in the hope it will change their country? Its all very confusing.

One nice thing is that alcohol seems to very low key; even on New Year's Eve, bottles of champagne were spotted outside the perimeter. The rumors that "provocateurs" were going to smuggle in vodka and get everyone drunk was enough to keep everyone sober....more confusion, I thought Ukraine was known as a problem area concerning alcoholism in epidemic proportions? Perhaps the drunks have exchanged their bottles for loud speakers and microphones. On one occasion I was wooed by a Ukrainian mother and daughter to their house miles away from the Kyiv city centre. They plied me with deliciously perfect vodka (called Horilka here) shared by a German and a Canadian Ukrainian who had also been seduced by their promise of delicious meats and desserts. The Canadian brought out of this world Canadian whiskey ... who knew?

Two days later I escape unscathed yet having fallen in love twice, one with the Canadian and once with a young Kozak regiment security guard they had also captured with a long moustache and dreamy eyes. i was disappointed. I thought I had finally come across part of the Ukrainian intelligentsia who had not been sent to Siberia.